William M. Roth

William M. Roth, Commerce Secretary Trowbridge, Agriculture Secretary Freeman, and Labor Under-Secretary Reynolds, 1967.

William Matson Roth (born September 3, 1916) was a shipping executive, special ambassador for trade, member of the ACLU executive committee, and Regent for the University of California.

In 1966 he was targeted along with Clark Kerr and Elinor Raas Heller by a fellow Regent, Edwin Pauley, for his alleged 'ultra-liberal' views. Ronald Reagan made the Free Speech Movement and Opposition to the Vietnam War on the Berkeley campus one of his major campaign issues. Pauley, working with J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, succeeded in having Roth and the others removed from Berkeley when Reagan became governor of California in 1967.

President Johnson appointed him United States Trade Representative from 1967-1969.

Among other activities, Roth worked as special representative for trade on US-European trade talks (named the Kennedy Round negotiations). See photo of Roth at a 1967 U.S. Chamber of Commerce conference alongside US Secretary of Commerce Alexander B. Trowbridge; Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, and Under Secretary of Labor James J. Reynolds.

In 1974, Roth, a long-time contributor to the Democratic Party, ran for Governor of California in the Democratic Primary election. He placed fourth (receiving 10% of the vote) in a crowded field of candidates that included San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto, Speaker of the Assembly Robert Moretti, Congressman Jerome Waldie, and the winner, Secretary of State Jerry Brown, who had the advantage of name recognition, his father Pat Brown having been Governor eight years before.

Roth had a summer home on Sonoma Mountain with substantial area, having purchased the holding around 1950; the Roth family gifted this property to the Nature Conservancy, who transformed it into a nature preserve, presently known as the Fairfield Osborn Preserve. Now his daughter Maggie Roth, wife of artist David Best, (David has two children from a previous marriage) lives on the property. They have two children together. Today William Matson Roth is 91 and lives in Ireland (for summer and spring) and New York (fall and winter). He lives with his wife Joan Osborn and has three children with her.