37 Facts About Chuck Robb

Charles Spittal Robb was born on June 26,1939 and is an American former US Marine Corps officer and politician who served as the 64th governor of Virginia from 1982 to 1986 and a United States senator representing Virginia from 1989 until 2001.

Chuck Robb is a son-in-law of Lyndon B Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, through his marriage to his daughter, Lynda Bird Johnson.

Chuck Robb co-chaired the Iraq Intelligence Commission with former US Attorney Laurence Silberman from February 2004 to December 2005.

Since 2001, Chuck Robb has been a member of the board of trustees of the MITRE Corporation.

Charles Chuck Robb was born in Phoenix, Arizona, the son of Frances Howard and James Spittal Chuck Robb.

Chuck Robb grew up in the Mount Vernon area of Fairfax County, Virginia and graduated from Mount Vernon High School.

Chuck Robb went on to serve a tour of duty in Vietnam, where he commanded Company I of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines in combat, and was awarded the Bronze Star and Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Star.

Chuck Robb became active in Virginia politics as a Democrat, and was a member of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee and the Virginia Democratic State Central Committee.

In 1977 Chuck Robb won the election for lieutenant governor of Virginia, the only one of three Democrats running for statewide office to win that year, leaving him as the de facto head of a political party that had not won a governor's race in a dozen years.

Chuck Robb led the statewide Democratic ticket as its candidate for governor in 1981.

Chuck Robb was noteworthy among his contemporaries for raising substantial sums of campaign funds.

Politically, Chuck Robb was a moderate and known generally as being fiscally conservative, pro-national security, and progressive on social issues.

Chuck Robb appointed a record number of women and minorities to state positions, including the first African American to the state Supreme Court.

Chuck Robb was the first Virginia governor in 25 years to use the death penalty.

Chuck Robb was instrumental in creating the Super Tuesday primary that brought political power to the Southern states.

Chuck Robb was a co-founder in creating the Democratic Leadership Council.

Chuck Robb was a strong vote-getter in Virginia in the 1980s and helped mold a more progressive Virginia Democratic Party than the one that had ruled the state for decades.

Chuck Robb later served as a Democratic member of the United States Senate from 1989 until 2001.

Chuck Robb ranked annually as one of the most ideologically centrist senators and often acted as a bridge between Democratic and Republican members, as he preferred background deal-making to legislative limelight.

Chuck Robb voted for the Federal Assault Weapons Ban and against the execution of minors.

Chuck Robb was opposed to a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.

Three years later, Chuck Robb was the only senator from a Southern state to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act.

Senator John Warner refused to support North and instead backed third-party candidate and former Virginia Attorney General Marshall Coleman, whom Chuck Robb had defeated in the 1981 gubernatorial contest.

Chuck Robb became the only senator to serve on all three national security committees: Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Intelligence.

Chuck Robb denied having an affair with her, merely admitting to sharing a bottle of champagne and receiving a massage from her in his hotel room on one occasion.

Chuck Robb strongly denied this when the issue was raised during his 1988 campaign for the US Senate.

In 1991, three of Chuck Robb's aides resigned after pleading guilty to misdemeanors related to an illegally recorded cell phone conversation of Virginia Governor Doug Wilder.

In 1994 Chuck Robb released a five-and-a-half-page letter admitting to some behavior "not appropriate for a married man".

Chuck Robb expressed regret for not acting quickly enough to end a conflict between his staff and Wilder's, and for not insisting that the tape of Wilder's conversation be destroyed immediately.

Bert Rohrer, a Chuck Robb spokesman, declared the charge as "nonsense" holding the process of crafting the letter had been months long and that he wanted to settle the issue before launching his re-election campaign.

On February 6,2004, Chuck Robb was appointed co-chair of the Iraq Intelligence Commission, an independent panel tasked with investigating US intelligence surrounding the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Chuck Robb has served since 2001 as a member of the board of trustees of the MITRE Corporation.

Chuck Robb serves as a co-leader of the National Security Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Chuck Robb is a former member of the Trilateral Commission and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, for which he served on the Independent Task Force on Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Chuck Robb was downstairs when the fire broke out and attempted to climb the stairs to get to his wife and was confronted by a wall of flame.

Chuck Robb was signaled to leave the building when his wife, who had been alerted to the fire by a smoke detector, incurred injuries when she took the car out of the garage and shined its headlights on the downstairs exit door.

Chuck Robb was taken to a local hospital and treated for burns then released, his wife was hospitalized for smoke inhalation and second-degree burn injuries on her hand and elbow that were non-life-threatening.