This Iowa-born New Yorker's blog features posts on politics and miscellany ranging from world history to British culture, science to the religious right. It also includes The Gore Vidal Pages.
POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
Born and raised in Iowa, Scott entered politics in 1988 during the state's first-in-the-nation caucuses, when he met presidential candidates of both major political parties, pitching horseshoes with then Vice-President George H. W. Bush, flipping pancakes with Robert Dole, and eating Alexander Haig for President cookies. Later that year he became the founding president of the Kossuth County Teenage Republicans.
When Scott turned 18 and became eligible to vote, he registered not as a Republican, but as a Democrat, in part because of the influence of his late grandfather, Bradford "Ike" Buffington, a staunch Democrat who always lauded President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as "a friend of the farmer."
In 1990, Scott attended Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, ("Orange," referring to the Dutch royal house of Oranje), a private liberal arts college founded by Dutch-American Calvinists. He was named both a Pew Scholar and a Norman Vincent Peale Scholar. In 1993, he was an intern in the British House of Commons for then Labour Party Spokesman on Energy, Martin O'Neill, M.P. (for Ochil), now a peer in the House of Lords (Baron of Clackmannan). In 1994, he returned to London to intern for The Reverend Derrick White, the Bishop of London's Chaplain to the Homeless (Church of England). Scott graduated in 1996 with both the John Stackhouse Award for leadership and the Faculty Honors Award, Northwestern's highest honor. In 1996, he earned a Masters in Religion from Yale University.
For the last several years Scott has been active in Democratic politics in New York City. In 1998 he helped with the state senatorial campaign of Danny O'Donnell, who has since been elected to the New York State Assembly. That same year, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields appointed Scott to Manhattan Community Board 5, on which he served as a vice-chair and chair of the Parks Committee. The district includes some of the crown jewels of the city's parks, including Union Square Park, Madison Square Park, and Bryant Park. In 2001 Scott was also very active in the Stonewall Democratic Club of NYC and the mayoral campaign of New York City's Public Advocate, Mark Green. He is also a member of Gay & Lesbian Independent Democrats (GLID). In 2003 he started Political Cawfee Tawk, an informal brunch series dedicated to political conversation. In February 2003, Scott was elected to the Board of Directors of Community Free Democrats (CFD), Manhattan's largest Democratic club, later becoming the editor of the club's newsletter, The Community Free Democrat. In February 2004 he was voted a Vice-President of CFD. During the 2004-2005 political season, Scott was active in Assemblymember Scott Stringer's successful bid for the Manhattan Borough Presidency. Scott currently oversees CFD's website and e-communications as a member of the club's communications committee.
Scott's political beliefs are rooted in the call of our nation's Founders for the federal government to "promote the general welfare"--a principle dear enough to the Founders that they enshrined it twice in the Constitution (in the Preamble and in Art. I, Sec. 8). Scott sees the principle best practiced in federal initiatives and programs like rural electrification, Social Security, Medicare, the School Lunch Program, the Peace Corps, Head Start, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Human Genome Project--all of which have improved the lives of millions of Americans, and all of which were created under Democratic leadership.
Outside of work and politics, Scott enjoys reading-- especially history, historical fiction, and science fiction.
To date, Scott is on course to share his Grandpa Ike's record of having never voted for a Republican.
--by Wayne Eley, Atlanta, 2003; updated, 2006.
