 |
| Booker still keeps a football in his Senate office in Washington (DAVID SWANSON / Staff Photographer) |
Jonathan Tamari reports in Philly.com about Cory Booker:
On his gleaming resumé, Booker’s college football career stands out as an unusual bullet point.
Unlike at most stops in his life, the onetime Stanford class president, Rhodes scholar, Newark mayor, and political celebrity who became a senator at 44 never achieved star status as a Stanford athlete. He was relegated to the background, a role player on a talented team.
It’s a piece of his biography that has gone largely unexplored as Booker has landed on the shortlist of potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2020. With that possibility comes a new level of scrutiny on Booker’s personal history, as voters seek to understand the experiences that shaped a man who might put himself forward to lead the country.
A look at his four years on the Cardinal football team shows how someone who has enjoyed a rapid rise, whose ambitions seem boundless, and whose political critics accuse him of being more flash than substance handled frustration, disappointment, and a workmanlike grind with little personal glory.
