BY GEORGE S. BAIN ’73
At 5 foot 7, you can call Jim Tedisco ’72 slight of stature, but never short on ambition or accomplishment.
In three seasons of varsity competition, the Schenectady native turned the campus and community onto Union College basketball, setting every school scoring record as a shooting guard. And he could dunk the basketball.
A Republican elected to the New York State Assembly in 1982, he became Minority Leader in 2005. He’s the longest-serving Republican now in the Assembly. And he was on the receiving end of one of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s most famous tirades.
In a special election staged this spring, Tedisco sought to become New York’s newest member of Congress. The House of Representatives vacancy within a Hudson River district that wraps around Albany was created when Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand was appointed to fill Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat. After weeks of post-election ballot counting showed a 399-vote lead for opponent Scott Murphy, Tedisco conceded.
“He’s lived the American dream. He’s a symbol of the American dream,” said Gary Walters, the basketball coach for Tedisco’s junior and senior years, remembering that Tedisco grew up in a row house and that his father worked 40 years in a General Electric Co. foundry.
Hoop dreams realized
Tedisco established his basketball reputation at the old Bishop Gibbons High School in Schenectady and spurned scholarship offers from Division I schools Syracuse, St. Bonaventure and Niagara to stay close to home and play at Division III Union for Chris Schmid, who recruited all the players who surrounded Tedisco in a magical two-season span.
“I had the confidence I could play anywhere,” Tedisco said about his decision. “I wanted to excel at a better academic institution, and that was Union.”
“Chris Schmid knew when he got him he’d made a fundamental shift in Union College basketball,” said Jim Bolz ’73, who played those two seasons. Bolz came to Schenectady from New York City, curious about his new teammate’s reputation.
“He was as good as I heard he was,” said Bolz. “He was determined, as competitive as anybody I’ve ever seen.”
In the early 1970s, freshmen still could not play varsity basketball, nor did the three-point shot exist.
So Tedisco set 15 scoring and assist records in three years, over a 65-game career. He graduated as Union’s all-time leading scorer with 1,632 points (now fourth in career points). His career scoring average of 25.0 points a game and his single-game total of 49 (against Utica in 1970) still stand.
His No. 14 jersey was retired before a crowd estimated between 3,500 and 4,000 after his last game in Memorial Field House, Feb. 19, 1972. Tedisco scored 41 points in the 110-79 win over Hamilton that night.
Union had gone five seasons without a winning record when Tedisco first stepped onto the varsity court. Even in his sophomore season, the Dutchmen finished 7-15. Walters arrived the next season. That team finished 18-3.
Tedisco brought to Union the work ethic his father had taught him and said in basketball he developed an understanding of teamwork that has served him throughout his life.
“I learned you have a role to play – on a team, in a family, in a business – you fill your role, you do what you’re best at.”
For him that was the outside jump shot. The summer before his senior year, his daily practices would include 600 to 800 shots “minimally,’’ he said. “Repetition may be boring, but it leads to success.’’
His coaches taught many lessons about achieving success. “They taught us to work toward a goal higher than any individual self.” And he learned how to confront failure: “When you fear failure, you’ll never be able to achieve success. Don’t let failure paralyze you.”
In Tedisco’s senior season, Union set what was then a college record of 19 wins (against three losses), including a record-tying 15-game winning streak. He led the team in points, assists, and scoring average. But he never dunked in a game, as the NCAA didn’t allowing dunking from 1967 to 1976.
Those exploits made him a member of the first class inducted into the Union Athletics Hall of Fame, in 2002.
Early in his time at Union, Larry Swartz ’73 learned of Tedisco’s determination. Swartz was the manager for the freshman team in 1969-70, Tedisco’s first year on varsity. The varsity scrimmaged the freshman team – with recruits like Tom Bacher, Mike Doyle, and Geoff Walker, all Class of 1973 – and lost.
Tedisco came into the locker room and punched a hole through a blackboard, Swartz recalled. “That incident indicated to me that Tedisco, in addition to being an extremely talented player, also had a will to win that extended even to seemingly inconsequential games.”
Swartz remembered “running from my dorm room to Memorial Field House on especially cold game-day nights and being met by hundreds of my fellow students, all momentarily freezing yet soon to be warmed by our team, composed of friends and classmates, who performed so admirably on their, and our, behalf.”
In those days before hockey began at Achilles Rink in 1975, sports at Union meant basketball.
