Cory Booker has a girlfriend. Cory Booker declared that he is not gay. Booker mentions these items a lot because it just keeps coming up. Booker also said:

Every candidate should run on their authentic self, tell their truth, and more importantly, or mostly importantly, talk about their vision for the country.

On February 1, Booker announced his campaign to run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2020 election, his kick-off event was just two weeks ago.

Booker has been a vegetarian since 1992, when he was a student at Oxford University. He works out every day, he does not drink alcohol and has no known vices or addictions other than coffee, He is open in his advocacy for animals and he has the most pro-animal welfare voting record in the Senate. While Mayor of Newark, Booker personally rescued a freezing dog, and saved a neighbor from her burning home, sustaining second-degree burns in the process.

Booker, who has never been married, and has generally tried to keep his personal life private. In the past, he described himself as a “straight male”. Last month, actor Rosario Dawson (Rent) confirmed to TMZ that she was in a relationship with Booker. The Washington Examiner published an op-ed that mentioned what a great first lady she would be.

America has two presidents who ran never having been married. The most recent was Grover Cleveland, who ran in 1884, single but dogged by charges that he had fathered a child out of wedlock. His opponents taunted him with the chant: “Ma, Ma, where’s my pa?!”. At first, Cleveland’s sister fulfilled most of the duties of the first lady. But Cleveland was secretly courting the daughter of his late law partner, who had become Cleveland’s ward at 12-years-old. They finally married in 1886; he was 49-years-old, she was 21, and the public was obsessed.

Then there was James Buchanan, with his relationship with William Rufus King, who lived with Buchanan in Washington DC for over a decade. The two were so inseparable that they were derisively called ”Aunt Nancy” and ”Miss Fancy”. Buchanan was probably our first gay POTUS.

In a 1992 interview, Booker admitted that as a teenager he “hated gays”. It has long been rumored that Booker is gay. I have one Washington DC insider who insists that Booker is gay and will be forced to come out because of openly gay Pete Buttigieg‘s run for president.  In 2013, Booker tweeted:

I want to challenge people on their homophobia. I love seeing on Twitter when someone says I’m gay, and I say, So, what does it matter if I am? So be it. I hope you are not voting for me because you are making the presumption that I’m straight.

Still, people really want to talk about his love life. I think a lot of this has to do with the Obamas. The Obamas were both so amazing and personable and effortlessly cool and unapologetically black, but that may never happen again, unless Jay Z or Beyoncé run for office.

Booker told The Hill:

I think that if Donald Trump can get elected president at this point with the personal life that he has, then anybody can.

Booker has been a Senator from New Jersey since 2013, the first African-American Senator from NJ. He was previously the Mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013. Before that, Booker served on the Municipal Council of Newark for the Central Ward from 1998 to 2002.

Booker received his BA and a master’s degree from Stanford University. Like Buttigieg, he studied abroad at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. Like Hillary Rodham Clinton, he graduated from Yale Law School. He won his upset victory for the Municipal Council of Newark in 1998, where he staged a 10-day hunger strike and briefly lived in a tent to draw attention to urban development issues in the city. His first term as mayor brought a doubling of affordable housing under development and the reduction of the city budget deficit from $180 million to $73 million. He was re-elected in 2010.

As a senator, his voting record is thought to be the third most liberal. Booker supports Women’s Rights, Affirmative Action, Marriage Equality, and single-payer healthcare. He co-sponsored the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013, sponsored the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, voted for the2014 National Defense Authorization Act, co-sponsored the Respect for Marriage Act of 2014, which requires the federal government to recognize the validity of same-sex marriages, and led the successful push to pass the First Step Act of 2018, which brought reforms to the federal prison system of.

In 2017, he became the first sitting senator to testify against another senator when he testified against Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing. A year ago, following the FBI raid on the offices of Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney, Booker introduced the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act to limit the executive powers of Trump.

Tiny tid-bit: Booker speaks fluent Spanish.

Tid-bit two: Booker celebrates his 50th birthday today, probably with a vegan carrot cake.