Meade Alcorn

Hugh Meade Alcorn Jr. (born October 20, 1907 in Suffield , Hartford County , Connecticut , †  January 13, 1992 ) was an American politician and from 1957 to 1959 chairman of the Republican National Committee , the party organization of the Republicans .

Lawyer and state politician

Alcorn initially embarked on a legal career. After graduating from Dartmouth College and Yale , he worked for the law firm Tyler, Cooper & Alcorn , which his father co-founded. Hugh Mead Alcorn was a district attorney in Hartford County and unsuccessfully applied for the post of governor of Connecticut in 1934 . Meade Alcorn became assistant prosecutor in 1935 and succeeded his father in 1942 when he retired.

He had previously been a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives since 1937 and served as its speaker since 1941 . In Parliament he was one of the Republican leaders; his opponent on the Democratic side was John Moran Bailey , who became chairman of the Democratic National Committee in the 1960s . In 1948 Alcorn aspired to the office of lieutenant governor of Connecticut, but was defeated in the primary elections of his party James C. Shannon , who then took over his duties after the death of Governor James McConaughy. When Shannon ran for his own term as governor in 1949, Alcorn became his running mate ; however, they were subject to the Democrats Chester Bowles and William T. Carroll .

Party political engagement

As a result, Alcorn concentrated more on his inner-party activities and no longer sought an election office. In 1953 he moved up to the Republican National Committee, whose chair he then finally took over in 1957 as the successor to Leonard W. Hall . When he resigned on April 1, 1959 after a 26-month term in office, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower honored him in a letter as an "outstanding spokesman for our party". Alcorn was then part of Vice President Richard Nixon's campaign team , who narrowly failed because of the Democrat John F. Kennedy .

In the years that followed, Alcorn remained a sought-after contact for political strategies in the ranks of the Republicans. Before the 1968 presidential election he was an advisor to Nelson Rockefeller , who was defeated by Richard Nixon as the representative of the Liberal Republicans in the primary. As before the presidential election in 1980 with Ronald Reagan , George Bush and John Connally three Republicans asked for his services, Alcorn refused all requests. He remained retired and died in 1992 of complications from a heart attack. Meade Alcorn was married twice and had one daughter. His brother Howard was also a state politician in Connecticut and a senior judge on the local Supreme Court . Both were great-grand-nephews of James L. Alcorn , the former governor of the state of Mississippi .

Individual evidence

1. ^ The American Presidency Project

Web links

• Meade Alcorn in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• The Political Graveyard