Their husbands are running for governor. And on Nov. 6, one of them will wake up as the next first lady of Virginia.
From different backgrounds and with different interests, Alice Monteiro Cuccinelli, Dorothy McAuliffe and Astrid Sarvis are out stumping for their spouses while helping to hold down the home front.
The role of first lady, a quasi-official position that offers a platform but not a paycheck, will likely have a higher profile following the McDonnell administration. Previous first ladies have created roles that stretch far beyond fussy luncheons and a stellar social calendar.
First lady Maureen McDonnell has spent the past 3½ years promoting Virginia’s wine and tourism industry as well as supporting military families and celebrating the Executive Mansion.
But the first family’s relationship with a wealthy donor, which has led to investigations by state and federal authorities, will likely increase the attention paid to the first lady.
While Sarvis has begun to think about what the next steps would be, neither McAuliffe nor Cuccinelli let on if they have planned for the logistical details should they become first lady, which could include uprooting children and moving to the Executive Mansion, a place that’s half museum, half private home. But they would have a rare opportunity to call attention to causes dear to them.
McAuliffe, wife of Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe, talks about the intersection of Virginia’s agricultural industry and the importance of fresh, local food.
Cuccinelli, married to Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican nominee, says she wants to serve the disadvantaged and to work on school choice.
Sarvis, a pediatric resident who is married to Libertarian nominee Robert C. Sarvis, is passionate about health literacy.
Sarvis, 30, was raised in the Mississippi Delta, one of eight children to a mother who she says received some form of public assistance until Sarvis was in medical school.
She wasn’t focused on medicine when she started high school, but credits a chemistry teacher who saw something in her and encouraged her to apply to Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans as a pre-med student.
She says she followed with medical school at the University of Mississippi on a full scholarship. In her fifth year, she studied at Yale University, where she earned a master’s degree in public health.
She’s now wrapping up her residency in pediatrics at a hospital in Fairfax County.
Meanwhile, she married Robert in 2010 and had two children.
And then Robert launched a bid for governor.
Life has moved quickly in the years since she met Robert in Mississippi at a Barnes & Noble bookstore. He was in Mississippi clerking for a federal judge at the time.
Juggling the work/life balance comes up on the campaign trail when she’s out with Robert and the children, she says. Though she says she values her privacy, she says she’s fully behind her husband’s effort.
She recalled meeting a man at a campaign event in a small rural town. The man said he traditionally voted conservatively and his wife “the other direction” and that they finally had a candidate they would both support.
“That sort of hit a place in me that brought it home. And so like Rob, I sort of feel obligated now to these people,” she said in an interview in the hospital where she is doing her residency.
“I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as I have. It’s been real rewarding for all of us.”
On Friday, Sarvis released a video expressing disappointment about her husband’s exclusion from the gubernatorial debate, scheduled for Thursday at Virginia Tech.
She asks debate organizers to reconsider their decision, and asks supporters of other candidates to “hold your candidate to a higher standard and also demand that my husband be in the debate so that your candidate can prove that he is the right and the best man for the job by debating everyone on the ballot.” She appears at times to tear up in the course of the 15-minute video, which she said she filmed on an iPad.
Her passion is health literacy — making sure a patient is able to obtain, process and understand health information that helps the individual make more appropriate health care decisions. If her husband is elected, it’s likely to be a subject she spends time advocating.
“Lack of health literacy has led to a lot of extra expenses in health, and I think if we want to move to a more sustainable health care system, then it’s something that absolutely needs to be addressed,” she said.
Dorothy McAuliffe met Terry years before they married. Her father, Richard Swann, was President Jimmy Carter’s finance chairman in Florida for the 1980 re-election effort, and Terry worked on the campaign. He was sent to Orlando to work alongside Richard Swann and he stayed at the Swann home.
According to Terry McAuliffe’s autobiography, Dorothy had just turned 16 when they met.
When she first knew him, Terry “was more like the older family friend,” Dorothy McAuliffe said in an interview in Richmond last week. Dorothy’s mother was prescient, however, telling Dorothy’s father at one point in those early days that she thought the two would wed one day.
It wasn’t until Dorothy McAuliffe started at Catholic University — where she earned a degree in political science — that they began dating. After Catholic, she said she went on to attend law school at Georgetown University and work as a banking and finance lawyer.
Despite snapshots of their private life appearing in Terry’s book, “What a Party!,” she doesn’t seem to relish media attention. She appeared more comfortable at a campaign event last week digging into a garden with young children and five former first ladies.
The event was intended to highlight one of McAuliffe’s focuses: food. She talks about the importance of children eating fresh, nutritious food and how that dovetails with promoting Virginia’s largest industry — agriculture.
She says that while thousands of Virginia children are food-insecure for some part of the year, there’s also a grass-roots movement around local, fresh food.
“As a mother of five children, it’s always been important to me, as with every mother, every parent, you want to make sure your children have good, healthy food,” Dorothy, 50, said last week in the William Byrd Community House garden.
“And yet with all these resources I have, we have, it’s still a struggle. But then you think about families that don’t have access and availability.”
