Fox News Monitors Geraldo as He Mulls Political Office

Geraldo Rivera’s stated interest in running for a Senate seat in New Jersey has been derided as a joke and a publicity stunt. But his employers are taking it seriously.

He’d have to leave his weekend Fox News Channel show, “Geraldo at Large,” as soon as he formally decided to run, a spokeswoman for the channel said.

Mr. Rivera, 69, has been a television reporter and commentator for decades, and he’s never sought political office before. But last Thursday he floated the possibility of running for the Senate seat currently occupied by Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, who is up for re-election in 2014. Mr. Lautenberg hasn’t said whether he will run again,and the Newark mayor Cory Booker, a fellow Democrat, has signaled that he will vie for the seat.

Mr. Rivera said he would run as a Republican, if he decided to actually do so. Although widely perceived to be one of the more liberal commentators on Fox News, he’s been a registered Republican for years.

Mr. Rivera initially brought up his interest in running for the Senate seat on his talk radio show last Thursday. The one-year-old show is distributed by Cumulus. Asked whether Mr. Rivera would have to quit or suspend the show if he decided to run, a spokesman for the distributor said, “Talk radio hosts talk about lots of things, and if at some point this is more than talk we’ll address the issue appropriately then.”

A Fox News spokeswoman went a little further, saying in an e-mail message, “Geraldo would have to step aside as soon as he made a formal decision, and we’re continuing to monitor the situation.”

Fox has faced similar situat! ions in the past. In 2011 when two of its paid contributors, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, were considering running for president, the network suspended their contracts while they made up their minds. The two men eventually did decide to run and severed their ties with the network.

For the time being, Fox and the radio show are forums for Mr. Rivera to talk about the possibility of running, thereby drumming up attention and potential supporters.

In one of several interviews on Fox last Friday, he said he had “public service” in the back of his mind when he decided to register as a Republican after moving to New Jersey in 1989. He said all of his “elected heroes” growing up were Republican.

But he was quite critical of the G.O.P. in the interviews, calling Republicans a “party of scolds” and proposing a more inclusive way forward. Mr. Rivera has long favored immigration refrm and a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

On “The O’Reilly Factor” on Friday night, he said he and his wife, Erica, were “seriously considering” a run: “We can revive, we think, the moribund G.O.P. in the Garden State.”