Thomas Howard Kean ( ; born April 21, 1935) is an American businessman, academic administrator, and politician who served as the 48th governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990 and as president of Drew University from 1990 until 2005.
Following the September 11 attacks, Kean was appointed by President George W. Bush as chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, widely known as the 9/11 Commission. On July 22, 2004, Kean and the commission released their findings in the 9/11 Commission Report, a 585-page report that included the commission's findings on events leading up to the September 11 attacks and steps that should be taken to avoid future terrorist attacks.
Kean is a member of the Republican Party and the father of U.S. Representative Thomas Kean Jr.
Early life and education
Kean was born in New York City to a long line of Dutch Americans and New Jersey politicians. His mother was Elizabeth Stuyvesant Howard and his father, Robert Kean, was a U.S. representative from 1939 until 1959. Kean's grandfather Hamilton Fish Kean and great-uncle John Kean both served as U.S. senators from New Jersey. His second great-uncle was Hamilton Fish, a U.S. senator, governor of New York, and U.S. secretary of state. Kean is also descended from William Livingston, who was a delegate to the Continental Congress, was the first governor of New Jersey, and is considered a founding father of New Jersey.
Kean first attended The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia. When he reached fourth grade, he entered St. Albans School, a college preparatory boarding school in Washington, D.C. In 1946, at the age of eleven, Kean was enrolled at St. Mark's School, an Episcopalian private school in Southborough, Massachusetts that was the alma mater of his father and his two older brothers.
After graduating from St. Mark's, Kean attended Princeton University. At Princeton, he completed a senior thesis on Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, a key architect of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's constitution, entitled Niemcewicz (The Biography of a Polish Patriot, 1756-1842, Including His Impressions of America, 1797-1807). While at Princeton, Kean participated in the American Whig–Cliosophic Society, a political, literary, and debating society with a lengthy list of distinguished members. He graduated from Princeton with a B.A. in history in 1957. After working on his father's unsuccessful U.S. senatorial campaign in 1958 and returning to St. Mark's School as a history teacher for three years, Kean attended Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City, where he earned his M.A. in history.
New Jersey General Assembly
In 1967, running as a moderate Republican, Kean was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly. He ran with Philip D. Kaltenbacher, a Short Hills Republican who had served as an aide to Assemblyman Irwin I. Kimmelman from 1964 to 1966; Kimmelman later served as Attorney General in Kean's administration as New Jersey governor. In the Republican primary, Kean and Kaltenbacher defeated Donald Fitz Maurice, Vivian Tompkins Lange, the sister of former U.S. Attorney William F. Tompkins, and Joseph Shanahan to win seats in the New Jersey Assembly.
At the start of the Assembly session in 1972, the New Jersey Assembly's then Democrat leadership sought to name S. Howard Woodson of Trenton as Speaker until Assemblyman David Friedland made a deal as one of four Democrats who voted to give the minority Republicans control of the General Assembly, and Kean was elected as Assembly Speaker. Woodson would have been the Assembly's first African American Speaker, and charges of racism were leveled against Friedland by fellow Democrats. In the following Assembly in 1974, Democrats united behind Woodson for Speaker, and Kean became the Assembly's minority leader. In 1973, Kean served briefly as acting New Jersey governor. In 1974, Kean ran for Congress in New Jersey's 5th congressional district but lost the Republican primary to Millicent Fenwick by 0.32%.
During the 1976 presidential campaign, Kean served as Gerald Ford's campaign manager for the state of New Jersey.