Ed Gillespie visits a residential recovery program in South Richmond aimed at keeping former inmates from returning to jail. Those in recovery, he told the group, "are not bad people who have to get good; they're sick people who need to get well." (Photo by Jay Paul)
The first election Ed Gillespie ever worked in was in support of his mother's campaign for the local school board in his New Jersey hometown. “I was 10, I think,” Gillespie says as he sits outside the Shockoe Espresso and Roastery. It’s late August and Gillespie, the Republican candidate for governor, is making a campaign swing through Richmond.
“She was the first woman elected to the school board in our hometown, and she went on to become the president of the school board. She shattered a glass ceiling. She was my hero, no two ways about it,” Gillespie says of Constance “Conny” Gillespie, who died in 2003.
Now the former head of the Republican National Committee is hoping to make a breakthrough of his own, after narrowly losing his bid to unseat Democrat Mark Warner in the 2014 U.S. Senate race.
Grocery Store Lessons
Gillespie, 56, grew up in Pemberton Township, where he attended high school. His late father, John Patrick “Jack” Gillespie, was an Irish immigrant and a decorated World War II veteran, earning two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star, the U.S. military’s third highest personal decoration for valor in combat. The Gillespies operated a neighborhood grocery store, the J.C. Market (J for Jack, C for Conny), where Ed and his brothers and sisters helped stock the shelves, sweep the floors, cut the lunch meat and work the cash register.
Gillespie describes his hometown as racially and economically diverse. He says that Pemberton Township High School, 55 percent white and 45 percent minority when he graduated, shaped his view of America. Depending on the year, he says that between a quarter and a third of the market’s customers paid with food stamps. Gillespie says one of the first lessons his parents taught him was to treat someone paying with food stamps the same as a person paying with cash. “People get down on their luck, and we need to treat everyone with respect.”
Gillespie says he learned everything he knows about politics from working in his family's neighborhood grocery.
In his 2006 biography, “Winning Right,” Gillespie says he learned everything he knows about politics from working in the family market: “Respect the customers, honor the competition, don’t put your thumb on the scale, and hard work never killed anybody.”
Though his parents never went to college, they insisted that their children did. Gillespie enrolled at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He took out loans, received some help from his parents and grandmother, and worked three jobs at different times, including a stint as a short-order cook. But the job that helped put him on the path to a political career was working as a Senate parking lot attendant. While parking cars, Gillespie learned about an internship in the House of Representatives. That led to a job with U.S. Rep. Andy Ireland of Florida, then a Democrat.
Political Roots
Gillespie's parents were Democrats; a photo of John F. Kennedy hung in the family dining room. But when Ireland became a Republican in 1984, attracted by then-President Ronald Reagan, Gillespie switched to the GOP, too. “My mother was probably a little disappointed,” Gillespie says. “She went to her grave a Democrat. My father had become an independent.”
He has often talked about his family’s multi-generational journey toward the American dream. It began when his father, at age 8, emigrated from Donegal, Ireland, in 1929 with his family. The only work that Gillespie’s grandfather could find was as a janitor in Philadelphia. Two generations later, Gillespie landed a position as counsel to then-President George W. Bush.
“From immigrant janitor to West Wing of the White House in two generations’ time — it’s an incredible country,” Gillespie says in the first TV commercial of his gubernatorial campaign. He also mentioned his family’s history when addressing questions after the Trump administration announced it would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that allows young undocumented immigrants, often called “dreamers,” to remain in the United States. Noting that he’s the son of an immigrant, Gillespie told reporters he does not think those young immigrants should be deported, and he urged a legislative solution.
In addition to his White House role, Gillespie also served as chairman of the Republican National Committee. During the 2004 election, Republicans retained control of Congress and Bush won reelection. On the state level, he served as chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, and he led Bob McDonnell’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 2009. In the private sector, Gillespie partnered in 2000 with Jack Quinn, former counsel to President Bill Clinton, to form one of the nation’s most powerful and lucrative lobbying firms, Quinn Gillespie & Associates. The firm was sold in 2004, and Gillespie has since started a crisis management and consulting firm, Ed Gillespie Strategies.
