Chuck Schumer: I'm Not Running For President

WASHINGTON -- Yes, New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer is going to Iowa in November. But it's not to run for president. It's just dinner.

Schumer -- who perhaps once harbored ambitions of being America's first Jewish president (at any rate, he's still closer than Eliot Spitzer) -- is going to the Hawkeye State for the Democrats' annual, presidentially important Jefferson Jackson dinner.

But he is not running, he told reporters Thursday.

"The last time I ran for president was 1964 in Cunningham Junior High School," said Schumer, referring his old neighborhood school in Brooklyn. "I lost. I'm not doing it again."

It was apparently so painful to the budding politician that he said he remembers the opponent to whom he lost. "To a woman," Schumer said. "Mamie Gilson."

While Schumer may not be running, the "JJ Dinner" is almost always the scene of organizing on behalf of prospective candidates. At least two of those are in New York, but the safe money would be on the former senator and secretary of state.

Former President Bill Clinton was the keynote speaker at the dinner in 2006, two years before Hillary Clinton mounted her 2008 bid.