AuCoin was born in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro, Oregon, the son of Les and Susan AuCoin, and grew up in Oregon and Washington, D.C., where his father served as a United States Congressman from 1975 to 1993. His first appearance on television was in one of his father's campaign commercials, in which he countered claims that his father was a tax-and-spend Democrat by washing the family car to illustrate how cheap his father actually was. AuCoin is a graduate of Georgetown Day School and Oberlin College.
