Jim Gilmore
James Stuart Gilmore III is an American politician, diplomat and former attorney who served as the 68th governor of Virginia from 1998 to 2002. A member of the Republican Party, Gilmore also chaired the Republican National Committee in 2001 and served as the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe during the first Trump administration.
A native Virginian, Gilmore graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia, and then served in the U.S. Army as a counterintelligence agent. He was later elected to public office as a county prosecutor and the Attorney General of Virginia before being elected Governor of Virginia in 1997. After his gubernatorial tenure ended in 2002, Gilmore unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2008 and for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 and 2016 elections.
In November 2018, Gilmore was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as the U.S. representative to United States Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a position which carries the rank of ambassador. His nomination was confirmed by a voice vote of the U.S. Senate on May 23, 2019. Gilmore was sworn in on June 25, 2019 and presented his credentials to OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger on July 2, 2019.
Early life and education
Gilmore was born in Richmond, Virginia, the son of Margaret Evelyn, a church secretary, and James Stuart Gilmore Jr., a grocery store meat cutter. He graduated from John Randolph Tucker High School in 1967, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia in 1971, where he was classmates with George Allen, who would later precede Gilmore as Governor of Virginia.Gilmore met his future wife, Roxane Gatling, at a Jefferson Literary and Debating Society club meeting in the Fall of 1974 while he was a law student and she was an undergraduate. During her senior year, Gatling became ill with a serious recurrence of Hodgkin's disease. Jim Gilmore accompanied her to her chemotherapy treatments and hospitalizations. The couple married in on August 6, 1977, and had two sons, Jay and Ashton Gilmore.
Military service
In 1971, Gilmore volunteered to serve in the United States Army after attending college, receiving training and preparation for service in the Military Intelligence Corps at the newly created United States Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Gilmore also received rigorous foreign language education at the United States Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. Gilmore then worked for three years in the early 1970s, in the 650th Military Intelligence Group. Serving in West Germany during the Vietnam War and fluent in German, he served as a U.S. Army Counterintelligence Agent.Legal career
Gilmore attended the University of Virginia School of Law, once again classmates with future fellow Virginia governor George Allen, graduating with his J.D. degree in 1977. A decade later, he was elected Commonwealth's Attorney in Henrico County and went on to be re-elected in 1991. In 1981, Gilmore ran for the Virginia House of Delegates in the 32nd district, however he lost the general election. In 1993, he was elected Virginia's attorney general, defeating Democratic nominee William D. Dolan III by more than 10 percentage points. Gilmore resigned in 1997 to run for governor.Governor of Virginia
In 1997, Gilmore faced then-Lieutenant Governor Don Beyer and Reform Party candidate Sue Harris Debauche in a bid to succeed George Allen as governor. Gilmore campaigned heavily on the twin promises of hiring 4,000 new teachers in public schools and phasing out Virginia's personal property tax on automobiles. Gilmore was elected, winning 56% of the vote to Beyer's 43%.In his first year as governor, Gilmore pushed for car tax reduction legislation that was eventually passed by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly. The legislation reduced car taxes on all cars valued less than $1,000, and phased out the tax on auto values over $1,000 as follows: 12.5% reduction in 1998; 25% reduction in 1999; 47.5% reduction in 2000; 70% reduction in 2001; 100% reduction in 2002. Beginning in 2001, Virginia's economy slowed and tax revenues flattened. In addition to a downturn in the national economy in 2001, Northern Virginia's economy was severely impacted after terrorists flew a hijacked airplane into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, on September 11, 2001, resulting in the closure of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport for 23 days. Despite the economic downturn, Gilmore insisted on advancing the car tax phase out from a 47.5% reduction of each taxpayer's bill in 2000 to the scheduled 70% reduction in 2001. Gilmore signed an executive order, which was passed by the General Assembly, reducing state spending by all agencies, except for education, to keep the state's budget balanced during the economic downturn. Democrats criticized the spending reductions and car tax cut. According to The Washington Post, "Virginia's politicians struggled to balance car-tax relief against demands for public services." When Gilmore left office in January 2002, the state's "rainy day fund," or revenue stabilization fund, had fallen to $900 million.
