Houston Irving Flournoy (October 7, 1929 – January 7, 2008) was an American politician who served as a
California legislator and
State Controller. He later became a professor of
public administration at the
University of Southern California (USC).
Born in
New York City, he attended
Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York, where he was active in the
Cornell University Glee Club and the
Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. He studied under
Clinton Rossiter, a Cornell faculty member who was an authority on
The Federalist. After graduating from Cornell in 1950, he served in the
United States Air Force during the
Korean War. In 1956, he earned a
Ph.D. in politics at
Princeton University. While in
New Jersey, he worked in politics as a researcher for the
New Jersey Legislature and an aide to Senator
H. Alexander Smith.
In 1957, he took a faculty position in the
Pomona College Department of Political Science, where he quickly won tenure and remained until 1960. In 1960, he successfully ran for
California State Assembly as a
Republican Party candidate, and served from 1961-1967. In 1966, he was elected
California State Controller and served as Controller from 1967 to 1975.
In 1974 he ran for
Governor of California. He defeated the more conservative choice, Lieutenant Governor
Ed Reinecke, in the GOP primary but then lost a surprisingly close election to
Jerry Brown in a heavily Democratic year. Flournoy, who blamed the September 1974
Gerald Ford pardon of
Richard Nixon for his loss,...
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