Who is Tom Perez?

Tom Edward Perez is an American politician and attorney. He served as the Chair of the Democratic National Committee from February 2017 to January 2021. He also served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights from 2009 to 2013. Perez was a GU Politics Fellow at the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service in 2021. He is one of the front runners in his party’s primary for governor of Maryland. 

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Tom Perez was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. He was born to Dr Rafeal Antonio de Jesus Perez Lara and Grace, who were both first-generation immigrants from the Dominican Republic. His father worked as a doctor in Atlanta, Georgia before moving to Buffalo. Perez is the youngest of five siblings. 

He attended Christ the King in Amherst, NY until 8th grade. He graduated from Canisius High School in 1979. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in International relations and political science from Brown University. He covered the cost of attending Brown with scholarships and by working as a trash collector and in a warehouse. He worked as a law clerk for Attorney General Edwin Meese while being a student at Harvard in 1986. He received Juris Doctor cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1987. 

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He worked as a federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division from 1989 to 1995. Perez then worked as Democratic Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy’s principal advisor on civil rights, criminal justice and constitutional issues from 1995 to 1998. 

Tom Perez was elected to the Montgomery Country (Maryland) Council in 2002. There he served as the council’s president from 2005 until 2006. He was appointed by Maryland Governor Martin O’ Malley to serve as Secretary of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation in January 2007. 

He was nominated by President Barack Obama to be the United States Secretary of Labor in 2013. He announced his candidacy in 2016 for the Chair of the Democratic National Committee in the 2017 party elections. He was elected as the Chairman on the second ballot. Perez declined to run for re-election in 2021. In 2021 he announced that he would run for the 2022 Maryland gubernatorial election. 

The Washington Post said, “none of the candidates can match Mr. Perez’s track record or command of governing. Few candidates in Maryland’s history, or the country’s, would enter a governor’s office so well prepared.”