“He was a terrific basketball player and a product of the terrific liberal arts education he received at Union,” said Walters, who spent three seasons at Union before going on to head coaching positions at Dartmouth and Providence. He’s been director of athletics at Princeton for 15 years.
The politcial arena
Tedisco received his B.A. in psychology from Union and a graduate degree in special education from the College of Saint Rose, in Albany. From 1973 to 1982, he worked in education, as a guidance counselor, varsity basketball coach and athletic director at what’s now Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons High School, then as a special education teacher, resource room instructor and varsity basketball coach at Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar.
In1977, at age 27, he became the youngest person at the time elected to the Schenectady City Council. Re-elected four years later, he set his sights on the State Assembly the next year. Incumbent Clark Wemple was retiring. Tedisco beat three other Republicans in the party primary, and later a fellow city council member in the general election.
As a freshman legislator, he was named ranking minority member of the Children and Families Committee and later was appointed chairman of the Assembly Minority Task Force on Missing Children. He championed an animal-protection measure signed into law in 1999 and the pay delay for state legislators when the New York budget is not passed by its mandated April 1 deadline. He also pushed for property tax reform through a tax cap. He was known for establishing the budget clock to chart late budgets (a regular occurrence in New York) and his “Pass the Budget” neckties.
Longtime Albany observer Allan Chartock admired Tedisco’s dedication to his Republican ideals as a minority member of the Assembly, where Democrats have been the majority party since 1975.
When the Republicans elected Tedisco their minority leader in 2005 (Assembly Democrats outnumbered Republicans then, 105 to 42), Chartock, executive publisher of the Legislative Gazette, wrote, “I’ve interviewed him on public radio for what seems like a million years and the thing that’s so great about the guy is that he plays to win.”
Chartock went on: “For all these years, Jimmy Tedisco has been playing politics the way he plays basketball: fearlessly. He takes no prisoners and asks no quarter. … I am certainly not saying that I agree with much the guy has to say, but I am fascinated by how hard he fights for his principles.’’
Every five years, Tedisco and teammates Rein Eichinger ’72 and Bob Pezzano ’72 organize a reunion for that team. Tedisco has hosted the last several events at his home.
“We’re all good close friends,” said Bolz, looking back over the past 37 years. He and many other teammates contributed to Tedisco’s Congressional campaign.
“Every morning at Union, I was excited,” Tedisco said. “I loved the campus, the academics, the professors, the coaches.’’
Walters recalled of those years, “His growth as a person at Union was almost tangible to observe. He came very quiet, very shy, probably intimidated by the academic stature. He shed the skin that concealed his personality. He became comfortable in his skin.”
Bolz still enjoys Tedisco’s sense of humor. In their playing days, he was known for his impersonations of politicians, television personalities, and the coaching staff’s personal habits and pep talks.
As an opposition leader in Albany, Tedisco demonstrated a penchant for publicity and attention.
In late 2007, he led the Republican fight against Spitzer’s plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, appearing often on the Lou Dobbs show on CNN and other cable news programs. Spitzer dropped the proposal.
Earlier that year, a Spitzer quote caused an Albany sensation.
Less than one month into his term, Spitzer was quoted in the New York Post as saying, “Listen, I’m a [expletive] steamroller and I’ll roll over you and anybody else,’’ in a phone conversation with Tedisco, who had complained about being ignored in negotiations on a proposed new ethics law. The Post reported that Tedisco told friends that he didn’t respond to Spitzer’s attack, saying in the Post: “I didn’t get as aggressive at that point because I think I still want to give him a little more room.”
Little more than a year later, news broke on a March afternoon that Spitzer was involved with a prostitution ring. Within minutes, Tedisco told the press the governor should resign if the report was true. The next day, he called for Spitzer’s impeachment if he did not resign. The next day, Spitzer resigned.
Athletic highlights
Jim Tedisco ’72 earned numerous honors during his basketball career at Union, including:
· First Team Academic All-American (1969-70)
· Second Team UPI “Small” (for players under 5 feet 10) All-American (1969-70)
· ECAC Division III Player of the Year (1970-71)
· First Team UPI “Small” All-American (1970-71)
· First Team New York State College Division Team (1970-71)
· Third Team AP Player of the Year (1971-72)
· ECAC Division III Player of the Year (1971-72)
· New York State Co-Player of the Year (1971-72)
· First Team New York State College Division Team (1971-72)
· First Team UPI “Small” All-American (1971-72)
· NCAA Silver Anniversary Award (1997)
· National Association of Basketball Coaches Silver Anniversary team (1997)