Bob Wise

Robert Ellsworth Wise Jr. (born 1948) is an American Democratic politician who served as the 33rd Governor of West Virginia from 2001 to 2005 and represented the state's Second and Third congressional districts in the US House of Representatives from 1983 to 2001. After leaving office he led the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based education-policy nonprofit, for sixteen years.

Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Charleston, West Virginia, he graduated from Duke University in 1970 and earned his law degree at Tulane in 1975. He served four years in the West Virginia State Senate before winning a US House seat in 1982, where he sat on the Government Reform and Education committees and worked on coalfield safety, prescription drug costs, and federal aid for Appalachian flooding.

Elected governor in 2000, he created the PROMISE Scholarship program providing tuition to West Virginia students who maintained a 3.0 grade-point average, expanded full-day kindergarten, and pushed legislation to raise teacher pay. His tenure was overshadowed by his 2003 acknowledgment of an extramarital affair with a state employee, and he chose not to seek re-election in 2004.

From 2005 to 2021 he led the Alliance for Excellent Education, advocating for federal investment in high-school graduation rates, digital learning, and equity, and serving on commissions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Council of Chief State School Officers. He has continued to lecture on education policy from his Charleston base.

The name Bob is a familiar form of Robert, derived from the Germanic Hrodebert, meaning "bright fame." Worn by a politician whose legacy mixed substantive education reform with personal scandal, it has carried him through a long and uneven public life.