Quentin Palfrey | |
---|---|
Personal details | |
Born | April 29, 1974 |
Political party | Democratic |
Relatives | Judith Palfrey (Mother) John Palfrey (Brother) John Gorham Palfrey (Grandfather) |
Education | Harvard University (BA, JD) |
Website | Campaign website |
Quentin Palfrey (born April 29, 1974) is an American lawyer, policymaker, and politician. He currently serves as Director of Federal Funds and Infrastructure in the Massachusetts Executive Office for Administration and Finance. [1] He previously served as the Executive Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) North America and is the Co-Director of the Global Access in Action project at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. [2] [3]
During President Obama’s first term, Palfrey worked as Senior Advisor for Jobs & Competitiveness in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In that role, he served as lead policy staffer on reform efforts [4] and also coordinated White House input into a report to Congress on the national strategy for innovation and competitiveness. [5] He has written and spoken widely on innovation, [6] poverty, [7] and evidence-based policy. [8]
Palfrey was the Democratic candidate in the 2018 Massachusetts election for lieutenant governor, running with gubernatorial candidate Jay Gonzalez against the incumbents, Governor Charlie Baker and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito of the Republican Party. The Baker/Polito ticket won the November general election by a margin of 1,781,341 votes to 885,770 cast for the Democrats. [9]
Palfrey grew up in Southborough, Massachusetts. [10] His parents, Judith Palfrey ( née Sullivan) and Sean Palfrey, are pediatricians who work in Boston. He has one brother, John Palfrey, who works as an educator, and one sister, Katy, who works in nonprofit conservation. Palfrey is the great-great-grandson of United States President Theodore Roosevelt. [11]
Palfrey attended Phillips Exeter Academy, and graduated from Harvard College in 1996 and Harvard Law School in 2002. [12]
After graduating from law school, Palfrey served as a law clerk for Judge Max Rosenn on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. After a brief stint as a litigation associate at the New York office of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Palfrey returned to Boston to serve as an Assistant Attorney General and later as the first Chief of the Health Care Division in the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Palfrey served as the voter protection director for President Obama’s campaign in Ohio. [13]
Palfrey also served as Deputy General Counsel for Strategic Initiatives at the US Department of Commerce. As the first Chief of the Health Care Division in the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General, [14] Palfrey oversaw multi-million dollar consumer protection litigation and investigations relating to health insurance, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, healthcare providers and nursing homes. Prior to his Chief position, he was an Assistant Attorney General in the Insurance Division.
In September 2017, Palfrey announced his campaign for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, [15] stating that "we need leaders who will fight for good jobs and fair pay, work to reduce inequality and poverty, and stand up against attacks on our diverse and inclusive American values." [16] On June 2, 2018, Palfrey was endorsed at the Massachusetts State Democratic Convention. In the Democratic primary election held on September 4, 2018, Palfrey defeated Jimmy Tingle. [17] Palfrey was defeated by Republican incumbent Karyn Polito in the general election held on November 6, 2018.
On January 21, 2021, Palfrey was sworn in by U.S. President Joe Biden to serve as Deputy General Counsel at the United States Department of Commerce. [18] For some time, Palfrey served as acting general counsel while in this position. [19]
Palfrey sought the Democratic nomination for attorney general of Massachusetts in 2022. He announced his candidacy in February 2022. [19] In June 2022, he won the party's endorsement at its state convention. [20] However, in August 2022, before the primary election, Palfrey withdrew his candidacy and endorsed Andrea Campbell. [21]
On March 20, 2023, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll announced that they had named Palfrey as Director of Federal Funds and Infrastructure in the Executive Office for Administration and Finance. [1]
This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(August 2022) |
Palfrey married Anna Tabor in 2008. They have one daughter and two sons.
Palfrey's father was born John Gorham Palfrey, III, and is a 1967 graduate of Harvard, as is his mother, born Judith Swarm Sullivan. His father is also considered John Gorham Palfrey, IV or John Palfrey, VI. He had a younger brother who didn't live for a day (December 5, 1946) and a younger sister, Antonia Ford Palfrey, named for their 3rd great-grandmother, Antonia (nee Ford) Willard.
Quentin's 3rd great-grandfather is Massachusetts politician John G. Palfrey (1796-1881). His 2nd great-grandfather, John Carver Palfrey (1833-1906), served in the United States Civil War, as did his 3rd great-uncle, Francis Winthrop Palfrey (1831-1889). His great-grandfather, John Gorham Palfrey II (1875-1945) was an 1896 graduate of Harvard and a lawyer in Boston. His grandfather, John Gorham Palfrey, Jr. or the III (1919-1979), was a 1940 graduate of Harvard, served in World War II, was appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission by President John F. Kennedy, and was a professor at Columbia University from 1952 until his death in 1979 as well as dean of Columbia College from 1958 to 1962. [22]
His grandmother was Belle Wyatt Roosevelt Palfrey (1919-1985), a daughter of Kermit Roosevelt, sister of Kermit Roosevelt Jr., sister of Joseph Willard Roosevelt, granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt, first cousin, once removed of Eleanor Roosevelt, and fifth cousin, twice removed of Franklin D. Roosevelt. His 2nd great-grandfather was Joseph Edward Willard, lieutenant governor of Virginia and United States Ambassador to Spain.
Through his Roosevelt side, his first cousin, once removed is Mark Roosevelt; second cousin is Kermit Roosevelt III; and his 2nd great-uncle was Quentin Roosevelt.
