Malinowski was never ‘middle class’

Democrat Tom Malinowski recalls growing up middle class in New Jersey in a new TV ad, “Good Life,” released by his campaign today.

There is no legal definition of middle class – it’s sort of a ‘you know it when you see it’ kind of thing.

But Malinowski was hardly middle class, at least not growing up in Princeton.

Born in Communist Poland, he came to the United States at age six when his mother married Blair Clark in 1972. Clark, ran CBS News and then managed Eugene McCarthy’s campaign for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination – an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful but led to President Johnson’s withdrawal from the race.  In 1972, in the early days of six-year-old Malinowski’s exposure to American politics, his step-father was the communications director of the Democratic National Committee at the time of the Watergate break-in.

The Clark family was old, old money.

Malinowski’s step-father was the son of a federal judge from New Jersey (appointed by Calvin Coolidge), the grandson of a U.S. Senator who served as Secretary of War under Ulysses Grant, and the great-grandson of Simon Cameron, who succeeded James Buchanan in the U.S. Senate and was Secretary of War under Abraham Lincoln.

In the mid-1700’s, the Clark family began operating a threat manufacturing company in Scotland.  They opened a factory in Newark toward the end of the Civil War.  Clark Thread merged with Coats Group in the 1950’s, a public company with $1.5 billion in sales last year.