Painter’s political views are generally left-of-center, though he describes himself as a political moderate who has remained consistent while the Republican Party drifted to the right. Painter was a Republican until 2018 when he left the party over disagreements with then-President Donald Trump whom Painter sued in 2017 over ethics violations. Painter ran for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota as a candidate of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party but lost in the Democratic primaries. He ran for U.S. Congress in 2022 but lost again in the Democratic primaries.

Early Life and Education

Richard Painter was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Painter attended Harvard University where he graduated in 1984 with a degree in history. He was a member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Democratic Club. Painter later earned his J.D. at Yale Law School. ^{1 2}

Career

After graduating from Yale Law School, Richard Painter began his career as a clerk for Judge John T. Noonan Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He then worked at the corporate law firms Sullivan and Cromwell in New York City and Finn, Dixon and Herling in Stamford, Connecticut. Painter’s corporate law work occurred during the Wall Street boom of the 1980s and 1990s, which inculcated in Painter a belief in the value of financial regulations. ^{3 4}

From 2002 to 2005, Painter was the Guy Raymond and Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He was also a faculty member at the University of Oregon School of Law. ⁵

From 2005 to 2007, Painter was associate counsel and chief ethics lawyer to then-President George W. Bush. Painter largely focused on financial conflicts of interest, ⁶ but also claimed to have helped President Bush choose John Roberts and Samuel Alito as U.S. Supreme Court Justices. In March 2016, shortly after Merrick Garland was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama (D), Painter claimed in a New York Times op-ed that President Bush would have nominated “someone like Judge Merrick Garland” to the U.S. Supreme Court if Bush had faced a Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate. National Review published a statement from Shannen Coffin, former counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, calling Painter’s claim “nonsense.” Another White House lawyer contacted National Review and claimed that Painter never had input into President Bush’s U.S. Supreme Court nominations. ^{7 8}

From 2007 to the present, Painter has worked as S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. ⁹

During the 2016 election, Painter filed a Hatch Act complaint against FBI Director James Comey for disclosing his investigation into former U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) days before the election. ¹⁰

In December 2016, Painter became vice chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-of-center government corruption watchdog. ¹¹

In 2020, Painter became a founding board member of Take Back Our Republic, an ostensibly right-of-center campaign finance regulation group. ¹²

Opposition to President Donald Trump

In May 2017, Richard Painter expressed belief in the notion that the campaign of then-President Donald Trump had colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election: “That’s a big difference with Nixon. Nixon may have been a crook, but at least he was our crook. He wasn’t a Russian agent… It’s a serious threat to our country from a foreign power and the administration continues to engage in a coverup.” ¹³ Painter later accuses President Trump of “obstructing justice” in investigations into President Trump and Russia. ¹⁴

Painter also criticized then-President Trump’s executive order limiting immigration from numerous Muslim-majority countries: “The president’s executive order is offensive and unconstitutional not only because it denies due process and is a thinly disguised ban on Muslims … but it also is heavily tilted toward the predominantly poor countries where the Trump organization is not doing business.” ¹⁵

In January 2017, Painter led a lawsuit through the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) against President Trump for allegedly violating a U.S. Constitutional ban on U.S. Presidents profiting from foreign governments while in office. While it is standard practice for U.S. Presidents to place their assets in a blind trust to avoid financial conflicts of interest, President Trump allegedly violated this norm by refusing to sell off numerous assets, some of which are located abroad, and placing the bulk of his financial interests in his children’s possession. According to Painter, “If Obama had tried that, we would have impeached him in two weeks.” ¹⁶ In December 2017, a district court dismissed the case for lacking standing. CREW appealed the decision. In January 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case because President Trump had left office. ¹⁷

In June 2018, Painter announced that he was switching from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party due to the conduct of President Trump and his loyalists within the Party: “When people are making up stories about Bob Mueller on Fox News and those get traction in congressional committees and in the White House, at a certain point, I’ve got to say no. At what point are we moving from a situation where I’m in the moderate wing of the party that plays by essentially the same rules as the Democrats, to a party that really is behaving as if it does not want to function in a democracy?” ¹⁸

