When Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey arrived at the Pennsylvania delegation breakfast on Thursday, he had already taken a dozen selfies, missed three elevators and fist-bumped a security guard. He was wiping sweat off his head with a table napkin.
All before he spoke a word.
“My voice is shot,” Mr. Booker, the guest speaker, told the crowd of familiar faces from New Jersey’s swing state neighbor to the west. But that didn’t stop him. As he neared the end of his 10-minute talk, Mr. Booker hopped off the stage and waded among the smattering of breakfast tables, shouting as much as his fatigued vocal cords would allow.
Conventions can feel like the Olympics for politicians, with dozens of speeches to give, donors to woo, tributes to pay and panels to anchor. Mr. Booker turns conventions into decathlons.
By Thursday, he was running on adrenaline, a fridge full of vegan food in his hotel room and little sleep — 3 hours 17 minutes on Wednesday night, according to his Oura smart ring, which he quipped was in “open rebellion” against him. Since arriving in Chicago on Sunday night for the Democratic National Convention, Mr. Booker has not allowed for any white space on his calendar.
That may be because the convention has felt like a realization of the campaign he wanted to run. His failed 2020 presidential campaign was an unrelenting tour of joy, hope and optimism, messages that Democratic primary voters were largely uninterested in four years ago. Now, at least in the cavernous convention hall, Democrats are leaning into the joy and eating it up.
“I’m an O.G. joy guy,” Mr. Booker said at an early morning news conference for the Harris campaign. In an interview, he recounted how he had been instructed by convention stage managers to ad-lib during a blank spot in the D.N.C. schedule on Wednesday night, telling him to “just go out there and bring the joy.”
As he ping-ponged around the Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Hampshire delegation breakfasts on Thursday morning — bringing his total delegation breakfasts to 15 for the week — Mr. Booker ruminated on how the country had changed since 2020, and what it meant for both the Harris campaign and himself.
“Running for president, you try to run your most authentic campaign possible, and you see if the movement of history locks into who you are,” Mr. Booker said in the interview. He mused about how Democratic presidential aspirants had probably suddenly shifted their focus from 2028 to 2032, expecting eight years of a Harris presidency. “I don’t know what the heck the future holds,” he said. “I know why I wanted to run, and right now, that reason is still there, but this convention is a testimony to a lot of the themes I wanted to be dominant.”
Throughout the morning, Mr. Booker was unable to walk anywhere without a demand for a selfie. His staff of five helped him navigate the crush of people, encouraging those waiting to “have your phones out.” A man from Texas, clad in a cowboy hat, circled back in line and waved his phone at the senator, saying he needed to redo his selfie. Mr. Booker smiled and grabbed the phone, taking at least three pictures to ensure the quality. His team handed out buttons that declared, “I got my selfie with Cory!”
But Mr. Booker is not above asking for a photo of his own. Backstage at the convention on Wednesday night, Mr. Booker ran into Kenan Thompson, a “Saturday Night Live” star who gave a presentation on Project 2025. They took out their phones simultaneously and asked each other for a picture.
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