Ed Gillespie

 ( 1961 Births ) 

Gillespie served as chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia from December 2006 to June 2007. In the 2006 Virginia Senate elections he served as spokesman for defeated Virginia Senator George Allen. He had been tapped by Allen as a political adviser for a possible presidential run in 2008 before that loss. In February 2009, Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced that Gillespie would serve as general chairman of his campaign for governor. Gillespie has served as an adviser to American Crossroads.

Later in 2007, the Washington Post reported that Gillespie had taken a substantial pay cut to become Bush's counselor. "A disclosure form shows he made nearly $1.3 million in salary and bonus in the previous 18 months at his consulting and public affairs firm . . . His annual government salary is $168,000. The form, obtained by the Associated Press, reports that Gillespie . . . a former Capitol Hill aide who co-founded his lobbying shop in 2000 . . . has accumulated a fortune estimated to be between $7.86 million and $19.4 million."

In January 2010, Gillespie was announced in as the national chairman of the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which helps elect state attorneys general, lieutenant governors, secretaries of state and state house and senate candidates. After Gillespie was announced chairman the RSLC is reported to have laundered $1.5 million from the Poarch Band of Creek Indians to Alabama Speaker Mike Hubbard and a group associated with Jack Abramoff. From January 2010 to January 2014 the RSLC paid Gilespie $654,000. Gillespie was not legally listed as the RSLC chairman until February 2011, when the organization filed updated documents with the IRS.

In 2010, together with Republican strategist Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie helped get the Super Pac American Crossroads "off the ground." The organization's goal was to supplement campaign spending for Republicans, independently of the Republican party. '"Obama had $1.1 billion in 2008," says Gillespie.."John McCain and his supporters spent $634 million. That's a sizable gap." American Crossroads, he boasts, will be the place where the real money goes to "play."'

In April 2012, Gillespie became a senior advisor to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.

In January 2014, he officially launched his candidacy. "Former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie launches Senate bid against Warner", The Washington Times. January 16, 2014. REtrieved January 31, 2014. He named Chris Leavitt, campaign manager of Mark Obenshain's 2013 run for Virginia Attorney general, his campaign manager. Gillespie will challenge Warner, hire Obenshain campaign manager On June 7, 2014, he became the Republican nominee after receiving about 60% of the vote at the state party convention.

Although Warner had been consistently leading Gillespie by double-digit margins in polls before October, Gillespie nearly upset Warner on Election Day, losing by a margin of just 0.8% and 17,723 votes, with 37% turnout. Gillespie conceded the race on November 7, 2014.

On June 13, 2017, Gillespie narrowly defeated his primary opponent Corey Stewart to win the Republican nomination for governor and was set to face incumbent lieutenant governor Ralph Northam, the Democratic nominee, in the November general election.

In the 2017 gubernatorial campaign up to June 2017, Gillespie ran as an establishment Republican and focused on economic issues rather than social issues. According to The New York Times in July 2017, Gillespie "sought to strike a delicate balance when pressed about Mr. Trump, who is highly unpopular here. He refused to say Mr. Trump's name, but warned that Mr. Northam, a Democrat, risked hurting Virginia's economy—which relies greatly on the federal government—by attacking the president so fiercely." According to CNN, even though Gillespie has been endorsed by President Donald Trump, the "endorsement isn't mentioned anywhere on Gillespie's campaign website or his social media pages. Gillespie doesn't discuss Trump unless he's prompted to do so. He doesn't criticize the President, but he also doesn't make an effort to embrace him, either." In October 2017, Vice President Mike Pence held a joint rally with Gillespie. According to The New York Times, the Gillespie campaign preferred Pence's involvement in the race over Trump's.