In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Painter said that President Trump’s greatest ethical breeches were his refusal to sell his businesses and release his tax returns to the public. ¹⁹

Later in 2018, while running for U.S. Senate, Painter released a national television ad comparing President Trump to a dumpster fire. ²⁰

In 2019, Painter claimed President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a wall on the Mexican border was illegal and called for the president’s removal from office under the 25th Amendment. Painter said: “I think we need to understand, though, why we’re in this situation… The president is not well at all mentally. I think he’s an extreme narcissist. He has been denied what he wants, his wall, and he is having a hissy fit. He is out of control, and he will not take ‘no’ for an answer from Congress.” ²¹

Politics

U.S. Senate Run

In 2018, Richard Painter announced he was forming an exploratory committee to run for U.S. Senate in Minnesota, but that he wasn’t sure whether he would run as a Republican, Democrat, or Independent. One month later, Painter announced he was leaving the Republican Party for the Democratic Party and ran as a candidate of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the Minnesota state-level Democratic Party. Painter challenged U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) months after she had been appointed to the position after then-U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) had resigned following sexual harassment allegations. Painter was a vocal defender of Senator Franken and argued against his resignation. In an interview, Painter stated that he did not “know the facts” of Franken’s case and didn’t want to “jump to conclusions” before a formal investigation could be held. ^{22 23}

Painter promised not to accept campaign contributions from PACs, super PACs, or any “dark money” groups. ²⁴

Painter was defeated in the Democratic primary by Sen. Smith who earned 76% of the vote. ²⁵

Gubernatorial Consideration

In 2021, Painter announced that he was considering running for Minnesota governor as an independent, though he ultimately did not run. ²⁶

Congressional Run

In 2022, Painter announced he was running for Minnesota’s 1st U.S. Congressional seat after the death of U.S. Representative Jim Hagedorn (R-MN). Painter ran as a candidate for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. He came in third place in the primary election with just over 9% of the vote. ²⁷

Political Views

Richard Painter was a member of the Republican Party from the 1980s until 2018. He is often referred to as a “centrist” or “moderate.” ^{28 29}

In 2018, after announcing that he would run for U.S. Senate as a Democrat, Painter said in an interview that he agreed with past Republican positions on many issues, including environmentalism, abortion, and military spending, but that the Party had drifted to the right while he stayed consistent. According to Painter, the ideological drift in the Republican Party began with President Ronald Reagan. ³⁰

Painter has more recently advocated for stricter regulation of the financial sector, a single-payer government health care system under Medicare-for-All, raising taxes, increasing government spending on education, increasing spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), expanding SNAP to provide school breakfast and lunches, implementing various subsidies and regulations to increase the de facto minimum wage to $20, and increasing public transportation (particularly electric busses). ³¹

Painter has criticized the concept of public-private partnerships, arguing that they tend toward corruption. While running for U.S. Senate, Painter attacked his opponent’s support for state subsidies for the construction of a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings football team. ³²

Painter favors legal access to abortions. ³³

Painter supports ending federal marijuana prohibition and permitting states to make their own marijuana laws. For harder drugs, Painter supports continued federal criminalization but with a greater emphasis on treatment and prevention rather than punishment. ³⁴

Painter supports stricter gun control and has advocated for creating a gun licensing system similar to driver licenses. Painter “[hates] the National Rifle Association (NRA).” In 2012, he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times accusing the NRA of running a “protection racket” that extorts support from Republican candidates in primary elections on the threat of financing the opposition. ^{35 36}

During the 2016 presidential election, Painter initially supported Florida Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) in the Republican primaries, then Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), and then Ohio Governor John Kasich (R-OH). After President Donald Trump received the Republican nomination, Painter voted for former U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY). ³⁷