Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat and 2020 presidential hopeful, spoke to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night about his interest in having a woman running mate for his campaign. He clarified that he doesn’t want to “box himself in,” given how far we actually are from the election, but that should he be the Democratic presidential nominee, he’d consider “women first.”
Of course, it’s worth remembering that we already have five women running for the Democratic nomination. As of now, this includes Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris, as well as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.
This race will see the most women running in any presidential primary in our country’s history. Luckily, Booker seems to realize he may be supporting a woman nominee, rather than choosing one to be at his side.
"I hope whoever wins, we all support," Booker stated in the video below. "It's very important to me that we have full support of whoever that nominee is."
On a personal level, Booker is a vegan, played college football, and graduated from Yale Law School. He’s the first African-American senator from New Jersey. Before this, he was the mayor of Newark. He’s also not married, which, if he wins, would make him the first unmarried president in more than a century.
Where does Booker stand on the issues? As most people know, he’ s pretty liberal. Booker openly supports women’s rights, same-sex marriage, single-payer healthcare, and affirmative action. In the era of Trump, Booker was the first sitting senator to actually testify against another one, when he testified against Jeff Sessions at his confirmation hearing. Along with Lindsey Graham, Thom Tillis, and Chris Coons, Booker later introduced the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act to limit Trump’ s executive powers.
"We have such a great field of leaders, I think you'll rarely see a Democratic ticket anymore without gender diversity, race diversity," Booker explained to Maddow. "It's something we should have. I'm not going to box myself in, but should I come to it, you know I'll be looking to women first."
If Booker gets the nomination, who do you want to see him run with?