In August 2017, The Washington Post reported that Gillespie hired Jack Morgan, an operative in the Trump 2016 campaign for president. Morgan has made controversial statements, such as saying that the country is on the brink of civil war and that communists are behind efforts to remove confederate monuments. Morgan had earlier in 2017 called Gillespie a "lobbyist" and said that it would be a "disaster" to elect him governor. According to The New York Times, even though the Gillespie campaign distanced itself from Trump the person, it sought to motivate voters with the same "culturally and racially tinged appeals" of the Trump 2016 campaign. Most of Gillespie's ad spending has gone towards commercials on confederate monuments and illegal immigration. In October 2017, former president Barack Obama took what The Washington Post described as "the unusual step" of criticizing Gillespie over his use of ads on Latino gang violence which he said sowed fear and were "as cynical as politics gets".

After the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Gillespie condemned the far-right protestors, saying, "We reject the people who came in, largely from outside our Commonwealth, and brought their hate, their white supremacism, their neo-Nazism with them." Can A DC Insider Win as a Republican in 2017? Ed Gillespie Is About to Find Out. After Donald Trump's controversial comment that there were "fine people on both sides," Gillespie said there was "no moral comparison between white supremacists and 'those that show up to condemn them for espousing that kind of hate-filled speech.'

Gillespie criticized Northam for casting the deciding "no" vote to stop a Republican bill which would have banned sanctuary cities in Virginia. During the campaign, Gillespie and Trump accused Northam of being responsible for the increased activities of the MS-13 gangs and of being "in favor of sanctuary cities that let dangerous illegal immigrants back on the streets" and that this contributed to the surge in MS-13 violence; a notion that FactCheck.org found to be "misleading". The Washington Post and CNN noted that there are no actual sanctuary cities in Virginia and The Washington Post editorial board condemned the ads in an editorial called "Gillespie's ads are poisonous to Virginia and the nation". Gillespie himself acknowledged that Virginia did not have sanctuary cities. The Washington Post furthermore noted that there is no evidence that sanctuary cities increase crime or gang activity.

In October, the Latino Victory Fund, which supported Northam, released an ad in which a pickup truck, adorned with a Gillespie bumper sticker, a "Gadsden flag" license plate, and a Confederate flag, chases down minority children and corners them in an alley—one of the children in the ad then wakes up, revealing the scene to have been a nightmare. White House knocks 'political racism' after ad against Virginia Republican (The Hill) 'Latino Victory Fund' Ad Depicts Ed Gillespie Supporter Terrorizing Minority Children (RealClearPolitics) Although Northam and his campaign were not involved with the ad, Northam initially defended it, saying Gillespie's own ads "have promoted fearmongering, hatred, bigotry, racial divisiveness," and adding, "I mean, it's upset a lot of communities, and they have the right to express their views as well." The ad was pulled the following day in the hours after a terrorist attack in New York City, in which a man killed several people by running them over with a truck. Political attack ad showing kids running from Republican pickup truck driver is pulled after New York terror attack (New York Daily News) Northam then distanced himself from the ad, re-emphasizing that it was not released by his campaign and saying that it is not one that he would have chosen to run. 10 On Your Side talks with candidates for Virginia governor (WAVY-TV) A spokesman for the campaign has said that the Latino Victory Fund's decision to pull the ad was "appropriate and the right thing to do." WTTG reported that the Northam campaign had accepted $62,000 as an in-kind media contribution from the Latino Victory Fund. Records show financial connection between Northam campaign and group behind controversial ad (WTTG-TV)

According to the Virginia Public Access Project, as of November 5, Northam had raised $33.8 million to Gillespie's $24.5 million. VPAP - 2017 Governor (accessed 10/29/17)

In October 2017, National Review posted an analysis of the Gillespie campaign as an important example of whether and how mainstream Republican politics, represented by Gillespie, can produce victories in a purple state in the "era of Trumpism", and said that the outcome would effect Republican strategies in future races.

Gillespie received 1.17 million votes (45%) to Northam's 1.40 million (54%) in the election.

Gillespie pledged to sign legislation to defund Planned Parenthood; Governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed such legislation.