When Gillespie was chairman of the Republican National Committee, he was frequently paired on political talk shows with Terry McAuliffe, also an Irish Catholic and a graduate of Catholic University, who was then chairman of the Democratic National Committee (and now the governor Gillespie hopes to succeed). In his biography, Gillespie writes, “At Republican events, I would frequently get asked, ‘How can you stand going on TV with Terry McAuliffe?’ I’d say, ‘I just figure for every minute I spend in a TV studio with Terry McAuliffe, I get three minutes in heaven.’”
Rising Star
One of Gillespie’s biggest political breaks was when Rep. Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, hired him as press secretary in 1985. Armey later became the first Republican House majority leader in 40 years, and Gillespie rose along with him. In 1985, Gillespie also met his wife, Cathy, at a congressional softball game. “He just ran onto the field, and the moment I saw him I thought he was kind of cute, and he seemed like he had a good personality,” she recalls.
“Even though we grew up in different parts of the country, we did seem to have a lot in common,” says Cathy Gillespie, a Texas native. “We were both working for very conservative members of Congress, and both came from hard-working families. My mother was the first to go to college. The first, really, to graduate high school.”
A graduate of Texas A&M University, Cathy Gillespie worked for 10 years as chief of staff for Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican. She later served as director of “W Stands for Women,” during President George W. Bush’s campaign for a second term. Her husband calls her “the best, smartest political operative I know.”
The Gillespies, who live in Fairfax County, married in May 1987, and they have three children in their 20s: two daughters, Carrie and Mollie, and a son, John, named for Gillespie’s father.
Cathy Gillespie says that with the aid of a preschool that had an after-hours program, as well some hired assistance at home, she and Ed were able to juggle family life with dual careers. Her husband, she says, coached a variety of sports as their children were growing up, while she participated in the Girl Scouts with their daughters.
“I came off [Capitol] Hill in 1998, and my schedule became more free,” she says.
Cathy Gillespie, who had been a Protestant, converted to Catholicism that same year. “I had been going to church with Ed and fell in love with the Catholic Church, and I wanted to have a strong foundation for our kids,” she says. “Our faith is central to our lives. ... That’s what gives us our strength and our peace.”
Points of Contention
Republican Del. John O’Bannon of Henrico County, who has known Ed Gillespie personally since the 2014 Senate race, says, “I think he's the real deal. ... He genuinely wants to see Virginia thrive under a conservative Republican model.”
Gillespie has released more than a dozen proposals and plans. One that has drawn interest from many conservatives is a proposal to reduce the individual tax rate by 10 percent, to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Critics have called it a budget buster. Gillespie also has proposed reducing the state government workforce by about 1,000 jobs through attrition, and using the savings to raise workers' pay.
During his first debate with Democrat Ralph Northam, the candidates sparred over various issues, including how to relate to President Donald Trump, whom Northam has called “a narcissistic maniac.” Gillespie countered that Virginia’s governor needs to be able to get along with the Trump administration. “What are you going to do as our governor, call the White House [and say], ‘Please put me through to the narcissistic maniac’? ” Gillespie asked his opponent.
In return, Northam and fellow Democrats have repeatedly called for Gillespie to denounce Trump’s actions, including the president’s response to the violent protest in Charlottesville on Aug. 11 and 12 related to the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Gillespie did, however, speak strongly against white supremacists and neo-Nazis during an Aug. 19 speech at the Americans for Prosperity gathering in Richmond. He said, “The belief that one race is superior to another or that ... someone’s religion is inferior to one’s own is not just anti-American, it’s worse than that. It’s not just immoral, it’s worse than that. It is the presence of evil in the world, and we reject it.”
Gillespie believes Confederate monuments should remain, with context.
In an era of polarized politics, Gillespie hopes to pull together a Virginia GOP in which the Confederate flag-embracing, unreservedly Trump-supporting Corey Stewart came surprisingly close to winning the party nomination for governor.
“There may be folks in my own party who don’t agree with all the positions I take, but they disagree with every position that Lt. Gov. Northam has taken,” he says. “I think that as we get closer to Election Day, they’re going to see that choice.”
