Anne Clark Martindell

Anne Clark Martindell (July 18, 1914 – June 11, 2008) was an American Democratic Party politician from New Jersey, as well as a diplomat who served as United States Ambassador to New Zealand from 1979 to 1981.

Anne Clark was born in New York City on July 18, 1914 to William and Marjory Clark. After attending boarding school in Maryland she enrolled at Smith College in 1932. After one year at Smith, she was forbidden from returning to campus by her father, William Clark, a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey who would later be appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He forced her to withdraw from the college, fearing that an educated woman would be unmarriageable. Much later in life she would return to Smith and earn a B.A. degree in 2002, at the age of 87. Smith also honored its oldest graduate with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

Following her departure from Smith she returned home to Princeton, New Jersey and married George Scott, a stockbroker, in 1934. They had three children together: Marjory Scott Luther, George C. Scott III; and David C. Scott. The marriage ended in divorce after 13 years. Upon her divorce she met and later married Jackson Martindell, publisher of Marquis Who's Who, the company that annually produces Who’s Who in America. Together they had a son, Roger, who served on the Princeton Borough Council.

Martindell was already in her fifties when she became active in Democratic politics. Her brother Blair Clark was the national campaign director for Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign. She attended the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago to show support for McCarthy, as well as for New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Robert B. Meyner, a friend of the family. After the convention, Meyner asked Martindell to become vice chair of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee. At the end of her four-year appointment, local Democrats encouraged Martindell to run for New Jersey Senate in 1973 in a traditionally Republican district encompassing parts of Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex and Morris Counties. She managed to beat incumbent State Sen. William E. Schluter in a year when Republicans battled the specter of the Watergate scandal and Democrats were buoyed by the landslide victory of Brendan Byrne as Governor of New Jersey.

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