Fred J. Eckert
| Fred J. Eckert | |
|---|---|
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| United States Ambassador to Fiji | |
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In office 1982–1984 |
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| President | Ronald Reagan |
| Preceded by | William Bodde |
| Succeeded by | Carl Edward Dillery |
| United States Ambassador to Tuvalu | |
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In office 1982–1984 |
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| President | Ronald Reagan |
| Preceded by | William Bodde |
| Succeeded by | Carl Edward Dillery |
| United States Ambassador to Kiribati | |
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In office 1982–1984 |
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| President | Ronald Reagan |
| Preceded by | William Bodde |
| Succeeded by | Carl Edward Dillery |
| United States Ambassador to Tonga | |
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In office 1982–1984 |
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| President | Ronald Reagan |
| Preceded by | William Bodde |
| Succeeded by | Carl Edward Dillery |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 30th district |
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In office January 3, 1985 – January 3, 1987 |
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| Preceded by | Barber B. Conable, Jr. |
| Succeeded by | Louise M. Slaughter |
| Member of the New York Senate from the 54th district |
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In office January 1, 1973 – February 11, 1982 |
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| Preceded by | Thomas F. McGowan |
| Succeeded by | William M. Steinfeldt |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Fred James Eckert May 6, 1941 Rochester, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse(s) | Karen Eckert |
| Children | 2 sons and 1 daughter |
| Residence | Raleigh, North Carolina |
| Alma mater | University of North Texas |
| Occupation | Retired U.S. Ambassador and Congressman |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
Fred J. Eckert (born 6 May 1941) is an American political and diplomatic figure and writer. He is best known for his unwavering conservative principles while holding public office and his early advocacy during the 1970s of causes that many years later became major public policy issues, such as public pension reform and replacing lifelong teacher tenure with renewable contracts.
He is also known for the high regard in which he was held by President Ronald Reagan, who said of him: “He has a quality that is all too rare in the political world – he has political courage; I am a personal witness to that courage.” Reagan referred to Eckert as “a good friend and valued advisor” and “a man of great experience and wisdom – one of a kind.” Eckert was one of the few of Reagan’s legion of backers whom he asked to call him “Ron,” a practice Eckert declined to follow after he became President.
Ambassador Eckert was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in its largest suburb, the Town of Greece. He is a graduate of the University of North Texas, where he majored in government and minored in both history and journalism. He worked as a journalist for the Richardson, Texas, Daily News while attending college. A movement conservative while in college, he was a contributing editor to The New Guard, the magazine of Young Americans for Freedom.
Following college and his marriage to his college sweetheart, Karen Laughlin of Morton, Mississippi, he served as Assistant Director of Mass Communications for the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll Fathers) and was recruited to join the public relations staff of a major Fortune 500 corporation, General Foods, at its White Plains, New York, headquarters. While living in the New York City area he took advanced courses in advertising, public relations and television scriptwriting at New York University and at The New School for Social Research.
Returning to Rochester he joined the area’s largest advertising and public relations agency as an account executive working on Kodak and Mobil Chemical accounts. At age 27 he challenged the local Republican Party establishment in a primary election contest for control of the government of the Town of Greece (pop: 75,000) in the area’s first primary election in fifty years. He sought the Supervisor (elected CEO) office, handily winning in what was viewed as a stunning upset and carried his entire town council team with him. Despite the defeated party establishment then fielding an “independent” slate in the general election, the Eckert team again won in a landslide. Two years later the Old Guard Republicans challenged him in a primary for re-election and he again won both the primary and general elections by landslide margins.
In 1972, the party establishment asked him to be the Republican candidate against a well-entrenched Democratic State Senator and agreed to his terms for doing so. He won in what was again viewed as a stunning upset. A major part of his campaign was his constant warning that the state’s public pension costs were “a ticking time bomb that will eventually blow huge holes in state and local government and school district budgets unless reined in,” an issue no other candidate in the state was raising.
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