Raymond Edwin Mabus Jr. (/meɪbəs/; born October 11, 1948) is an American politician and lawyer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 75th United States Secretary of the Navy from 2009 to 2017. Mabus previously served as the State Auditor of Mississippi from 1984 to 1988, as the 60th governor of Mississippi from 1988 to 1992, and as the United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1994 to 1996.

Mabus was born on October 11, 1948, in Ackerman, Choctaw County, Mississippi. He was the only child of Raymond Mabus Sr. (1901–1986), a successful timber farmer, and Lucille (née Curtis) Mabus (1909–2000), a teacher. His paternal uncle, merchant Leslie E. Mabus (1896–1992), was a member of the Mississippi State Senate from 1932 to 1936.

Mabus graduated from Ackermann High School in 1966 as class valedictorian. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Mississippi, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi, with a Bachelor of Arts in English and political science. He earned a Master of Arts in political science from Johns Hopkins University and a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. He had been offered a Fulbright Scholarship, had held a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and had traveled widely throughout Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and Latin America. Prior to attending law school, he also served two years in the Navy as a surface warfare officer from 1970 to 1972 aboard the cruiser USS Little Rock (CLG-4), achieving the rank of lieutenant junior grade. He worked as a law clerk in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and as a legal counsel to a subcommittee of the United States House Committee on Agriculture.

Mabus volunteered for William F. Winter's unsuccessful gubernatorial candidacy in 1967. Following Winter's successful election to the governorship in 1979, Mabus returned to Mississippi to work as the governor's legal counsel in 1980. While in office, Winter and his staff pushed through a legislative overhaul of the state's public education system. Mabus was one of several of the governor's aides who delivered lectures across the state to build popular support for the reform bill.

State Senator Ellis B. Bodron, who was broadly opposed to the legislation, denounced Mabus and the other young Winter aides—including Dick Molpus, David Crews, Bill Gartin, Andy P. Mullins, and John Henegan—as the "Boys of Spring", a moniker which they thereafter took pride in. Mabus also helped draft an open records law and more stringent driving under the influence legislation. He left the counsel position in 1983.

While working on Winter's staff in 1982, Mabus requested that the Department of Audit supply him with the latest three audit reports for Hinds County government. The department sent him three reports, with the latest dated 1977. Surprised, Mabus reminded the department that he wanted the three latest audits. The department informed him that 1977 was the last year in which an audit of the county was conducted, and that all audits were being conducted on a five-year-delay. Aspiring to run for elective office, Mabus researched the position of State Auditor. He realized the office had the power to investigate nearly all state and local government agencies, later saying, "I did a radical thing. I went and read the statute. That office had more jurisdiction than almost any in the state of Mississippi. It had never been used. It's the one place you can combat corruption without changing the law. It was sitting there, waiting for somebody like me to come along." Concluding that it could be "the most powerful office in the state", he decided to run for the position of State Auditor in the 1983 elections.

In the 1983 Democratic primary, Mabus faced Department of Audit employee Mason Shelby and former radio station owner Murray Cain. Shelby was viewed as the favorite of the outgoing state auditor, Hamp King, and other leaders in the department. Mabus and Cain criticized the department for which Shelby worked as outdated in its methods and a part of an old boy network. Mabus declared that the department was two to four years behind on most of its audits. King wrote an open letter to Mabus rejecting his claims as exaggerations and asked a legislative committee to conduct a review of the Department of Audit. Mabus ultimately won the election, and the legislative report was published in December. The committee identified several flaws with the department's structure and practices, and determined that it was delinquent for 581 fiscal years worth of audits.

Mabus was sworn in as state auditor on January 5, 1984. At the time he took office, he found the audit department was disorganized; in addition to being behind on hundreds of years' worth of audits, it had no filing system and thousands of dollars' worth of checks for auditing services performed for local governments and other agencies were stored in a shoebox in the auditor's office. Mabus convinced the legislature to permit the department to contract out auditing services to private Certified Public Accountant firms to work on the backlog. Using these strategies, the office eliminated the backlog in two years. On July 1, 1985, his office adopted Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for financial reporting. His office also released a single comprehensive annual financial report for state government for the 1986 fiscal year instead of separate reports for each state agency, the first time this had been done in Mississippi. The consolidated report was well-received, and the legislature subsequently mandated the issuance of a comprehensive financial report by statute, though it transferred the responsibility for the document's publication to the Fiscal Management Board.