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Quick Facts
Who: John Delaney
State: Maryland
Current position: Presidential candidate for 2020
Campaign Website: https://www.johnkdelaney.com
Background: Delaney received a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1985 and a Juris Doctor degree in 1988. He is the Co-Founder of Alliance Partners, LLC. And was the Co-Founder of CapitalSource, Inc. from 2000 to 2010. From 1993 to 1999 he also served as the Chief Executive Officer of HealthCare Financial Partners Inc. Delaney won the 2012 election and gained a seat on the U.S. House of Representatives for Maryland. He served from 2013 to 2019.
2020 Campaign & Endorsements
Date Announced: July 28, 2017
Fundraising: $12.1 million in first quarter
Campaign Leadership: John Davis
Key Endorsements: Juan Vargas, David Trone
Political Positions
- Healthcare: Delaney wants to create a new system of healthcare that covers everyone from when they’re born to when they’re 65 years old. Afterwards, people are moved to Medicare. It would eliminate employment health care and both programs would include supplementals. He considers healthcare as a right and not a privilege.
- Environment: Delaney promoted a carbon tax back in 2012 in order to encourage industries to research and invest in environmentally-friendly alternatives to fossil fuels. He also supports regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
- Economy: Delaney co-sponsored bill H.R.1031 & S.824 in 2015, which was designed to raise, “the cap on outstanding loans, guarantees, and insurance of the Export-Import Bank of the United States for FY2015-FY2022 and afterwards.” He also supports federal stimulus spending for the purpose of economic growth.
- Border Security: When it comes to homeland security, Delaney is willing to reduce funding for defense in order to balance the budget. He supported not only the DREAM act, but also more H1B1 visas. He doesn’t agree with forcing illegal immigrants back to their country of origin before applying for citizenship. He doesn’t support President Donald Trump’s border wall plan because he feels that the project would be too expensive and ineffective.
- Gun Control: Delaney received a 100 percent voting record score from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence for 2013-2014.
- Abortion: Delaney supports public funding for abortion. He also supports regulations to force churches to provide birth control and abortion coverage in their insurance plans.
Criticisms/Controversies
- Hypocrisy in gerrymandering?: One of the issues Delaney promised to tackle if he became president is to end gerrymandering. Yet it was that very practice that helped the representative win the 2012 election. When John Harwood interviewed Delaney on CNBC on Dec 27, 2018 asking him about the controversy, Delaney said, “I really became very sensitive to this when I ran for office the first time because both Democrats and Republicans were upset about it. Republicans felt like the Democrats kind of engineered this district away from them. It really struck me how the reaction to this, on a bipartisan basis, was negative.”
This piece is part of our Election 2020 series. See below for more information on the most talked about Democrats challenging President Trump.