Randal Teague

Early career

Teague intended a career in marine botany. He had received awards from the U.S. Department of the Navy, General Electric Co. and Parade Magazine for work on the practical applications of harvested seaweed and the adverse impacts of polluted runoff from land on reproduction of marine species. He had earlier become student president of the Science Center of St. Petersburg (now the Science and Technology Education Innovation Center) His first employment was at the St. Petersburg Beach Field Station of the Bureau of Sport and Commercial Fisheries of the U.S. Department of the Interior. He shifted his focus to government and public administration and eventually law at the encouragement of a Washington-based educator.

From 1964 through 1968, Teague served as the minority (Republican) clerk of the U. S. House of Representatives’s Committee on Public Works (now its Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure); from 1968 to 1971 as director of state and local activities and then executive director of Young Americans for Freedom on whose national board of directors he had previously served; from 1971 to 1973 at the Office of Economic Opportunity in the Executive Office of the President of the United States); from 1973-1979 as administrative assistant (now referred to as chief of staff) and legislative counsel to then U.S. representative (and later secretary of Housing and Urban Development and 1988 Republican presidential primary and 1996 Republican vice presidential candidate Jack K. Kemp of New York); and from 1979 to 1981 as division counsel for Cabot Corporation), a leading global specialty chemicals and performance materials company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

From 1987 to 1991 during the Presidents Ronald Reagan and G.H.W. Bush administrations, he served as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid of the U.S. Agency for International Development, for which he received its Superior Honor Award.

Kemp-Roth Legislation and Reagan Tax Cuts

In September 1973, Teague left the Executive Office of the President to become Congressman Kemp’s chief of staff and tax legislative counsel. In the book “Econoclasts: The Rebels Who Sparked the Supply-Side Revolution and Restored American Prosperity,” author Brian Domitrovic writes of Teague joining Kemp when the congressman was a freshman: “Kemp began speaking on the floor in favor of investment tax credits for small as well as large businesses. He began to attract talented, indeed visionary, staff. Randal Teague, a conservative activist with credentials from the Goldwater campaign and the Nixon White House, joined Kemp’s staff in 1973 at age twenty-nine.”

In 1974, Kemp and Teague began devising tax legislation aimed at getting the national economy out of its doldrums. The earliest bills consisted of proposed tax changes to encourage savings and investment. A 2011 article in Forbes detailed their work on the legislation: "In 1974, Kemp (assisted by staffer Randal Teague, who spoke last week in Charlottesville) started devising legislation aimed at getting the economy out of its inflationary torpor. At first his resolutions included mixes of tax cuts for businesses and savers. But in 1977, he introduced what would become one of the iconic bills of modern political history – the Kemp-Roth personal income tax cut, which would reduce rates by 30% across-the-board. Kemp-Roth thundered out of the gate, picking up sponsors and votes as inflation went from a high 8% per year to a nosebleed 14%. The ’70s gave way to 1980, but President Jimmy Carter would not let Kemp-Roth pass, making compromises to get it off the table and expunging even its rhetoric in House-Senate conference sessions. It took Ronald Reagan to pick up the ball." This bill became the basis for the Reagan tax cut law in 1981.

National and International Organizations

Teague was president of the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL) from 1981 to 1983 and a director from 1981 to 1994. ACYPL was founded in 1966 with support from the U.S. Government and is the U.S. chapter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-founded Atlantic Association of Young Political Leaders (AAYPL) which is the young leaders affiliate of the Atlantic Treaty Association. He was founder and president of the International Exchange Council, which fosters exchanges involving ACYPL alumni. He was a visiting fellow at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1992 while on sabbatical from the Vorys law firm. He served as a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council of the United States from 1996 to 2007.

Teague presently serves as chairman and CEO of the Board of Trustees of The Fund for American Studies (TFAS) in Washington, D.C. At TFAS, he oversaw the formations of the American Institute on Political and Economic Systems at Charles University in Prague; the International Institute for Political and Economic Studies on Crete in Greece; the Asian Institute for Political Economy in Hong Kong; and the Institute for Leadership in the Americas in Santiago, Chile. He also serves as president of the Board of Trustees and as a director of EARTH University in Costa Rica as well as secretary of the EARTH University Foundation in the United States; a counsellor to the International Foundation for Election Systems, headquartered in Washington DC; director and secretary of the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria; a director of HDI, Inc., the U.S. affiliate of Health and Development International in Oslo, Norway; and director and secretary of Friends of Mengo Hospital (USA), Ltd. in support of Mengo Hospital in Kampala, Uganda.

As a descendant of Charles Martel and Charlemagne, he is a member of the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne. He is also a member of the Magna Charta Dames and Barons. He is a descendant of Henry Soane, who was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and its Speaker in 1660-1661 and the great-great-grandfather of Declaration of Independence author, University of Virginia founder and President Thomas Jefferson. As a descendant of Soane, Teague is a member of The Jamestowne Society and as a descendant of Jefferson’s great-grandfather Major Peter Field, he is a member of the Order of Indian Wars of the United States. As a descendant of the Revolutionary War patriot Moses Teague of North Carolina, he is a member of the National Society Sons of American Colonists and National Society Sons of the American Revolution lineage societies. As a descendant of Alexander Clarke, he is a member of the Virginia Society of Sons of the Revolution. He serves as a director and secretary-treasurer of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.

Teague is a member of The Federalist Society; The Philadelphia Society; Philanthropy Roundtable; and (United States) Air Force Academy Foundation academic and institutional development organizations.

He is a member of The University Club of Washington DC and the National Republican Club of Capitol Hill. He was formerly a member of the Union Club in Boston, Massachusetts.

Education

Teague received his B.A. from American University in 1967 where he was Pi Sigma Alpha. He received his J.D.and LL.M.with highest honors in 1971 and 1972 respectively from George Washington University.

Awards

He has been conferred LL.D. and Doctor of Humanities honorary degrees from Allen University and EARTH University, respectively. He was awarded the George Washington Honor Medal of the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge in 1978.

Publications

Personal life

Teague was born in Durham, North Carolina on May 19, 1944 and was raised there and in Chapel Hill. Teague’s immediate family moved to St. Petersburg, Florida when he was thirteen.

Teague married Jessica Townsend of Mission Hills, Kansas in 1977, and they have four adult children: R. Cornell Teague, Jr., Townsend Teague, Mary Robb D. Wilson, and James K.B. Teague. The Teagues were divorced in 1997 but remain friends.

He has visited all 50 states as well as the United States’ Guam and Puerto Rico and over a hundred countries.