Meanwhile, she says, the state’s rural communities are “a critical part of who we are as Virginians.”
“You provide the economic opportunity, then you can encourage more young people to go into farming, especially this food-to-table movement,” she said. “If they can find a market for them, we’re encouraging people to go into that sector of the economy, which I think is really important to us.”
While she is on the trail talking with voters and supporting her husband’s bid, she is also keeping things running on the home front. As the McAuliffes raised their five children, now ages 11 to 22, Dorothy served on a number of boards. She’s also a supporter of Knock Out Abuse Against Women, a Washington-based nonprofit helping victims of domestic violence.
Alice Monteiro Cuccinelli, known as “Teiro,” has stepped onto the campaign trail, especially for meet and greets, where she said she tries to flesh out the picture of her husband that voters may have gotten from TV ads.
Cuccinelli, 43, was born in Radford and raised in Virginia, mostly Northern Virginia. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she said her mother worked full time to provide for her three children. She eventually remarried.
“She had a lot of great many struggles, and I’m very thankful to her for what she was able to provide and do for us,” Cuccinelli said in a phone interview Friday.
She met Ken when she moved a few doors down from him in McLean when she was in high school. They dated as teenagers and then were apart for most of their college years. She graduated from James Madison University with a business degree, and the two married in 1991.
They have seven children, ages 4 to 17, whom the Cuccinellis have home-schooled until they reach about sixth grade.
Like the other spouses, she said she’s focused on Nov. 5 and not the logistics beyond.
“I live one day at a time,” she said. “I know when I get up in the morning what I need to do each day. And I know I’m able to do that. But I try not to think too far ahead.”
She has causes dear to her, however, and says her goal would be to serve the disadvantaged of Virginia. She wants to assist in empowering parents and helping them try to work toward school choice.
“Ken and I have always believed that education is the best way out of poverty,” she said.
“The other thing that is important to me is just trying to serve the needy and the disadvantaged, helping organizations already in place to serve them,” she said.
In 16 days, one of these women will have a whole lot more on her plate.
And the new role will come with new scrutiny. Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, believes Virginia first ladies will receive more attention going forward for a few reasons.
It’s possible that reporting requirements on gifts, earnings and investments of the first lady and other members of the first family will tighten in the next General Assembly session. As Virginia becomes more competitive electorally, increased scrutiny could also result.
In addition, Kidd said he thinks there will be more scrutiny “because what we learned as a result of the McDonnell gift scandal in a way burst a (perhaps) naive perception we had about what the first lady did, or could do, in connection to policy and the governor’s agenda.”
[email protected]
(804) 649-6812
From different backgrounds and with different interests, Alice Monteiro Cuccinelli, Dorothy McAuliffe and Astrid Sarvis are out stumping for their spouses while helping to hold down the home front.
The role of first lady, a quasi-official position that offers a platform but not a paycheck, will likely have a higher profile following the McDonnell administration. Previous first ladies have created roles that stretch far beyond fussy luncheons and a stellar social calendar.
First lady Maureen McDonnell has spent the past 3½ years promoting Virginia’s wine and tourism industry as well as supporting military families and celebrating the Executive Mansion.
But the first family’s relationship with a wealthy donor, which has led to investigations by state and federal authorities, will likely increase the attention paid to the first lady.
While Sarvis has begun to think about what the next steps would be, neither McAuliffe nor Cuccinelli let on if they have planned for the logistical details should they become first lady, which could include uprooting children and moving to the Executive Mansion, a place that’s half museum, half private home. But they would have a rare opportunity to call attention to causes dear to them.
McAuliffe, wife of Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe, talks about the intersection of Virginia’s agricultural industry and the importance of fresh, local food.
Cuccinelli, married to Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican nominee, says she wants to serve the disadvantaged and to work on school choice.
Sarvis, a pediatric resident who is married to Libertarian nominee Robert C. Sarvis, is passionate about health literacy.
Sarvis, 30, was raised in the Mississippi Delta, one of eight children to a mother who she says received some form of public assistance until Sarvis was in medical school.
She wasn’t focused on medicine when she started high school, but credits a chemistry teacher who saw something in her and encouraged her to apply to Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans as a pre-med student.
She says she followed with medical school at the University of Mississippi on a full scholarship. In her fifth year, she studied at Yale University, where she earned a master’s degree in public health.
She’s now wrapping up her residency in pediatrics at a hospital in Fairfax County.
Meanwhile, she married Robert in 2010 and had two children.
And then Robert launched a bid for governor.
Life has moved quickly in the years since she met Robert in Mississippi at a Barnes & Noble bookstore. He was in Mississippi clerking for a federal judge at the time.
Juggling the work/life balance comes up on the campaign trail when she’s out with Robert and the children, she says. Though she says she values her privacy, she says she’s fully behind her husband’s effort.
She recalled meeting a man at a campaign event in a small rural town. The man said he traditionally voted conservatively and his wife “the other direction” and that they finally had a candidate they would both support.
“That sort of hit a place in me that brought it home. And so like Rob, I sort of feel obligated now to these people,” she said in an interview in the hospital where she is doing her residency.
