About Us

I am thrilled and honored to have the opportunity to run for East Hampton Town
Council for the East Hampton Republican party. This opportunity combines the
goals that I have been seeking professionally and personally for the past 30 years:
service that benefits the local community with solutions honed from both my life
experiences and my professional work in global markets.
Even though I may be a newcomer to local politics, I have been an active member
of our community since I moved to Wainscott over 25 years ago, where I now
reside with my two college-bound children and my longtime girlfriend, a teacher
from Southampton.
I currently serve as the Treasurer of the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church for
the last ten years, and I am an ocean lifeguard and first responder/rescue
swimmer for both East Hampton Ocean Rescue and Southampton Village Ocean
Rescue for the last three years. In 2012, I was recruited by my friends to compete
in The Leukemia, Lymphoma Society fundraising contest. I reached out to the
community for the cause and was fortunate enough to raise over $10k, earning
the moniker “East End Man of the Year”. Later on, with my fellow YMCA master
swimmers, we created a local annual swim fundraiser event benefiting The
Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research. In 2020 I biked over one
hundred miles from New York City to the Hamptons for Autism Research to
support a friend with her local effort (Flying Point) to create facilities and
activities for special needs children of the East End. Besides local fundraising, I
volunteered with All Hands and Hearts, an organization that brought disaster
relief following the battering of multiple tropical storms and hurricanes in
Southeastern Texas.
During my professional career, I traded currency derivatives in the global foreign
exchange market and advised Fortune 500 multinational corporations on how to
best mitigate foreign exchange currency risk as a Vice President for the Bank of
NY. I believe the key to my success was my ability to establish credibility and
trust, both with my clients and colleagues. I hope to bring both credibility and
trust back to the Town Board of East Hampton.

I studied engineering at Georgia Tech and finance at Columbia Business School
and the most important thing I learned from both engineering and business is
problem-solving and finding practical solutions in the context of limited resources
and constraints. In trying to solve our problems locally – I realize that the
constraints will be many and resources few – but I will advocate for solutions that
are mindful, sustainable, and common sense-based for the entire community and
it's needed.
As a lifelong Independent - I find the intense polarization of national politics
disheartening, and I strongly believe that the issues and struggles that we have
locally should be viewed as just that - local issues impacting our constituents and
our local culture and not through the lens of party ideologies that dominate and
create hostile environments at the national level.

I am a lifeguard, triathlete, and a lover of our ocean and our beautiful environs; as
a result, I am passionate about local issues such as open space, over
development, and quality of life issues. I hope to bring perspective and grounded
solutions to the many problems facing our diverse community: not solutions that
fit the few, but solutions that Benefit all!
I believe the one-party rule of the democratic party in East Hampton has created
an echo chamber - where critical thinking and new ideas are not heard or
considered. I hope to change that!
I look forward to meeting many of you on the campaign. Please feel free to
contact me with any questions or comments at the following email address:
wootton4eh@gmail.com
Thank you for your consideration,

MICHAEL WOOTTON
WAINSCOTT