Chatham native Ann McLaughlin Korologos, who served as U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Ronald Reagan, died on January 30 from complications of meningitis. She was 81.
McLaughlin Korologos attended the Academy of Saint Elizabeth in Convent Station.
In 1970, she served as a campaign manager for John McLaughlin, a Jesuit priest who was the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Rhode Island. The Democratic incumbent, John Pastore, defeated McLaughlin by a 2-1 margin. McLaughlin later left the priesthood, became a White House speechwriter under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and hosted The McLaughlin Group, a syndicated network Sunday morning pundit news program from 1982 until he died in 2016.
He married his former campaign manager in 1975.
She had worked in public relations in New York before joining the Committee to Re-elect the President as a press aide on Nixon’s 1972 campaign. She later became a spokesperson for Nixon’s second inauguration.
McLaughlin Korologos was a spokeswoman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during Nixon’s second term and then joined the government affairs office of Union Carbide.
After Reagan won the presidency in 1980, McLaughlin Korologos became the Undersecretary of the Interior and Undersecretary of the Treasury. After Bill Brock resigned as Labor secretary to manage Bon Dole’s 1988 presidential campaign, Reagan nominated McLaughlin Korologos to serve in his cabinet for the final fourteen months of his presidency.
Two of Reagan’s three labor secretaries were New Jerseyans; Raymond Donovan held the post from 1981 to 1985.
She later served on corporate boards and as chair of the RAND Corporation.
McLaughlin Korologos and her husband divorced in 1992. She later married Tom Korologos, a Nixon/Ford White House aide-turned-lobbyist who was U.S. Ambassador to Belgium under President George W. Bush.
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April 25, 2018