James Ortenzio

Mr. Ortenzio, who built a business as a wholesale meat supplier and owns several meat processing companies, was a distributor of meat and other foods to Cipriani restaurants. Mr. Ortenzio has been active in Republican circles for years. In 1995, he was named by Gov. George E. Pataki to the board of trustees of Cornell University. By 1996, Mr. Ortenzio had been named chairman of the Hudson River Park Conservancy, a part of the Empire State Development Corporation. (The conservancy was later subsumed, 1999, by the Hudson River Park Trust. Mr. Ortenzio was named its first chairman.) In recent years, Mr. Ortenzio has become more active in political circles. In 2005, he advised Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in his re-election effort. He also served as state finance chairman for the Republican Party. In 2006, Mr. Ortenzio encouraged K. T. McFarland, who was a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, to run against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.