Jacob Daniel Auchincloss ( AW-kin-kloss; born January 29, 1988) is an American politician, businessman, and Marine Corps officer serving as the U.S. representative for Massachusetts's 4th congressional district since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a member of the Newton City Council from 2015 to 2021.
Born to a wealthy family in New England, Auchincloss graduated with a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 2010. Commissioned into the U.S. Marine Corps that same year, he was deployed to Afghanistan in 2012 and to Panama in 2014. He currently serves in the Marine Corps Reserve with the rank of major.
Returning home from the military, Auchincloss ran for Newton city council in 2015. After his election victory, he earned an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was re-elected in 2017 and 2019. In 2020, he was elected to the United States Congress at age 32, succeeding Joe Kennedy III, who had retired to run for Senate.
Jacob Daniel Auchincloss was born on January 29, 1988, in Newton, Massachusetts, to Laurie Glimcher and Hugh Auchincloss. He is Jewish by matrilineality and was raised Jewish. His father is of Scottish ancestry. Both of his parents are physician-scientists specializing in immunology. His father, also a surgeon, served briefly as the interim director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases after Anthony Fauci resigned in 2023. His mother is a scientist and the former president and CEO of Dana–Farber Cancer Institute who was at the center of several controversies prior to stepping down from her leadership role.
Auchincloss's maternal grandfather, Melvin J. Glimcher, pioneered the development of artificial limbs and the robotic arm, and was chair of orthopedic surgery at Harvard University. Auchincloss's grandfather was first cousin once removed from Hugh D. Auchincloss Jr., step-father to both First Lady of the United States Jacqueline Kennedy and author Gore Vidal.
Auchincloss was raised in Newton with his sister, Kalah, and attended Newton North High School.
Auchincloss studied government and economics at Harvard University, graduating in 2010 with a Bachelor of Arts with honors. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps then returned to school and earned a Master of Business Administration in finance in 2016 from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
After graduating from Harvard, Auchincloss joined the United States Marine Corps, earning his commission through Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Virginia. He commanded infantry in Helmand Province in 2012 and a reconnaissance unit in Panama in 2014. In Helmand, he led combat patrols through villages contested by the Taliban. In Panama, his team of reconnaissance Marines partnered with Colombian special operations to train the Panamanian Public Forces in drug-interdiction tactics.
Auchincloss completed both infantry training in Quantico and the Marine Corps's reconnaissance training in California, profiled in Nate Fick's One Bullet Away. He graduated from the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school in Maine and was an honor graduate from the Basic Airborne Course in Georgia. He remained in the Individual Ready Reserve after leaving active duty and was promoted to major on September 1, 2020.
After returning home from the military, Auchincloss worked for Charlie Baker's successful 2014 gubernatorial campaign.
In 2015, Auchincloss ran for Newton City Council on a platform of full-day kindergarten and expanded pre-K offerings. He defeated the incumbent councilor. He was reelected to the Newton City Council in 2017 and 2019. He chaired the transportation and public safety committee. In office, he supported progressive immigration and housing policies, sustainable transportation and co-docketed the successful Sanctuary city ordinance.
When the Newton City Council debated a pay raise for elected officials, Auchincloss voted no. Auchincloss was the first elected official to endorse Ruthanne Fuller for mayor of Newton.
While serving on the Newton City Council and attending MIT, Auchincloss was the director of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. He also worked at a cybersecurity startup as a product manager and at Liberty Mutual as a senior manager at its innovation arm, Solaria Labs.
On October 2, 2019, Auchincloss announced his candidacy for the open Massachusetts's 4th congressional district to succeed Joe Kennedy III, who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate against incumbent Democrat Ed Markey.
Auchincloss raised the most money during the primary election in both the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020 and earned endorsements from the National Association of Government Employees, VoteVets, The Boston Globe and James E. Timilty. He earned the support of several Newton politicians, including the president and vice president of the city council and the chair and vice chair of the school committee. He earned additional endorsements throughout the district.
During the campaign, questions arose about his party affiliation. Auchincloss was originally a Democrat but was a registered Republican from 2013 to 2014 while working for Charlie Baker's gubernatorial campaign. He continued to vote in Republican primaries as an independent until late 2015 before becoming a Democrat again.
Auchincloss faced some controversies throughout the campaign and apologized for his old statements that defended the harassment of Black students with a Confederate flag for protecting Newton's free speech values and compared it to banning a pride flag or Black Lives Matter banner, appeared to justify the burning of the Quran, for making fun of a local community efforts' to rename Columbus Day "Indigenous Peoples' Day" in 2016 and he voted against a symbolic 1 percent decrease in the local police budget. He modeled himself after the moderate Republican Governor Charlie Baker.
The Democratic primary took place on September 1, 2020. In a race with eight other candidates, Auchincloss won with 22.4% of the vote. It took the Associated Press three days to call the race because nearly one million votes were cast through mail-in ballots due to the COVID-19 pandemic.