Menendez headed to Nevada on Friday

Basking in his senate colleague's victory in the New Hampshire primary, Sen. Bob Menendez said he is scheduled to travel to Nevada to stump for Clinton on Friday.

"Nevada is one of the states that has the largest percentage of Latino voters," said Menendez, who sees his mission in part on the weekend trip as a way to discuss what he says is the respect Clinton enjoys in the Latino community.

The Nevada primary is scheduled for Jan. 19th. There are 33 delegates at stake. Hispanics make up 19.7% of Nevada's population.

But Menendez said that he’s not taking New Jersey for granted, and will spend the bulk of his time campaigning for Clinton in the Garden State. New Jersey, he said, will likely see another Clinton visit sometime before the February 5th primary.

“I’m going to Nevada because that’s the very next election, and there is a role that I can play there,” said Menendez in a phone interview.

Menendez noted that Nevada is one of the first early caucus states to have a large Hispanic population. But he doesn’t have any plans to campaign for Clinton in California, which has the largest Hispanic population in the country.

“The good news is that in California, Hillary’s got a bunch of members of the House of Representatives who are well known out there, who are part of the congressional Hispanic caucus and who can be very helpful to her. Home state people are always the best surrogates,” he said after the conference call. “The bottom line is that in that respect she’s very well taken care of.”

Menendez also downplayed the significance of Barack Obama’s visit to Jersey City today, saying that he welcomes all the candidates to the state, but that it was a convenient stopover for Obama.

“I think he’s making a stop here because he’s raising money between Boston and New York,” he said.