Terry McAuliffe

Terence Richard McAuliffe (born February 9, 1957) is an American businessman and politician who served as the 72nd governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018.

He graduated from Bishop Ludden Junior/Senior High School in 1975.

In 1979, he earned a bachelor's degree from the Catholic University of America, where he served as a resident adviser.

After graduating, McAuliffe worked for President Jimmy Carter's re-election campaign, becoming the national finance director at age 22.

In 1979, McAuliffe met Richard Swann, a lawyer who was in charge of the fundraising for Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign in Florida.

Following the unsuccessful campaign, McAuliffe attended Georgetown University Law Center, where he obtained his Juris Doctor degree in 1984.

At the age of 14, McAuliffe started his first business, McAuliffe Driveway Maintenance, sealing driveways and parking lots.

In 1985, McAuliffe helped found the Federal City National Bank, a Washington, D.C.–based local bank.

In January 1988, when he was thirty years old, the bank's board elected him as chairman, making him the youngest chairman in the United States Federal Reserve Bank's charter association.

In 1988, he married Swann's daughter, Dorothy.

In 1991, he negotiated a merger with Credit International Bank, which he called his "greatest business experience."

He became the vice-chairman of the newly merged bank.

In 1991, the Resolution Trust Corporation, a federal agency, took over the assets and liabilities of Swann's American Pioneer Savings Bank.

Under Swann's guidance, McAuliffe purchased some of American Pioneer's real estate from the Resolution Trust Corporation.

His equal partner in the deal was a pension fund controlled by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA).

They purchased real estate valued at $50 million for $38.7 million; McAuliffe received a 50% equity stake.

A member of the Democratic Party, he was co-chairman of President Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005 and chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.

In 1996, he acquired a distressed housebuilding company, American Heritage Homes, which was on the brink of bankruptcy.

He served as chairman of American Heritage.

In 1997, McAuliffe invested $100,000 as an angel investor in Global Crossing, a Bermuda–registered telecommunications company.

By 1998, he had built American Heritage Homes into one of Central Florida's biggest homebuilding companies.

Global Crossing went public in 1998.

By 1999, the company was building more than 1,000 single family homes per year.

In 1999, he sold most of his holdings for $8.1 million.

McAuliffe joined ZeniMax Media as company advisor in 2000.

In late 2002, KB Home bought American Heritage Homes for $74 million.

McAuliffe was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial election.

In 2009, McAuliffe joined GreenTech Automotive, a holding company, which purchased Chinese electric car company EU Auto MyCar for $20 million in May 2010.

Later that year, he relocated GreenTech's headquarters to McLean, Virginia, and the manufacturing plant was later based in Mississippi.

In the 2013 gubernatorial election, after he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, he defeated Republican Ken Cuccinelli and Libertarian Robert Sarvis in the general election.

Due to Virginia law barring governors from serving consecutive terms, he was succeeded by his lieutenant governor, Ralph Northam.

McAuliffe ran for a non-consecutive second term as governor in the 2021 gubernatorial election but narrowly lost to Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin.

Throughout McAuliffe's term in office, the state had a Republican-controlled legislature and McAuliffe issued a record number of vetoes for a Virginia governor.

Because of this partisan division, he was unable to achieve many of his legislative goals, principal among them Medicaid expansion, which was later enacted by Northam.

As governor, McAuliffe focused heavily on economic development and restored voting rights to a record number of released felons.

During his final year in office, he responded to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, condemning the rally and calling for the removal of Confederate monuments from public spaces throughout Virginia; Northam began the removal of these monuments a few years later.

McAuliffe left office with high approval ratings, though not as high as his immediate predecessors.

McAuliffe was born and raised in Syracuse, New York, the son of Mildred Katherine (née Lonergan) and Jack McAuliffe.

His father was a real estate agent and local Democratic politician.

The family is of Irish descent.