Rob Portman's haunted hotel and 3 more surprises about the VP frontrunner

The Ohio senator is often pigeonholed as a "boring white guy" — but the VP finalist has plenty of quirks that buck the label

He may have a buttoned-up exterior, but Ohio Sen. Rob Portman is a keen outdoorsman who once smuggled a kayak into China to brave the Yangtze River.
(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has long been pegged as just the type of "boring white guy" who Mitt Romney is likely to pick as his vice-presidential running mate, given the Republican presidential candidate's desire to avoid the drama and controversy that surrounded John McCain's choice of the decidedly un-boring Sarah Palin. Portman, a former U.S. trade representative and director of the Office of Management and Budget, certainly appears a tad boring on paper, and the comedian Stephen Colbert has quipped that a Romney-Portman ticket would be an example of "the bland leading the bland." But there's more to the 56-year-old senator than meets the eye. Here, four surprising facts about Rob Portman:

1. He's an astonishing mimic

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