The Advocates: “Roosevelt’s 3rd Term and Working with Mondale and Carter!” with Richard Moe

Richard Moe has had a distinguished career in government, law, historic preservation and as a writer.  A native of Minnesota, he was educated at Williams College and the University of Minnesota Law School.  At an early age he served in administrative positions in state and local government before being elected chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party.

In 1972 he was asked to serve as chief of staff to Senator Walter Mondale and then in the same capacity to Vice President Mondale.  In the course of helping to shape what has become known as the “modern vice presidency,” President Jimmy Carter named Moe as a member of his own senior staff, the first vice presidential aide so designated.

After twelve years as a partner at the law firm of Davis Polk and Wardwell, Moe wrote an acclaimed Civil War history, The Last Full measure – The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers.  In the course of researching the book he became involved in Civil War battlefield preservation, which in turn led to a broader interest in historic preservation.  From 1993 to 2010 he served as president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation where, early in his tenure, he helped rally prominent historians such as David McCullough, James McPherson and Shelby Foote to stop a Disney theme park from being built in the historic Northern Piedmont of Virginia.   He also led the national effort to restore historic New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. 

His goal of making historic preservation more relevant to more people included initiatives focusing on community revitalization, sustainability and public lands.  Toward that end he co-authored Changing Places – Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl.  In 2007 he received the Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building museum, and the same year he received the Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award from the American Historical Association as “an individual outside the historical profession who [has] made a significant contribution to the study, teaching and understanding of history.” Moe has served on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations, including the Ford Foundation from 1998 to 2010.  His new book, Roosevelt’s Second Act – The Election of 1940 and the Politics of War, was published in September 2013, has been selected by Oxford University Press to be included in its Pivotal Moments in American History Series. He and his wife Julia divide their time between Washington D.C. and Santa Fe, New Mexico.