Bruce Rauner

Bruce Vincent Rauner (; born February 18, 1956) is an American businessman, venture capitalist, and politician who served as the 42nd governor of Illinois from 2015 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he had a decades-long career in investment management before entering politics, serving as the co-founder and chairman of Chicago-based private equity firm GTCR. As of 2026, Rauner and his lieutenant governor Evelyn Sanguinetti are the most recent Republicans to have won or held statewide office in Illinois.

Following his retirement as chairman of GTCR in 2012, Rauner shifted his focus from business to civic and political involvement, leading Chicago's tourism bureau and the Chicago Public Education Fund. He announced his candidacy for governor of Illinois in 2013, winning a crowded Republican primary. In the 2014 election, Rauner narrowly defeated incumbent Democratic governor Pat Quinn, winning every county in the state besides Cook County.

Governing as a moderate conservative, Rauner sought to pass right-to-work laws, institute term limits, protect abortion rights, and lower income taxes. However, his agenda was largely stalled by the Democratic supermajorities controlling the Illinois General Assembly. Notably, disagreements between Rauner and Democratic leaders culminated in to a two-year budget crisis. Running for reelection in 2018, he narrowly fended off a primary challenge from conservative State Representative Jeanne Ives. Rauner went on to lose by a large margin to Democratic nominee JB Pritzker.

Rauner was born in Chicago and grew up in Deerfield, Illinois, a suburb 10 miles north of Chicago city limits. His mother, Ann (née Erickson) Rauner, was a nurse, and his father, Vincent Rauner, was a lawyer and senior vice president for Motorola. He has three siblings, Christopher, Mark, and Paula, and is of half Swedish and half German descent. His parents divorced and his father remarried to the former Carol Kopay in 1981. Through his father's second marriage, he has a stepsister, Larisa Olson. His first job was as a paperboy.

Rauner graduated summa cum laude with a degree in economics from Dartmouth College, where he was a brother of Theta Delta Chi. He later received an MBA from Harvard University.

Rauner was the chairman of private equity firm GTCR, where he had worked for more than 30 years, starting in 1981 after his graduation from Harvard through his retirement in October 2012. A number of state pension funds, including those of Illinois, have invested in GTCR.

In 2013, Rauner opened an office for a self-financed venture firm, R8 Capital Partners. The firm planned to invest up to $15 million in smaller Illinois companies.

Rauner served as Chairman of Choose Chicago, the not-for-profit that is the city's convention and tourism bureau, resigning in May 2013, and as Chairman of the Chicago Public Education Fund. Rauner has also served as the Chairman of the Education Committee of the Civic Committee of The Commercial Club of Chicago.

In 2015, Rauner reported earning over $180 million.

Prior to his 2014 run for Illinois governor, Rauner served as an advisor to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Rauner was awarded the 2008 Distinguished Philanthropist award by the Chicago Association of Fundraising Professionals. In 2003, Rauner received the Daley Medal from the Illinois Venture Capital Association for extraordinary support to the Illinois economy and was given the Association for Corporate Growth's Lifetime Achievement Award. Rauner and his wife were nominated for the Golden Apple Foundation's 2011 Community Service Award.

Rauner has been a financial supporter of projects including Chicago's Red Cross regional headquarters, the YMCA in the Little Village neighborhood, six new charter high schools, an AUSL turnaround campus, scholarship programs for disadvantaged Illinois public school students, and achievement-based compensation systems for teachers and principals in Chicago Public Schools. He provided major funding for the construction of the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College, endowed full professor chairs at Dartmouth College, Morehouse College, University of Chicago, and Harvard Business School, and was the lead donor for the Stanley C. Golder Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurial Finance at the University of Illinois.

As of 2013, Rauner served on the board of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Rauner is also a frequent donor to his fraternity at Dartmouth, Theta Delta Chi.

In March 2013, Rauner formed an exploratory committee to look at a run for Governor of Illinois as a Republican. Rauner said that his top priorities included streamlining government, improving education, and improving the state's business climate. He supported term limits and said he would serve no more than eight years (two terms) as governor. On June 5, 2013, Rauner officially announced his candidacy for governor, telling Chicago magazine's Carol Felsenthal that his platform would include overhauling tax policy and freezing property taxes.

In October 2013, Rauner announced that his running mate would be Wheaton City Councilwoman Evelyn Sanguinetti.

Rauner won the March 18, 2014, Republican primary with 328,934 votes (40.13 percent), defeating State Senator Kirk Dillard, who received 305,120 votes (37.22 percent), State Senator Bill Brady (123,708 votes, 15.09 percent) and Illinois Treasurer Dan Rutherford (61,848 votes, 7.55 percrent).

For the general election, Rauner was endorsed by the majority of Illinois newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Herald, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

During the general election, television ads aired regarding Rauner's role in a chain of long-term care homes owned by his companies that faced lawsuits stemming from the death and alleged mistreatment of residents. Among the problems outlined in court cases, state records, and media reports were the deaths of developmentally disabled residents in bathtubs, "deplorable" living conditions, sexual assaults, and a failure by employees to stop residents from harming themselves.

Rauner was sworn in as the 42nd governor of Illinois on January 12, 2015. He governed Illinois as a Rockefeller Republican, with liberal stances on several issues including abortion, same-sex marriage, and immigration.

Rauner had a 52% job approval rating after assuming the governorship in 2015, which gradually declined during his term. It stood at 33% in December 2016, ranking 45th of the 50 U.S. governors. In January 2019, as Rauner was leaving office, his approval rating was about 25%.

In his first executive order, Rauner halted state hiring as well as discretionary spending and called for state agencies to sell surplus property. The conflict between Rauner's demand for budget cuts and Speaker of the House Mike Madigan's demand for tax increases resulted in the Illinois budget impasse, with major credit agencies downgrading the state's debt to the low investment grade of triple-B by the end of 2015.

On February 9, 2015, Rauner signed an executive order blocking so called "fair share" union fees from state employee paychecks. The same day, Rauner hired a legal team headed by former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb and his law firm Winston & Strawn to file a declaratory judgment action in Federal Court to affirm his action. In February 2015, Rauner proposed $4.1 billion in budget cuts affecting higher education, Medicaid, state employee pensions, public transit, and local government support. In April, Rauner also suspended funding for programs addressing domestic violence, homeless youth, autism, and immigrant integration. Critics called these moves "morally reprehensible" and harmful to the state economy.

On June 25, 2015, Rauner vetoed the Illinois state budget passed by the legislature, which would have created a deficit of nearly $4 billion but which covered what Illinois Democratic lawmakers called "vital services". He stated that he would not sign a budget until the Democratic state legislature passed his "Turnaround Agenda" to reduce trade union power and freeze property taxes. With no state budget, social service agencies cut back on services, state universities laid off staff, public transit service ceased in Monroe and Randolph Counties, and Child Care Assistance eligibility was cut by 90%.

Before being elected governor, Rauner resided in Winnetka, Illinois, with his wife, Diana Mendley Rauner, and family; they have three children. He also has three children from his first marriage, to Elizabeth Konker Wessel, whom he married in 1980, separated from in 1990, and was legally divorced from in 1993.

During Rauner's governorship, he and his family resided in the Illinois Governor's Mansion in Springfield. They also own ranches in Montana and Wyoming. Rauner is an Episcopalian.