DENVER - The barkeep slapped a pizza slice in front of me at the Chicago Deep Dish Pizzeria on 13th and Race.

It turns out pizza wasn't the only reminder of home around these parts, smack in the Rocky Mountains.

Cory Booker and Mikie Sherrill were also on the menu here, two of a slew of 2028 presidential contenders already jockeying for position to succeed grotesquely dematerializing lame duck Donald Trump. Booker ran over his Republican opposition last week in time to vault into the scrum of fellow national aspirants who want to do more than just a 2026 endzone dance.

Building on 2025 momentum, Sherrill last week helped slam dunk Rebecca Bennett in CD-7 and pitched in to hoist Zack Mullock to victory in CD-2.

(Speaking of Bennett, U.S. Rep.-elect Paige Cognetti (D-Scranton), who defeated Republican incumbent Rob Bresnahan in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District last week, will room with Bennett in D.C., she said. "I'm going to live with Rebecca Bennett in a two-bedroom, two-bath [apartment]." Each has two kids. Something in common.)

But back to prez politics.

If any doubt about their intentions abided, Booker and Sherrill were scheduled to earnestly surface here at the Mission Ballroom in the Mile High City for this two-day "What's Next" Democratic Party conference.

Of course, Booker will have to work hard to try get around his colleague, U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who's also here, riding not only a blue wave but considerable party adoration for his having made his 2026 reelection effort look like easy work.

In what was supposed to be - at best - a purple state, which Trump lost (who could ever forget that) in 2020 and then won decisively in 2024, Ossoff trampled U.S. Rep. Mike Collins (R) by 18 points. In so doing, he became the darling of that national political school looking for a Huck Finn strategy similar to what Bill Clinton wrought in 1992. It's not a complex idea. In a Democratic bicoastal universe of Gavin Newsoms and Cory Bookers, you go with a Southern guy as the nominee, ostensibly to signal enemy territory familiarity.

But Booker has other plans, of course. And incidentally, the sitting U.S. Senator can make his own compelling southern strategy argument, having just campaigned in deep south Mississippi - when few gave Democrats a chance in that contest - for the ultimately successful Scott Colom.

New Jersey's full of surprises.

Like Sherrill.

"She's not running," a statewide ally told InsiderNJ earlier this week. "She's got work to do here first."

But her presence in Denver - scheduled to speak tomorrow (Friday) suggested otherwise.

Maybe.

Maybe everyone here isn't necessarily running for president but just trying to assure a substantial position within the developing Democratic party conversation.

Or perhaps it's more that that.

In fact, Sherrill is described by a source as one of the most requested speakers at this event here in Denver. She continues to receive many phone calls from supporters urging her to run for president. It's not a joke.

And it puts her - conceivably - on a same-state collision course with cemented contender Booker.