John Carney (Delaware politician)

Carney was born in Wilmington, Delaware, and raised in Claymont, the second of nine children of Ann Marie (née Buckley) and John Charles "Jack" Carney (1925-2014).

Both his parents were educators.

His great-grandparents immigrated from Ireland.

John Charles Carney Jr. (born May 20, 1956) is an American politician serving as the 74th governor of Delaware since 2017.

Carney was quarterback of the 1973 state championship St. Mark's High School football team, and earned All-Ivy League and Most Valuable Player honors in football at Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1978.

At Dartmouth, he joined the local Beta Alpha Omega fraternity.

He later coached freshman football at the University of Delaware while earning his master's degree in public administration.

Carney served as Deputy Chief Administrative Officer of New Castle County and as Secretary of Finance and Deputy Chief of Staff for Governor Tom Carper.

The seat had been held since 1993 by Republican Michael Castle, who declined to seek reelection to the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Vice President Joe Biden.

In the first week of October, Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind Poll released the results of its opinion research, showing Carney with a 15-point advantage over Urquhart, 51%-36%.

Days before the election, a second Fairleigh Dickinson poll showed Carney leading by 17 points, 53% to 36% among likely voters.

He also served as Delaware's secretary of finance from 1996 to 2000.

He was elected lieutenant governor of Delaware in 2000 and served from January 16, 2001, until January 20, 2009.

As lieutenant governor, he presided over the Delaware State Senate and chaired the Board of Pardons.

He also chaired the Delaware Health Care Commission, the Interagency Council on Adult Literacy, the Criminal Justice Council, the Center for Education Technology, and the Livable Delaware Advisory Council.

In 2002 he launched the education initiative "Models of Excellence in Education" to identify practices in schools that have raised student achievement.

Carney was also selected by other lieutenant governors to chair the National Lieutenant Governors Association from July 2004 to July 2005.

Carney has long been an advocate for wellness issues in Delaware, sponsoring "BeHealthy Delaware" and "The Lt. Governor's Challenge" to encourage Delawareans to be more active and address the state's high rate of chronic disease.

He fought for Delaware's public smoking ban to improve health, cut cancer rates, and discourage teens from starting to smoke.

He first unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2008, losing to Jack Markell.

After completing his tenure as lieutenant governor in 2009, Carney served as president and chief operating officer of Transformative Technologies, which is investing in the DelaWind project, to bring offshore wind turbine construction to Delaware.

He planned to step down in early 2010 to concentrate on his U.S. House campaign.

Carney was the Democratic nominee for Delaware's at-large seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2010.

He faced Republican Glen Urquhart, Independent Party of Delaware nominee Earl R. Lofland, Libertarian Brent A. Wangen, and Blue Enigma Party nominee Jeffrey Brown.

A member of the Democratic Party, Carney served as the U.S. representative for DE's at-large congressional district from 2011 to 2017 and as the 24th lieutenant governor of Delaware from 2001 to 2009.

Carney won the seat by 16 points, 57%-41%, and took office on January 3, 2011.

His victory was one of the three seats Democrats gained in a year when they lost a net 63 seats to the Republicans.

In 2011, Carney and Illinois Republican Aaron Schock co-sponsored a bill that would use U.S. oil exploration to help fund a five-year federal highway construction project.

In his bid for a second term in 2012, Carney faced Republican Tom Kovach, the president of the New Castle County Council, and two minor candidates.

In a debate with Kovach, Carney said, "I will continue to do in Washington what I did in Delaware: work across the aisle to get things done. I learned early on that compromise is part of life."

Carney called the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) "not perfect" but the "only chance we have to get costs under control".

He was reelected in a landslide, with 64% of the vote to Kovach's 33%.

Carney ran for reelection to a third term in 2014.

He defeated Republican Rose Izzo, 59% to 37%, with Green nominee Bernie August and Libertarian Scott Gesty taking 2% each.

On April 7, 2014, Carney introduced the Expatriate Health Coverage Clarification Act of 2014 (H.R. 4414; 113th Congress) into the House.

The bill would exempt expatriate health care plans from the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

Carney argued that expatriates, a group that includes businessmen, pilots, and ship captains, usually already have special, high-quality health care plans designed to meet their unique needs.

He said that "expatriate health insurance plans offer high-end, robust coverage to executives and others working outside their home country, giving them access to a global network of health care providers."

He ran for governor again in 2016 and won, succeeding Markell, who was term-limited.

He was reelected in 2020, defeating Republican Julianne Murray with 59.5% of the vote.