Five Things We Know About Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s Openly Gay Campaign Manager

Are you ready for the 'Mook Mafia'?

Photo of Robby Mook via DCCC | Photo of Clinton via Getty

Few were surprised when Hillary Clinton announced her second bid for the presidency earlier this month, just as few were surprised to hear Robby Mook named her campaign manager—at least, few within the Washington Beltway.

A name relatively unknown outside political circles, Mook has quite the reputation when it comes to campaigning. The first openly gay man to manage a serious presidential campaign, the 35-year-old is making history. Famous for remaining in the background, here are five things we know about the boyish Democratic heavyweight.

1. He was a classics major at Columbia, and still reads in ancient Greek:

According to Mother Jones: "His bookshelves are still stocked with books in the original Greek and histories of esoteric topics including numismatics, the study of currency.”

2. He's been campaigning since his teens:

“Mook organized phone banks for the Clinton-Gore '96 campaign as a 16-year-old,” Mother Jones explains.

3. He's been involved in a ton of Democratic campaigns:

In 2004, he worked on Howard Dean’s failed primary campaign, and then John Kerry’s failed presidential campaign. Mother Jones states: “He went to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party organization focused on electing Democrats to the US House of Representatives… During the 2012 cycle, when House Democrats upended pundits' grim predictions by winning more than a dozen seats, he ran the entire organization.”

His crowning glory, to date, was his successfully running of Terry McAuliffe gubernatorial campaign in 2013.

4. He has his own mafia:

It's called the "Mook Mafia," and its allegedly self-proclaimed aim is to "smite Republicans mafia-style." According to The Guardian, he (along with his mafiosos) was responsible for Hillary’s 2008 primary wins in Nevada, Ohio, and Indiana.

5. He’s a different breed of campaign manager:

According to Geoff Garin: "He's cut from a very different cloth from the bold, brash campaign managers that we hear about so often. He does not seek out the spotlight and in fact does everything he can to avoid it."

“Mook rarely appears in news stories or on TV. He did not respond to repeated interview requests. He has no Facebook page," Mother Jones reports. "He has a Twitter account but never tweets and has forgotten the password."

(H/T Mother Jones)