John Delaney is running for president in 2020. Here's everything we know about the candidate and how he stacks up against the competition.

Joe Perticone

Apr 2, 2019, 03:39 IST

John Delaney is running for president in 2020. Here's everything we know about the candidate and how he stacks up against the competition.

Gary Miller/FilmMagic

John Delaney.

Who is John Delaney?

Current job: Running for president of the United States as a Democratic candidate.

Age: 55

Family: Delaney is married to April McClain. Together they have four daughters.

Hometown: San Antonio, Texas.

Political party: Democratic

Previous jobs: Representative for Maryland's 6th congressional district from 2013 to 2019. Co-founder of Health Care Financial Partners. Founder of CapitalSource, a Maryland-based commercial lender.

Who is John Delaney's direct competition for the nomination?

Based on a recurring series of national surveys we conduct, we can figure out who the other candidates competing in John Delaney's lane are, and who the broader opponents are within the party.

Even after weeks of polling, we're really not near the sample size of John Delaney name recognition where we'd be confident interpreting his performance and drawing conclusions about a viable candidacy.
Only about 40 of the 2,850 voters who said they'd likely participate in the Democratic primary process both knew of and would be satisfied with Delaney as nominee.

INSIDER has been conducting a recurring poll through SurveyMonkey Audience on a national sample to find out how different candidate's constituencies overlap. We ask people whether they are familiar with a candidate, whether they would be satisfied or unsatisfied with that candidate as nominee, and sometimes we also ask whether they think that person would win or lose in a general election against President Donald Trump.

What are John Delaney's policy positions?

On healthcare:
- "Tying access to health insurance to employment forces workers to stay in jobs they don't like, distracts entrepreneurs from their main focus of running their businesses, and prevents wages from increasing," according to Delaney's campaign website.
- Delaney backs preserving the Affordable Care Act while Congress hashes out the details of a new healthcare system that would preserve traditional Medicare, but also create new universal program for Americans under the age of 65.
- He also proposes allowing the government to negotiate drug prices to "stop the transfer of wealth from working families to corporate executives and shareholders of pharmaceutical companies."
On immigration:
- Delaney supports a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
- Increasing refugee resettlement caps in the US.
- Investing in increased border security infrastructure, including physical barriers, personnel, and boosting the relevant government agencies' technological capabilities.
On climate change:
- Delaney supports a federal carbon tax, aiming to reduce US carbon emissions 90% by 2050.
- He wants the US to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords.
- He would push the Department of Energy to dramatically increase green energy research.
- Delaney said the Green New Deal is "as realistic as Trump saying that Mexico is going to pay for the wall."

On campaign finance:
- Delaney is using a unique method to boost small dollar donations to his campaign by pledging to donate $2 of his vast personal wealth to a list of charity organizations for each new donor.
- He has sworn off PAC money, as have many of the Democratic candidates.

On abortion:
- Delaney supports legal access to abortion.
- He opposes the ban on government funding of abortions and supports requiring religious groups to provide birth control coverage.
- He has a 100% score from the pro-abortion NARAL Pro-Choice America organization.
On LGBTQ rights:
- Delaney supports banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ individuals.
- He supports the Equality Act, which would ban discrimination against LGBTQ individuals for housing, employment and credit.
On education:
- Delaney supports guaranteed education starting in pre-K through at least two years of higher education.
- Delaney proposed paying for universal pre-K by placing a 1.5% surtax on Americans earning higher than $500,000.
- He also supports a national service initiative, which would have recent high school graduates choose from either military service, infrastructure apprenticeships, or community service.
On guns:
- Delaney supports expanding background checks to secondary, peer-to-peer purchases on firearms.
- He also supports red flag laws, which allows individuals to notify police of impending gun violence by a family member to temporarily take away their guns.
On criminal justice reform:
- Delaney said the federal government should stop blocking states from legalizing marijuana.
On trade:
- Delaney opposes the Trump administration's position of placing high tariffs on certain industries.
- He wants to get tougher on intellectual property theft by countries like China.
On foreign policy:
- Delaney has been critical of Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the Iranian nuclear deal.
- According to his past congressional campaign website, Delaney called for tough sanctions on Russia in response to their growing aggression. "Delaney believes in strong sanctions against Russia in response to their regional aggression, as well as new initiatives to sell American natural gas to Europe as a way of breaking Russia's regional hegemony," his website read.
- Delaney's congressional campaign website also said the US "should be focused on support for Israel and the maintenance of the bonds between our two nations."
On taxes:
- Delaney voted against the 2017 Republican-led tax cuts bill, which is now law.
- He has voted against repealing the estate tax.
- Delaney supports raising the corporate tax rate to 27%, an increase of current levels but still lower than rates prior to the new tax law implemented in 2018.

What are John Delaney's political successes?

He took a company public on the New York Stock Exchange at age 33.
While in Congress, Delaney was a founding member of both the Climate Solutions Caucus and the Artificial Intelligence Caucus.

How much money has John Delaney raised?

Delaney has been actively running for president since 2017, just several months after Trump was inaugurated. Delaney has spent most of his almost two-year-old campaign self-funding from his large personal wealth. At the end of 2018, he had loaned his campaign $2.5 million of his own personal money and also received over $1 million in donations.

Could John Delaney beat President Trump?

Referring back to INSIDER's recurring poll, John Delaney is not getting anywhere near enough name recognition to get the needed sample size to draw conclusions about how she'd perform in a general election against Donald Trump. Generally, that is not a good sign.