At age 15, Cory Booker once wrote, he tried to grope the breast of a girl who had given him "an overwhelming kiss" on New Year's Eve. She pushed his hand away once, and then he succeeded on his second try. Nothing more ensued.
Booker, now a Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey, wrote about the incident as a student at Stanford University in a column taking aim at the campus culture of men trying to get women to sleep with them.
"I had begun listening to the raw truth from men and women discussing rape about two years ago as a peer counselor," Booker wrote. "The conversations were personal accounts, not rhetoric; they were real life, not dorm programing. It was a wake-up call -- I will never be the same."
Conservatives resurrected Booker's account on their websites and on social media after he defended Christine Blasey Ford, the Northern California research psychologist who claimed she was sexually attacked by U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh while both were in high school.
It also got the attention of conservative columnists and commentators, including The Star-Ledger's Paul Mulshine.
"Do you not see the hypocrisy and double standard?" said Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity.
Hannity was joined by other allies of President Donald Trump, who nominated Kavanaugh to the delight of his supporters.
A member of the Senate Judiciary Committee considering Kavanaugh's nomination, Booker supported delaying a vote until Ford testifies, objected to the panel's Republicans demanding she appear Monday or not at all, and backed an independent investigation of her allegations.
Booker's spokeswoman hit back against the comparison.
"Senator Booker's Stanford Daily column has been the focus of disingenuous right-wing attacks that have circulated online and in partisan outlets for the past five years," Booker spokeswoman Kristin Lynch said.
"These attacks ring hollow to anyone who reads the entirety of the column, which is in fact a direct criticism of a culture that encourages young men to take advantage of women -- written at a time when so candidly discussing these issues was rare -- and speaks to the impact Senator Booker's experience working to help rape and sexual assault survivors as a college peer counselor had on him," she said.
Richard Painter, the White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said the two incidents were not similar.
"Attacks on Cory Booker over this are political smears or political correctness run amok," he tweeted. "He is honest about his bad behavior as a 15 year old and better attitude as an adult."
He also said there were "very different facts." Ford has contended that at a house party, a drunken Kavanaugh tried undressing her and stifling her cries on a bed before she fled. Kavanaugh has repeatedly denied her accusation.
Booker claimed a "Spartacus moment" during the hearings when he released documents that a Republican lawyer initially classified as private. The lawyer, Bill Burck, had approved some of the papers for public release before Booker's action.
Burck, a Bush lawyer who also has represented members of the Trump administration, was overseeing the document release because Judiciary Committee Republicans refused to wait for the National Archives to fulfill its traditional role in deciding which papers involving a Supreme Court nominee should be made public.
Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.