AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
- Justice Clarence Thomas’ marriage to Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist, is under scrutiny.
- Ginni Thomas texted Trump’s White House chief of staff urging him to fight to overturn the 2020 election.
- DC is a town of powerful political marriages, some of which are famous. Others, less so.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas, have suddenly found their marriage under intense public scrutiny.
Ginni Thomas, a conservative author and activist, is under scrutiny following revelations that she sent a series of text messages in late 2020 and early 2021 to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, urging him to fight on behalf of Donald Trump’s bid to remain president after losing the election. Ginni Thomas’ actions have raised serious ethical questions about whether a spouse of a Supreme Court justice should be attempting to influence issues that could come before the court.
While his wife’s salvos lit up Washington circles, Clarence Thomas, the high court’s most reliably conservative member, had been hospitalized for days fighting an infection until doctors released him on March 25. Democrats are now calling for him to recuse himself from any cases involving the January 6 insurrection or Trump.
The Thomases’ drama shows how — for better or for worse — they’re one of Washington, DC’s most prominent power couples. In a town that runs on insider connections, a marriage between two power players can sometimes elevate each partner to greater heights than either one could achieve alone. But it can also open them up to public criticism, should the appearance of conflict arise.
Here are 18 other married couples — some better-known than others — who both wield political power and influence in the nation’s capital and beyond.
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Antony Blinken, who serves as Biden’s secretary of State, has his hands full at the moment as the US tries to stamp out a Russian invasion of Ukraine without the war escalating to the point of direct American involvement.
His wife, Evan Ryan, also serves in a high-profile role in the Biden administration as the White House Cabinet Secretary. Ryan serves as a conduit between the White House and the president’s cabinet, who lead the federal agencies and carry out Biden’s policy agenda in their various departments.
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and two-time cabinet secretary Elaine Chao have been married since 1993, making them one of DC’s most established power couples.
Chao, who immigrated from Taiwan when she was eight, has served under three presidents: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Bush appointed her secretary of labor, and she served in the post from 2001 to 2009.
McConnell, of course, is the shrewd leader of the senate Republicans, who over the past three decades has found myriad ways to stymie Democratic initiatives through filibuster blockades and rule changes.
They reached the height of their influence during the Trump administration, when the former president appointed Chao to run the Transportation Department and her husband oversaw a Republican majority in the Senate.
Chao resigned from her position after the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.
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The Cruzes met while working on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and married just a few months after their first date.
The couple has been married since 2001 and has two daughters. Both Ted Cruz and Heidi Cruz held high-profile jobs in Washington, and have spent much of their marriage in separate states.
Heidi Cruz, a managing director at Goldman Sachs in Houston, took a leave of absence from her job during the rough-and-tumble Republican 2016 presidential race to work on her husband’s campaign. And she withstood personal attacks on her appearance from then-candidate Donald Trump.
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican of Texas, at the time blasted Trump as a “pathological liar,” saying “morality does not exist for him.”
“He went after Heidi directly and smeared my wife, attacked her — apparently she’s not pretty enough for Donald Trump,” Cruz said in May 2016. “I may be biased, but I think if he’s making that allegation he’s also legally blind.”
Cruz went on to become one of Trump’s staunchest defenders during Trump’s presidential administration, particularly toward the end.
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In the days after a gunman shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the head in January 2011, it wasn’t clear whether the Democratic congresswoman from Arizona would survive.
She did. And in the years since, Giffords has dedicated herself to the work of her now-eponymous organization that, through its nonprofit and political action committee arms, advocates against gun violence and “supports elected officials who step up to fight the gun violence epidemic.”
As of February 28, Giffords PAC has more than $2.4 million cash on hand, according to its latest disclosure with the Federal Election Commission.
While Giffords left Congress in 2012, her husband, Mark Kelly, joined in 2020, having won a special US Senate election to represent Arizona.
The retired NASA astronaut is running for a full six-year term in the 2022 midterm election.
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Barack Obama may have been a two-term president who bagged a Nobel Peace Prize.
But even though Michelle Obama hasn’t been first lady since 2017, she’s been the “most admired woman” in the world for three years running, according to research firm Gallup.
Barack Obama can no longer compete: he had been Gallup’s “most admired man” from 2008 to 2019 — until Donald Trump supplanted him.
The Obamas are still very much DC denizens, having decided to stay within the capital city’s limits after exiting the White House. Since leaving the White House, the Obamas have published best-selling autobiographies and worked together on a variety of charitable endeavors, many under the auspices of the Obama Foundation.
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The Clintons don’t visit the nation’s capital so often these days. And neither have run for elected office or served in a prominent governmental capacity since Hillary Clinton lost her bid for the White House in 2016.
But ask anyone to name the nation’s most powerful political couple, and the Clintons will still top many lists. After all, they’ve together served as a governor, senator, secretary of state, and president, and between them, they’ve run for the White House four times.
Hillary Clinton remains active on the Democratic fundraising scene, having, for example, appeared in January at a pricey virtual gathering for Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, who’s running for the Senate. The Clinton Foundation is still very much a major platform for Bill Clinton, even if donations have waned.
And some Republicans continue to delight in (and raise money off) making the couple a foil while suggesting Hillary Clinton will run for president again in 2024 — even as she says she won’t.
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George Conway is a long-term Republican lawyer who played a key role in the Bill Clinton impeachment that stemmed from the Democratic president’s illicit affair with a White House intern.
In modern times, however, George Conway is more famous for being the husband of Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who later served as the senior counselor to Donald Trump, a man she previously opposed. George Conway, on the other hand, became a leading voice of the anti-Trump movement, helping found the Lincoln Project, a social-media-savvy super PAC with a mission of taking down Trump.
