Zephyr Teachout

As of May 2018, she served on the board of advisors of Let America Vote, an organization founded by former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander that aims to end voter suppression. In October of that year she was appointed to the editorial board of The Nation.

Teachout served as treasurer for Cynthia Nixon's campaign for governor of New York until May 2018, when she announced she was running for attorney general of New York in the 2018 election. At the time Teachout was pregnant, expecting a child in October, one month after the primary and one month before the general election. On August 19, 2018, The New York Times endorsed Teachout for state attorney general. Its editorial board members argued that she would be the ideal candidate to hold both President Trump as well as the state government to account.

On September 13, 2018, Teachout lost the Democratic primary for Attorney General to Letitia James, receiving 31% of the vote to James's 40.6%.

In October 2018, Teachout and Juliusburger were expecting their first child. Teachout used footage of her receiving an ultrasound in a campaign advertisement.

In January 2017, Teachout joined the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's lawsuit against President Trump, alleging violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause.

Teachout was among the minority of Democratic congressional candidates who endorsed Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. She was also among the first candidates Sanders endorsed. He subsequently endorsed her for attorney general of New York in 2018, and Teachout has endorsed him in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. In a January 2020 opinion column in The Guardian, Teachout wrote that Sanders's Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden had "a big corruption problem" arising from his relationships with donors over the course of his Senate career. Sanders apologized to Biden for the article, saying, "It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way."

In August 2015, Teachout became CEO and board chair of the campaign finance reform-oriented organization Mayday PAC, replacing Lawrence Lessig. She stepped down from this position in December 2015 to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York's 19th congressional district.

In March 2015, Teachout moved from Brooklyn to Dutchess County, New York. Ten months later she announced her candidacy in New York's 19th congressional district's 2016 Democratic congressional primary. She ran to replace Republican Chris Gibson, who was retiring. In the June 28 primary Teachout won the nomination. She was endorsed by U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Chuck Schumer, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the National Education Association, New York State United Teachers, National Nurses United, the Communication Workers of America, EMILY's List, and the Sierra Club. She lost to Republican John Faso in the November 8 general election by nine percentage points.

In 2014, Teachout ran for the Democratic Party nomination for governor of New York and lost to incumbent Governor Andrew Cuomo, receiving 34% of the primary vote. In 2016, Teachout was a candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New York's 19th congressional district. Teachout won the Democratic primary before losing to Republican John Faso. In 2018, Teachout was a candidate for New York State attorney general in the 2018 elections but lost the Democratic nomination to Letitia James. Her candidacy was endorsed by The New York Times.

Teachout faced off against incumbent Andrew Cuomo and comedian Randy Credico in the Democratic primary election on September 9, 2014. She first ran for the Working Families Party nomination, but lost to Cuomo. His margin of victory was much smaller than expected, especially since the Working Families Party traditionally cross-endorses the Democratic Party candidate.

Teachout and Wu lost to Cuomo and his running mate, former U.S. Representative Kathy Hochul, in the primary on September 9, 2014.

She has been a professor at Fordham Law School since 2009. She was a visiting professor of law at Duke University in 2007 and a lecturer at the University of Vermont.

After graduating from law school, Teachout clerked for Chief Judge Edward Roy Becker of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She served as the Director of Internet Organizing for the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign. In 2009 she helped found the Antitrust League. She was the first national director of the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes transparency and accountability in government.

Teachout is also an actor who has performed in many plays at the Unadilla Theatre in Marshfield, Vermont, directed by Bill Blachly, appearing as Katherine in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost in 1994 and as Imogen in Shakespeare's Cymbeline in 1995. She played Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days in 2012 and 2019. In 2013, Teachout was Lady Utterwood in George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House. In 2019, she played Anne in Florian Zeller's 2012 play The Father.

In 1993, Teachout received a B.A. degree from Yale University, where she also did some acting. In 1999, she earned two simultaneous degrees from Duke University: a J.D. degree, summa cum laude, and an M.A. degree in political science. She was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Duke University Law Review.

Zephyr Rain Teachout (/ˈ t iː tʃ aʊ t / , born October 24, 1971) is an American attorney, author, and Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University.