“I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as I have. It’s been real rewarding for all of us.”
On Friday, Sarvis released a video expressing disappointment about her husband’s exclusion from the gubernatorial debate, scheduled for Thursday at Virginia Tech.
She asks debate organizers to reconsider their decision, and asks supporters of other candidates to “hold your candidate to a higher standard and also demand that my husband be in the debate so that your candidate can prove that he is the right and the best man for the job by debating everyone on the ballot.” She appears at times to tear up in the course of the 15-minute video, which she said she filmed on an iPad.
Her passion is health literacy — making sure a patient is able to obtain, process and understand health information that helps the individual make more appropriate health care decisions. If her husband is elected, it’s likely to be a subject she spends time advocating.
“Lack of health literacy has led to a lot of extra expenses in health, and I think if we want to move to a more sustainable health care system, then it’s something that absolutely needs to be addressed,” she said.
Dorothy McAuliffe met Terry years before they married. Her father, Richard Swann, was President Jimmy Carter’s finance chairman in Florida for the 1980 re-election effort, and Terry worked on the campaign. He was sent to Orlando to work alongside Richard Swann and he stayed at the Swann home.
According to Terry McAuliffe’s autobiography, Dorothy had just turned 16 when they met.
When she first knew him, Terry “was more like the older family friend,” Dorothy McAuliffe said in an interview in Richmond last week. Dorothy’s mother was prescient, however, telling Dorothy’s father at one point in those early days that she thought the two would wed one day.
It wasn’t until Dorothy McAuliffe started at Catholic University — where she earned a degree in political science — that they began dating. After Catholic, she said she went on to attend law school at Georgetown University and work as a banking and finance lawyer.
Despite snapshots of their private life appearing in Terry’s book, “What a Party!,” she doesn’t seem to relish media attention. She appeared more comfortable at a campaign event last week digging into a garden with young children and five former first ladies.
The event was intended to highlight one of McAuliffe’s focuses: food. She talks about the importance of children eating fresh, nutritious food and how that dovetails with promoting Virginia’s largest industry — agriculture.
She says that while thousands of Virginia children are food-insecure for some part of the year, there’s also a grass-roots movement around local, fresh food.
“As a mother of five children, it’s always been important to me, as with every mother, every parent, you want to make sure your children have good, healthy food,” Dorothy, 50, said last week in the William Byrd Community House garden.
“And yet with all these resources I have, we have, it’s still a struggle. But then you think about families that don’t have access and availability.”
Meanwhile, she says, the state’s rural communities are “a critical part of who we are as Virginians.”
“You provide the economic opportunity, then you can encourage more young people to go into farming, especially this food-to-table movement,” she said. “If they can find a market for them, we’re encouraging people to go into that sector of the economy, which I think is really important to us.”
While she is on the trail talking with voters and supporting her husband’s bid, she is also keeping things running on the home front. As the McAuliffes raised their five children, now ages 11 to 22, Dorothy served on a number of boards. She’s also a supporter of Knock Out Abuse Against Women, a Washington-based nonprofit helping victims of domestic violence.
Alice Monteiro Cuccinelli, known as “Teiro,” has stepped onto the campaign trail, especially for meet and greets, where she said she tries to flesh out the picture of her husband that voters may have gotten from TV ads.
Cuccinelli, 43, was born in Radford and raised in Virginia, mostly Northern Virginia. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she said her mother worked full time to provide for her three children. She eventually remarried.
“She had a lot of great many struggles, and I’m very thankful to her for what she was able to provide and do for us,” Cuccinelli said in a phone interview Friday.
She met Ken when she moved a few doors down from him in McLean when she was in high school. They dated as teenagers and then were apart for most of their college years. She graduated from James Madison University with a business degree, and the two married in 1991.
They have seven children, ages 4 to 17, whom the Cuccinellis have home-schooled until they reach about sixth grade.
Like the other spouses, she said she’s focused on Nov. 5 and not the logistics beyond.
“I live one day at a time,” she said. “I know when I get up in the morning what I need to do each day. And I know I’m able to do that. But I try not to think too far ahead.”
She has causes dear to her, however, and says her goal would be to serve the disadvantaged of Virginia. She wants to assist in empowering parents and helping them try to work toward school choice.
“Ken and I have always believed that education is the best way out of poverty,” she said.
“The other thing that is important to me is just trying to serve the needy and the disadvantaged, helping organizations already in place to serve them,” she said.
In 16 days, one of these women will have a whole lot more on her plate.
And the new role will come with new scrutiny. Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, believes Virginia first ladies will receive more attention going forward for a few reasons.
It’s possible that reporting requirements on gifts, earnings and investments of the first lady and other members of the first family will tighten in the next General Assembly session. As Virginia becomes more competitive electorally, increased scrutiny could also result.
In addition, Kidd said he thinks there will be more scrutiny “because what we learned as a result of the McDonnell gift scandal in a way burst a (perhaps) naive perception we had about what the first lady did, or could do, in connection to policy and the governor’s agenda.”
[email protected]
(804) 649-6812