Kenneth McClintock - Early Life

Early Life

Kenneth Davison McClintock-Hernández was born in London, England, on January 19, 1957. His father, George Davison McClintock (1925–2001), an Irish-American architect born in Texas City, Texas, was working for the United States Air Force at the time. McClintock's mother, Nívea M. Hernández (1931–2000), born in Puerto Rico, was a university professor and a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Puerto Rico. Kenneth, along with his brother Steven George and his sister Elaine Mercedes, were raised and educated in Puerto Rico.

He graduated from University High School (UHS) in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico in 1974, where he served as student council president, studied from 1974 to 1977 at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras School of Business Administration, and in 1980 obtained his Juris Doctorate from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. While in college, McClintock, along with Puerto Rico's current governor Luis Fortuño, founded the Puerto Rico Statehood Students Association, a student organization that promoted absentee voting in favor of the reelection of Governor Carlos Romero Barceló in 1980. McClintock never applied for admission to any bar, neither in Louisiana nor in Puerto Rico, as his intention was not to practice law but to be a public servant. He began that public service before law school, as the staff director for the Puerto Rico House of Representatives Consumer Affairs Committee. He subsequently served as a legislative assistant to the NPP House delegation, under delegation leaders Jose Granados Navedo, the late Angel Viera Martinez and Edison Misla Aldarondo. He also served as an aide to then-Senator and current mayor of Guaynabo Hector O'Neill.

McClintock has spent almost all his adult life working in the Puerto Rico Legislative Assembly, first as a full-time staffer and subsequently as a legislator. While in college, he was an Amway independent distributor, learning how to run a small private business and earning enough money to support himself.

He was married on July 16, 1994, to Maria Elena Batista, director of Sports and Recreation for the municipality of San Juan and a former Olympic swimmer, but on February 18, 2011, they jointly announced their separation and divorced in 2012 after 18 years of marriage. The two have a son, Kevin Davison, born in 1995, a high school senior, and a daughter, Stephanie Marie, born in 1997, and a high school sophomore. He lives in San Juan where he is an active member of the Puerto Rican Episcopal Church and has been a delegate to its Diocesan Convention.