Pierre Samuel "Pete" du Pont IV (January 22, 1935 – May 8, 2021) was an American attorney, businessman, and politician who served as the 68th governor of Delaware from 1977 to 1985.

[2] He seriously considered a bid for a United States Senate seat in 1972 (eventually won by Democrat Joe Biden), and initially faced a likely primary election against former U.S. Representative Harry G. Haskell Jr.

In Congress, du Pont supported an attempt to limit presidential authority through the War Powers Act of 1973, but was one of the last to remain loyal to U.S. President Richard M. Nixon during the impeachment process.

[4] At the time, du Pont's cousin Nathan Hayward III advocated that tiny Delaware aspire to become the "financial Luxembourg of America" – a tax haven for corporations, yacht owners, and credit card companies permitted to charge unlimited interest.

With his second and final term as governor expiring in 1985,[3] du Pont, as the dominant Delaware politician, was widely expected to challenge the popular incumbent Democratic U.S.

Senator and future President, Joe Biden, but du Pont had little interest in legislative politics and declined to run, preparing instead for a long shot bid for the Republican U.S. presidential nomination in the 1988 election.

As described by Celia Cohen in her book, Only in Delaware, du Pont "wanted to reform Social Security by offering recipients private savings options in exchange for a corresponding reduction in government benefits.

Du Pont was the chairman of the board for the National Center for Policy Analysis, a think tank based in Dallas, Texas; he was a retired director with the Wilmington, Delaware law firm of Richards, Layton, and Finger, and until May 2014, he wrote the monthly Outside the Box column for the Wall Street Journal.