Hillary Clinton Launches Presidential Campaign Led By Openly Gay Robby Mook

Robert (Robby) Mook is the head of Hillary Clinton's
2016 Presidential Campaign

Hillary Rodham Clinton announced tha she is running for President in 2016 on Sunday, but she made some further news by confirming that her campaign manager would be Robby Mook. Mook, 35, is openly gay and a longtime Democratic operative who worked on Hillary's 2008 campaign. Mook also led the campaign of longtime Clintonite Terry Macauliffe for his second (and successful) run for the Governorship of Virginia in 2013.

Hillary Clinton took note of Mook's work on the McAuliffe campaign. She wants desperately to avoid the mistakes of her last race and run a low-drama campaign. Knowing this, advisers and former aides say, it's not surprising she chose Mook. "He's cut from a very different cloth from the bold, brash campaign managers that we hear about so often," says pollster Geoff Garin, who worked with Mook on McAuliffe's 2013 run. "He does not seek out the spotlight and in fact does everything he can to avoid it." 

Mook is widely known as Robby, not Robert, and at 35, he's still boyish—handsome and clean-shaven with close-cropped brown hair. His usual uniform consists of chinos and bland dress shirts rolled up to the elbows. He couldn't be more different from, say, James Carville, the loudmouth Ragin' Cajun who advised Bill Clinton's first presidential bid and now makes a living as a consultant and TV commentator. Mook rarely appears in news stories or on TV. He did not respond to repeated interview requests. He has no Facebook page. He has a Twitter account but never tweets and has forgotten the password. 

Mook, who will be the first openly gay manager of a major presidential campaign, is largely unknown beyond the insular world of Democratic staffers but well liked within it. In addition to the email listserv, his loyal following—the Mook Mafia—plans yearly reunions, during which they return to a state where they once operated for a weekend of bar-hopping mixed with volunteering for a local campaign.

It will be interesting to see if having an openly LGBT person at the head of a Presidential campaign will make a difference policy-wise to how Hillary's campaign is run and the positions she takes.