Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American politician, businessman and former presidential candidate who has served as the junior United...
Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American politician, businessman and former presidential candidate who has served as the junior United States senator from Utah since January 2019. He previously served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2012 election.
Raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, by his parents, George and Lenore Romney, he spent over two years from 1966 in France as a Mormon missionary. He married Ann Davies in 1969; they have five sons. By 1971, he had participated in the political campaigns of both parents. In 1971 Romney graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in English from Brigham Young University (BYU) and in 1975 gained the JD–MBA degree from Harvard. Romney became a management consultant and in 1977 joined Bain & Company in Boston. As Bain's chief executive officer (CEO), he later helped lead the company out of a financial crisis. In 1984, he co-founded and led the spin-off company Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became one of the largest of its kind in the nation. Active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) throughout his adult life, Romney served as bishop of his ward and later as a stake president, for an area covering Boston and many of its suburbs.
After stepping down from Bain Capital and his local leadership role in the LDS Church, Romney ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 United States Senate election in Massachusetts. After losing to longtime incumbent Ted Kennedy, he resumed his position at Bain Capital. Years later, a successful stint as president and CEO of the then-struggling Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics led to a re-launch of his political career. Elected Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Romney helped develop and later signed a health care reform law (commonly referred to as "Romneycare") that provided near-universal health insurance access through state-level subsidies and individual mandates to purchase insurance. He also presided over the elimination of a projected $1.2–1.5 billion deficit through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees and closing corporate tax loopholes. He did not seek re-election in 2006, instead focusing on his campaign for the Republican nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Though he won several primaries and caucuses, Romney ultimately lost the nomination to Senator John McCain. Romney's considerable net worth, estimated in 2012 at $190–250 million, helped finance his political campaigns prior to 2012. Romney again ran for and won the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, becoming the first Mormon to be a presidential nominee of a major party. He was defeated by incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, losing the Electoral College by a margin of 206–332 and the popular vote by a margin of 47–51%.
After re-establishing residency in Utah, Romney announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by the retiring Orrin Hatch in the 2018 election; he defeated state representative Mike Kennedy in the Republican primary and Democrat Jenny Wilson in the general election. In doing so, he became only the third individual ever to be elected governor of one state and U.S. senator for another state (the others being Sam Houston and William Bibb). Romney was sworn in on January 3, 2019. In the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, he voted to convict the president of abuse of power (over Trump's attempts to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden), becoming the first and only senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a president of his own party.
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Tim Kaine
Timothy Michael Kaine (, born February 26, 1958) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Virginia since...
Timothy Michael Kaine (, born February 26, 1958) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Virginia since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 38th lieutenant governor of Virginia from 2002 to 2006 and 70th governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010. Kaine was the Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2016 election as the running mate of Hillary Clinton.
Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Kaine grew up in Overland Park, Kansas, graduated from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and earned a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School before entering private practice and becoming a lecturer at the University of Richmond School of Law. He was first elected to public office in 1994, when he won a seat on the Richmond City Council. He was then elected Mayor of Richmond in 1998 and was in that position until being elected Lieutenant Governor of Virginia in 2001. Kaine was elected Governor of Virginia in 2005 and was in that office from 2006 to 2010. He was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2009 to 2011.
Kaine joined the race for the 2012 Virginia Senate Race, and won the election.
On July 22, 2016, Hillary Clinton introduced Kaine as her vice presidential running mate. The 2016 Democratic National Convention nominated him on July 27. Despite winning a plurality of the national popular vote, the Clinton–Kaine ticket lost the Electoral College, and thus the election, to the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and Mike Pence on November 8, 2016. Kaine successfully sought re-election to a second Senate term in 2018, defeating Republican Corey Stewart by a larger margin than expected.
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