In April 1998, Gilmore's first trip abroad as governor was to Germany with his Secretary of Commerce, Barry Duval. They sought to expand jobs and investment with German companies who at the time had invested more than $2 billion and 10,000 jobs in the Commonwealth. During his tenure, Gov. Gilmore was focused on creating jobs by leading several trade missions to: South America in 1999 ; Asia in 2000 ; Europe again in 2001. Mr. Gilmore, since leaving office, has also traveled to Pakistan, Australia, and Peru. He also traveled to Israel when he was Attorney General of Virginia in the early 1990s.
The Gilmore Administration implemented new Standards of Learning reforms in Virginia's public schools. The Standards of Learning prescribed a uniform curriculum in mathematics, science, English and social studies and instituted new tests at the end of the third, fifth and eighth grades, as well as end-of-course tests in high school, to measure student achievement. During Gilmore's term, Virginia's public school students' scores increased on these state tests as well as nationally normed tests.
In 1999, Gilmore proposed and signed into law legislation that reduced tuitions at public colleges and universities by 20%. Gilmore also commissioned a Blue Ribbon Commission on Higher Education that studied accountability and governance of public colleges and universities. Gilmore's Commission authored the first blueprint for decentralized regulatory and administrative authority to some universities in return for agreements to meet agreed upon performance objectives.
Gilmore also proposed and signed into law Virginia's first stand-alone Martin Luther King Holiday. Prior to this proposal, Virginia had observed a combined Lee-Jackson-King Day that recognized Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Martin Luther King on the same day each year. Gilmore and his wife hosted a historic reception in the Governor's Mansion for Coretta Scott King and announced a technology partnership between Virginia and the King Center for Nonviolence. Gilmore also proposed and funded a new African-American History Trail in Virginia and called upon the State Board of Education to include a more diverse range of historical figures in Virginia's Social Studies curriculum. Test scores during Gilmore's term showed a narrowing of the "achievement gap" between minority and white students. Gilmore significantly increased funding for two of Virginia's historically black universities, Norfolk State University and Virginia State University.
Gilmore created the nation's first state Secretary of Technology, a position first held by Donald Upson. Together they established a statewide technology commission, and signed into law the nation's first comprehensive state Internet policy.
During his term, 37 people were executed in Virginia. Gilmore granted executive clemency to one death row inmate on the basis of mental illness. In another well publicized case, he pardoned Earl Washington Jr., a former death row inmate, after DNA tests, ordered by Gilmore, implicated another person. Gilmore also ordered DNA tests in the case of Derek Rocco Barnabei; the tests confirmed Barnabei's guilt and he was executed.
As governor, Gilmore signed into law legislation establishing a 24-hour waiting period and informed consent for women seeking an abortion, as well as a ban against partial birth abortion. Gilmore increased funding for adoption services. He also signed into law a bill that banned human cloning. In 1998, Gilmore went to court to try to prevent the removal of a feeding tube of a car crash victim, the former Kentucky news anchor Hugh Finn, who had suffered from a persistent vegetative state for several years. Gilmore lost his petition that removal of a feeding tube was not removal of artificial life support because it amounted to starvation of an infirm person who could not feed himself and Finn was allowed to die, upholding his wishes as he had expressed them to his family while he was working on developing a living will when still in good health that he wished not to be kept alive in such a state. As Attorney General of Virginia, Gilmore had defended a legal challenge to Virginia's first parental notification law for minors seeking abortions.
The Virginia Constitution forbids any governor from serving consecutive terms, so Gilmore could not run for a second term in 2001. He was succeeded by Democrat Mark Warner, who took office in early 2002.
Subsequent runs for office
2008 presidential candidacy
A "Draft Gilmore for President" group was formed in August 2006 encouraging Gilmore to run for President of the United States.On December 19, 2006, Gilmore announced he would form an exploratory committee to "fill the conservative void" in the race. On January 9, 2007, Gilmore officially filed papers with the Federal Election Commission to form the Jim Gilmore for President Exploratory Committee.
Gilmore said he represented "the Republican wing of the Republican Party" in the race for the 2008 Presidential nomination; the comment mirrored the slogan used by Howard Dean when seeking the Democratic nomination in the 2004 election, who lifted the slogan from Senator Paul Wellstone. Gilmore officially announced his candidacy on April 26, 2007.
In the first quarter of 2007 Gilmore raised $174,790, the second lowest of any of the major-party candidates. Gilmore hosted only one fundraiser in the first quarter due to a late exploratory announcement.
On July 14, 2007, Gilmore announced that he was ending his campaign. Gilmore said that it would be "impractical" to run, citing the difficulty of raising enough money to be competitive in early-voting states Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.