Eric Swalwell Biography

Eric Michael Swalwell was born on November 16, 1980, in Sac City, Iowa, U.S. He graduated from the Dublin High School in 1999.

He then attended the University of Maryland, College Park, after losing a soccer scholarship to Campbell University due to an injury.

He majored in government and politics and earned his Juris Doctor (JD) degree from the law school of the university. While at the university, he established the Student Liaison of the College Park City Council and became its student representative.

In 2001, Eric Swalwell interned at the office of congresswoman Ellen Tauscher. Later, on September 11 that year, he joined Capitol Hill as an intern. That fateful day gave a new direction to Swalwell's career, and he pledged to join politics so that he could establish a college scholarship program for those students who had lost their parents in the 9/11 attacks.

After receiving his JD degree, Swalwell practiced in an Alameda County deputy district. He joined the Dublin Heritage & Cultural Arts Commission in 2006 and quit in 2008 to serve the Dublin Planning Commission, where he remained until 2010. He left the Planning Commission after he was voted to the Dublin City Council.

As a congressman, Swalwell had a bipartisan approach to employment policies. He aimed to generate employment opportunities, balanced the city's annual budget, boosted the economic viability of his constituency, and promoted viticulture through the Wine Region Subcommittee.

In September 2011, Swalwell announced his candidature for the 15th district of California. He was on a leave of absence from the Dublin city council to promote his campaign. However, the council persuaded him to return until he won the election.

The San Francisco Chronicle endorsed Swalwell's November 2012 general election campaign. His opponent, Democrat Pete Stark, criticized his campaign, labeling him a Tea Party candidate. Swalwell refuted, but Stark refused to debate.

Swalwell hence had a debate with an actor impersonating Stark. The campaign gimmick was highly sensationalized in the media.

Swalwell defeated Stark and assumed office in January 2013. With that, he became the third person to represent this district. In the first term, he additionally served on the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He also co-chaired the bipartisan group United Solutions Caucus, which he had co-founded in January 2013.

He used the innovative way of connecting with constituents through social media. He also supported policies for the allowance of cameras on the House floor. Swalwell supported same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

He unsuccessfully fought to reverse Transportation Security Administration administrator John S. Pistole's decision of allowing pocket-knives at the airport security.

In June, he was dragged into a controversy for recording a video of himself voting against an anti-abortion bill, on his mobile phone, and publishing it on Vine. The act was against the decorum of the House and was thus condemned. In his defense, Swalwell argued that such protocol and rules were too "eighteenth century" and that they should be abolished. He believed that his act was a step toward transparent democracy.

In December 2013, he used the Philippines Charitable Giving Assistance Act to grant an additional deduction from the taxable income of 2013 to those who had made any charitable contributions to the Typhoon Haiyan relief fund in the Philippines, between January 1, 2014, and April 15, 2014. President Obama passed the bill as a law in March 2014.

By the time Eric Swalwell's first term was about to end, he had introduced three bills through the House, of which two were turned into laws (the highest number among other newcomers).

In 2014, Swalwell declared he would be chairing the O' Say Can You See PAC's Young Professionals Leadership Circle of his friend and Maryland governor Martin O'Malley. However, he clarified that his acceptance of the position should not be mistaken as his support for O'Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign (though he ultimately did support the campaign).

In 2014, Swalwell defeated Republican Hugh Bussell, a senior manager at Workday, Inc., in the November general election. His second term began on January 3, 2015.

In his second term, Eric Swalwell served on the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He was also part of the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology since the first term. He was a ranking member of the Central Intelligence Agency Subcommittee.

In June, Swalwell introduced HR 1671 to rename the Dublin post office to the James "Jim" Kohnen Post Office. His activities in his second term included supporting the withdrawal of the No Child Left Behind Act, allocation of a higher budget for education, lowering the budget allocated for defense, promoting renewable-energy jobs, trying to raise the Social Security cap by procuring funds from wealthy Americans, and introducing the idea of congressmen casting votes remotely (so that they could simultaneously focus on their duties).

With the help of a group of young House Democrats, Eric Swalwell established the Future Forum in April 2015, to address the concerns of millennials. He was appointed as the chairman of the group. In that capacity, he addressed the issue of student-loan debts, something he had been facing since mid-2017.

In May 2015, along with Republican Darrell Issa (R-CA), Swalwell launched the bipartisan Sharing Economy Caucus.

In February 2016, Swalwell was made the vice-chair of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. Swalwell defeated Republican Danny Reid Turner of Livermore in the November 2016 general election and commenced his third term on January 3, 2017.

In January 2017, Swalwell reintroduced the legislation of the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which he had introduced with Republican Elijah Cummings in December 2016. The bill aimed to establish a bipartisan committee, which would investigate any foreign intervention in the general election that year. Unfortunately, the law could not win any bipartisan support in the 115th congress.

Eric Swalwell defeated Republican Rudy Peters of Livermore in the 2018 November general election and was sworn in to his fourth term on January 3, 2019. He has served on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Subcommittee on Strategic Technologies, the Advanced Research Committee on the Judiciary, the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, the 'Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law. He has also chaired the Subcommittee on Intelligence Modernization and Readiness.

He held memberships in the American Sikh Congressional Caucus, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus.

Swalwell criticized the 2019 Turkish attack on north-eastern Syria and called for the removal of Turkey from NATO.

In January 2020, in an op-ed for NBC News, Swalwell compared the XYZ Affair to the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal.

In April 2019, while speaking on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Eric Swalwell announced he would be running for the 2020 presidential campaign. He endorsed his campaigns on social media, too.

His list of agendas included better gun control. Swalwell, however, later withdrew his nomination.

After divorcing his first wife, Eric Swalwell married Brittany Ann Watts, a sales director at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, in October 2016. They had a son in 2017 and a daughter in 2018.

As revealed in 2019, Swalwell had previously suffered from Bell's palsy.