Alexander Treadwell

Alexander F. "Sandy" Treadwell (born March 25, 1946 in London , Great Britain ) is an American politician ( Republican Party ). He was Secretary of State of New York from 1995 to 2001 .

Family, education and journalism

Alexander F. Treadwell was born in London in 1946. His father was a brigadier in the British Army and his mother, Susan Ord Treadwell, a Red Cross volunteer who had come to England from Albany, New York , at the start of World War II . Her father was a founding member of General Electric . The family moved to Albany after the birth of Alexander. His father returned his officer's license and accepted a position with the English-Speaking Union (ESU) in New York City . Alexander grew up in New York City and on the family estate in Westport, New York near Lake Champlain . He attended Groton School and then college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , where he graduated with a bachelor's degree. In the absence of a clear goal, he started writing about sports for the school newspaper during his studies (

"I quickly realized this is what I wanted to do"

). Upon graduation, he took a job at Sports Illustrated , for which he wrote for the next three years. Meanwhile, he met his wife, Elizabeth Krautter, one of the first women to write about professional football there . The couple had two children: Zachary and Caroline. In 1972 he left the magazine and started working as a freelancer; He justified this as follows:

"I had this dream job, but I didn't want to spend my life interviewing 22-year-olds."

He worked for Classic Sports Magazine for four years in the late 1970s . Then he tried to start his own magazine with a focus on the film business. The project failed. In 1980 he happened to watch the runners of the New York City Marathon in Central Park and decided - despite consuming two and a half packs of cigarettes a day at the time - to run the marathon the following year; he started training for it the next day. In the next few years he ran the New York Marathon and the London Marathon twice and the Moscow Marathon once . In 1987 he wrote an illustrated book about marathons around the world.

Political career

Treadwell also had a political career in Essex County , which was in the eastern Adirondack Mountains and had a population of 38,000. In 1973, he ran for a seat in the New York State Assembly , but suffered a clear defeat to Republican incumbent Andrew W. Ryan junior in the party primary . Nevertheless he continued his political career; he quickly became party leader in the town of Westport (1,400 inhabitants). In 1985 he was elected county chairman . Treadwell first met later New York Governor George Pataki in 1990, when he was still a member of the New York State Assembly for Peekskill . They toured the state as members of the Republican Platform Committee and held public discussions. Treadwell said of Pataki:

"He was just amazingly inclusive when people would come up and give their points of view. I became a fan of his right away. "

When Pataki began his campaign for governor of New York in 1994, Treadwell supported him as one of the first county chairmen. After his election he appointed Treadwell to Secretary of State of New York with an annual salary of 120,800  US dollars . Treadwell said afterwards:

"[I still feel] so in sync with the governor on his philosophy."

Indeed, many in the Republican Party believed that his election as party leader only signaled the governor's will to control the party. Treadwell was previously from 1989 to 1994 deputy party chairman.

Treadwell ran in the 2008 election to the United States House of Representatives against the Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand , who had only won the mandate in this traditionally Republican constituency in 2006. The campaign between the two was the second costliest of the Congressional election, and Treadwell spent considerably more than Gillibrand. It still prevailed with 62 to 38 percent of the vote.

literature

• Elizabeth Benjamin: Senate hopeful claims GOP bosses snubbed him ( Memento August 7, 2004 in the Internet Archive ), Times Union Newspaper, February 25, 1994
• James C. McKinley junior: A Nice Guy in a Tough GOP Job , The New York Times, March 10, 2001
• Raymond Hernandez: Short of Funds, GOP Recruits the Rich to Run , The New York Times, November 26, 2007
• George J. Marlin: Sandy Treadwell and Bill Weld: Two Liberal "Peas in a Pod" , Street Corner Conservative, December 2nd 2007

Web links

• Alexander Treadwell on the Prabook.org website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 2008 Election Results. In: Elections.NY.gov (English); Gillibrand, Treadwell spending millions. In: The Daily Gazette , October 28, 2008.