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Sure, Pete Buttigieg is the former 2020 presidential candidate who became US secretary of Transportation, and many Democrats expect the 40-year-old to one day occupy the White House.
But Chasten Buttigieg, his husband since 2018, has a major fan club in his own right. For starters, Chasten Buttigieg has more than 619,000 Twitter followers and a best-selling book.
The Buttigieges are fast-becoming Washington’s “it” couple, if they haven’t already achieved that status.
They aren’t afraid to be seen around town, either, frequently showing up at various DC restaurants and bookshops.
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Jamie Raskin represents a swath of suburban Maryland just outside of DC. He gained a new level of prominence in 2021, after he led the Democratic prosecution for Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. He lead the proceedings all while grieving his son who had died by suicide just weeks earlier. The Senate ultimately acquitted Trump on charges that he instigated a deadly riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Bloom Raskin is a former deputy Treasury secretary and was until recently Biden’s nominee to serve as the Federal Reserve’s chief Wall Street watchdog. Biden withdrew her nomination in March after Republicans, along with Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, refused to support her.
Earlier this year, Jamie Raskin violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act’s disclosure provisions in February by failing to properly report a massive stock holding and payout for Sarah Bloom Raskin.
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The Kaplans have held some of the most plum lobbying gigs in Washington, DC.
Laura Cox Kaplan spent 10 years leading the public policy practice at the accounting powerhouse PricewaterhouseCoopers, before starting a podcast and media company called She Said/She Said. Cox Kaplan got her start on Capitol Hill as a communications director for the Senate Republican Conference in 1999.
Joel Kaplan is currently the head lobbyist for Meta, formerly known as Facebook, and has been at the forefront of the social media giant’s battles with Congress.
As CEO Mark Zuckerberg made repeated visits to Capitol Hill to defend his company, Kaplan was frequently pictured sitting just behind him. Kaplan got his start working in the George W. Bush White House as a deputy chief of staff, and his work for Facebook came under intense scrutiny after journalists revealed Facebook had altered its moderation policies to be more forgiving to Trump and conservative content, even if they violated the rules.
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Powell McCormick served as Trump’s deputy national security counsel during the early months of his administration and is now a partner in Goldman Sachs investment banking division.
Earlier in her career, she served Republican administrations as an assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs, among other positions.
McCormick, meanwhile, is looking to serve on Capitol Hill as a US senator — he’s a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania. McCormick has served as the CEO of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates.
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Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, votes on big-ticket legislation by virtue of his elected office.
But his wife, Ritu Khanna, is the one who brings home big money for the couple.
Ritu Khanna, a former product marketing specialist for luxury item brand Bulgari, is also an heir to a family fortune built by her father, Monte Ahuja, the long-time leader of investment firm MURA Holdings and automotive company Transtar Industries.
The Khanna’s estimated wealth is well into the tens of millions of dollars, according to Ro Khanna’s most recent annual personal financial disclosure, with most of that coming from Ritu Khanna’s assets.
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Gorguze is president and CEO of Cameron Holdings, a private equity firm.
Her business success has helped make Peters, a Democratic congressman from California, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, with a minimum net worth of nearly $40 million, according to an Insider analysis of federal lawmakers’ personal financial disclosures.
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These longtime Biden loyalists have seen their stars rise alongside their former boss. Both of them worked on Biden’s unsuccessful 1988 presidential campaign, his first of three runs for the White House.
Catherine Russell was appointed executive director of UNICEF in December, after serving as the director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel.
Tom Donilon, who was a national security advisor to Obama, is now the chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, a think tank within the powerful financial institution. His brother, Mike Donilon, currently serves as a senior advisor to Biden.
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These two former members of Congress have gone on to have powerful and lucrative careers as lobbyists since departing Capitol Hill.
Molinari was Republican congresswoman from New York from 1990 to 1997, and was Google’s top lobbyist in DC until she stepped aside in 2018. She made headlines in 2020 for endorsing Biden for president.
Bill Paxon, a five-term Republican congressman from New York who served a stint as National Republican Congressional Committee chairman during the 1990s, was until 2017 a partner at the high profile lobbying firm Akin Gump.
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Carville and Matalin have long been Washington’s oddest political couple — well before the Conways gave politics an even stranger pairing.
Carville is a longtime Democratic strategist famous for helping get Bill Clinton elected in 1992. Matalin helped run the campaign of his rival, President George H.W. Bush.
Matalin is now a Libertarian although she’s well-known for her work as a Republican strategist and political analyst.
The two, who have been married since 1993 and have two children, remain influential in US politics.
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The daughter and son-in-law of former President Donald Trump followed him to the White House in 2017. Though neither had had previous political or policy experience, they both landed cushy advisory roles in the Trump administration that did not require Senate confirmation.
As advisor to the president, Ivanka Trump was known to show up during the president’s interviews with reporters. Kushner was senior advisor and Trump’s emissary on Middle East politics.
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The Gaetzes, who married in 2021, are one of Washington’s most controversial couples, but they’ve built a following on the right and among fans of Trump.
Matt Gaetz, 39, is a Florida congressman who is facing a federal sex trafficking investigation, after accusations emerged that he and his associates may have solicited minors for sex, and trafficked them across state lines. Gaetz has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, Ginger Luckey is a senior associate for sales transformation at tax and accounting firm KPMG US, and a MAGA social media star. The couple often appear together at political events and Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s compound in Palm Beach, Florida.
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