FirstPrinciples.US

BIOGRAPHY

THOMAS NEAL TRIPP

Tom Tripp was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1942. His youth was shaped by the aftereffects of World War II-both the unparalleled prosperity of the United States and the real terror of nuclear destruction embodied in the Cold War. As a college student he was inspired and swayed by the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War. He graduated from Michigan State University in 1964 with an honors degree in political science, and received a law degree from George Washington University in Washington, DC in 1967. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army in 1964 and served on active duty from 1967 until 1969.

Mr. Tripp practiced law in the early 70s and then turned to business as vocation and politics as avocation. His interest and involvement in things political, both the mechanics and the theory, grew in the Watergate era, and during the 1978-80 presidential season he was offered his first national level assignment in the primary campaign of George Bush. Over the years he has served in various capacities in political campaigns and also as an official in the Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton administrations.

Tom Tripp has written on politics and the law and has been published in various mainstream news outlets and online and professional journals. In addition to political consulting and involvement in campaigns he has been an active fund raiser and served on various non-profit, business, and education boards. For more than a decade he served as a board member and officer of the American Conservative Union Foundation and is currently chair of FirstPrinciples.US.

JAMESON G. CAMPAIGNE, Jr.

Jameson Campaigne comes from a newspaper and book publishing background. His father was editor-in-chief of the Indianapolis Star and Jameson spent some of his summers as a reporter and on the re-write desk before entering college. He was educated at Park School in Indianapolis, where in addition to much time spent on the athletic fields he was also editor of the school newspaper. The foundations of his interest in things political were cemented when he spent two summers interning on Capitol Hill for U.S. Congressman Donald Bruce, later a chairman of the American Conservative Union. Jameson graduated from Williams College in 1962, following four years of campus activism. In 1960 he was one of the founders, and later a long term board member, of Young Americans for Freedom, the first nationwide youth group of conservative activists.

After college Jameson worked at the Henry Regnery Company, book publishers, where he was the managing editor and published such distinguished authors as Frank Meyer, William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, Willmoore Kendall, Phil Crane, Wilhelm R�pke, and others. His first national political campaign, in 1964, was on the staff of F. Clifton White for the nomination and election campaigns of Barry Goldwater, followed by involvement in the 1968, 1976, and 1980 presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan. He also was one of the principals in the first congressional campaign of Phil Crane, later chairman of ACU, in 1969.

Subsequent to the presidential election of 1964 Jameson worked briefly for Field Enterprises, publisher of the Chicago Daily News and Chicago Sun-Times as a management trainee, and then with a partner purchased a newspaper publishing company with one daily and six weekly newspapers. Following the sale of his newspaper company he became an executive editor at the Open Court Publishing Company, and then in 1975, founded Green Hill Publishers, and, in 1986, Jameson Books, both of which remain his primary business interest, producing, among others, more than ten million copies of conservative books. He is also a direct mail and newspaper consultant.

In addition to his print vocation Jameson Campaigne's avocation has been conservative politics and philosophy. The long list of institutions and organizations which he has served, from the American Conservative Union board for twenty years, to the Mont Pelerin Society, to the National Humanities Institute, and those of which he was a founding member and trustee, such as The Philadelphia Society, reflects his life-long interest in restoring American government to a state approximating the vision of our Nation's Founders.

DAVID A. KEENE

David Keene was Chairman of the American Conservative Union, the nation's largest grassroots conservative organization, for more than a quarter century. He was National Chairman of Young Americans for Freedom while at the University of Wisconsin Law School; a Special Assistant to Vice President Spiro Agnew; Executive Assistant to New York Senator Jim Buckley; Southern Regional Political Director for Ronald Reagan's 1976 Presidential campaign; National Political Director for George Bush's 1980 Presidential race; and Senior Advisor to former Senator Bob Dole. He has been a John F. Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics, a First Amendment Fellow at Vanderbilt University's Freedom Forum, and a member of the Board of Visitors at Duke University's Public Policy School. He is currently president of the National Rifle Association.

Mr. Keene has written for Human Events, National Review, the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, New York Times and many other media outlets, and was a regular columnist for The Hill. For many years he has also served as a political analyst on myriad radio and television programs.

JAMES A. BAKER, III

James A. Baker III has served in senior government positions under three United States presidents. He served as the nation's 61st Secretary of State from January 1989 through August 1992 under President George Bush. During his tenure at the State Department, Mr. Baker traveled to 90 countries as the United States confronted the unprecedented challenges and opportunities of the post-Cold War era. In 1995, Mr. Baker published The Politics of Diplomacy, his reflections on those years of revolution, war, and peace. Mr. Baker served as the 67th Secretary of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. As Treasury Secretary, he was also chairman of the President's Economic Policy Council. From 1981 to 1985, he served as White House Chief of Staff to President Reagan.

Mr. Baker's record of public service began in 1975 as Under Secretary of Commerce to President Gerald Ford. It concluded with his service as White House Chief of Staff and senior counselor to President Bush from August 1992 to January 1993. Long active in American presidential politics, Mr. Baker led presidential campaigns for Presidents Ford, Reagan, and Bush over the course of five consecutive presidential elections from 1976 to 1992. A native Houstonian, Mr. Baker graduated from Princeton University in 1952. After two years of active duty as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, he entered The University of Texas School of Law at Austin. He received his LL.B. with honors in 1957, and practiced law with the Houston firm of Andrews and Kurth from 1957 to 1975.

Mr. Baker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 and has been the recipient of many other awards for distinguished public service, including Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Award, the American Institute for Public Service's Jefferson Award, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government Award, the Hans J. Morgenthau Award, the George F. Kennan Award, the Department of the Treasury's Alexander Hamilton Award, the Department of State's Distinguished Service Award, and numerous honorary academic degrees.