Terry McAuliffe

Former Governor of Virginia

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. 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. McAuliffe was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial election. 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 his term in office, McAuliffe presided over a Republican-controlled legislature and 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. From Wikipedia