When Lou Dobbs announced his resignation from CNN a couple weeks ago, the Editors’ Desk polled readers about what he’d be doing in the future. 45 percent said he would be going to Fox News, and an additional 8 percent said he’d be working for another broadcast outlet. 36 percent said he’d seek political office, with 9 percent of those saying it would be a run for the presidency.

AP photo/Nov. 16: Lou Dobbs with Bill O'Reilly

This week, according to broadcast and print reports, Dobbs has been sending signals that he’s interested in political office.

David M. Halbfinger of the New York Times reported earlier this week:

His name was quickly floated as a potential challenger in 2012 to United States Senator Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat, an ardent advocate for immigrants’ rights and the chamber’s only Hispanic member. (Mr. Dobbs, 64, lives on a horse farm in rural Wantage, N.J.)

Then, on Monday, Mr. Dobbs said he had been urged to ponder a White House run, and was indeed thinking about it. “Yes is the answer,” he told former Senator Fred D. Thompson, who reached Mr. Dobbs at his vacation home in West Palm Beach, Fla., and broadcast the interview on his radio program.

What’s unclear is whether Mr. Dobbs, who branded himself “Mr. Independent” on CNN and talks prodigiously about his scorn for partisan politicians on a radio program syndicated to more than 200 stations, would run as an independent or seek the nomination of the Republican Party, which he spurned in 2006, switching his registration to independent.

On Monday, Mr. Dobbs told Mr. Thompson he did not know which way he was leaning on a presidential bid, but said he would “be talking some more with some folks who want me to listen to them the next few weeks.”

Later, he told a Washington radio station, “For the first time, I’m actually listening to some people about politics,” adding: “I think that being in the public arena means you’ve got to be part of the solution.”