Kermit Roosevelt Sr. MC was an American businessman, soldier, explorer, and writer. A son of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, Kermit graduated from Harvard College, served in both World Wars, and explored two continents with his father. He fought a lifelong battle with depression and died by suicide while serving in the US Army in Alaska during World War II.
Leverett Atholville Saltonstall was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts. He served three two-year terms as the 55th Governor of Massachusetts, and for more than twenty years as a United States senator (1945–1967). Saltonstall was internationalist in foreign policy and moderate on domestic policy, serving as a well-liked mediating force in the Republican Party. He was the only member of the Republican Senate leadership to vote for the censure of Joseph McCarthy.
The 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial election was held on November 7, 2006. The incumbent Republican governor, Mitt Romney, chose not to seek a second term. Polls had been mixed prior to Romney's announcement, with one poll showing Romney slightly leading Democrat Attorney General Tom Reilly and other polls showing Reilly, who was then the Democratic frontrunner, in the lead.
The Roosevelt family is an American political family from New York whose members have included two United States presidents, a First Lady, and various merchants, bankers, politicians, inventors, clergymen, artists, and socialites. The progeny of a mid-17th-century Dutch immigrant to New Amsterdam, many members of the family became nationally prominent in New York State and City politics and business and intermarried with prominent colonial families. Two distantly related branches of the family from Oyster Bay and Hyde Park, New York, rose to global political prominence with the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) and his fifth cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945), whose wife, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was Theodore's niece. The Roosevelt family is one of four families to have produced two presidents of the United States by the same surname; the others were the Adams, Bush, and Harrison families.
Judith Swann Palfrey is an American pediatrician and author. She is the T. Berry Brazelton Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the author of Community Child Health: An Action Plan for Today (1995) and Child Health In America: Making A Difference Through Advocacy (2006), and co-editor of Global Child Health Advocacy (2014) and the Disney Encyclopedia of Baby and Childcare (1995). She is also the former Faculty Dean of Adams House at Harvard University along with her husband Sean Palfrey who is also a pediatrician in Boston.
Mark Roosevelt is an American academic administrator and politician who served as the seventh president of the Santa Fe campus of St. John's College. He was the President of Antioch College from January 2011 to December 2015 and superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, the second largest school district in Pennsylvania, until December 31, 2010. He served as a state legislator in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and was the Democratic nominee for governor in the 1994 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. Roosevelt is the great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, and the son of CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt Jr.
John Gorham Palfrey VII is an American educator, scholar, and law professor. He is an authority on the legal aspects of emerging media and an advocate for Internet freedom, including increased online transparency and accountability as well as child safety. In March 2019, he was named the president of the MacArthur Foundation effective September 1, 2019. Palfrey was the 15th Head of School at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts from 2012 to 2019. He has been an important figure at Harvard Law School and served as executive director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society from 2002 to 2008.
Kerry Murphy Healey is an American politician and educator serving as President Emerita of Babson College. She previously served as the 70th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 under Governor Mitt Romney. A former member of the Republican Party, she was the party's nominee for Governor of Massachusetts in the 2006 gubernatorial election, but was defeated by Deval Patrick.
Susan Roosevelt Weld is an American educator who is a former professor at Harvard specializing in ancient Chinese civilization and law. She also was General Counsel to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. She was the First Lady of Massachusetts from 1991 until 1997.
John Gorham Palfrey was an American clergyman and historian who served as a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts. A Unitarian minister, he played a leading role in the early history of Harvard Divinity School, and he later became involved in politics as a State Representative and U.S. Congressman.
Joseph Edward Willard was an American politician, philanthropist, and diplomat.
Francis Winthrop Palfrey (1831–1889) was an American historian and Civil War officer.
Joseph Willard Roosevelt was an American pianist and composer.
Karyn Ellen Polito is an American attorney, businesswoman, and politician who served as the 72nd lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 2015 to 2023. Polito was a Republican member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives for the 11th Worcester district from 2001 to 2011. Polito was first elected lieutenant governor in 2014 with her running mate, Charlie Baker. They were both re-elected in 2018, and declined to seek reelection in 2022.
Maura Tracy Healey is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 73rd governor of Massachusetts since 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as Massachusetts Attorney General from 2015 to 2023 and was elected governor in 2022, defeating the Republican nominee, former state representative Geoff Diehl.
The 2018 Massachusetts gubernatorial election took place on November 6, 2018, to elect the governor and lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Republican governor Charlie Baker and lieutenant governor Karyn Polito sought reelection to a second term in office, facing Democratic challengers Jay Gonzalez and Quentin Palfrey, respectively. Candidates were selected in the primary election held on September 4, 2018.
The 2018 Massachusetts general election was held on November 6, 2018, throughout Massachusetts. Primary elections took place on September 4. Early voting took place from October 22 through November 2.
The 2022 Massachusetts gubernatorial election was held on November 8, 2022, to elect the governor of Massachusetts. Republican former state representative Geoff Diehl, Democratic state attorney general Maura Healey, and Libertarian Kevin Reed sought to succeed incumbent governor Charlie Baker, who did not seek re-election after two terms. The race was one of six Republican-held governorships up for election in 2022 in a state carried by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election and the only race in which the incumbent was retiring despite being eligible for re-election.
The 2022 Massachusetts Attorney General election took place on November 8, 2022, to elect the next attorney general of Massachusetts. Incumbent Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey was eligible to seek a third term, but instead announced she would run for governor.
John Gorham Palfrey Jr. was an American academic, administrator, and government official. He was a professor at law at Columbia University and served as dean of Columbia College from 1958 to 1962. He also served on the United States Atomic Energy Commission from 1962 to 1966.