Ken Mehlman

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Kenneth Brian Mehlman (born August 21, 1966, Baltimore, Maryland) is an American attorney who was chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2005 to 2007. He served as the campaign manager for George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. In a June 2007 press release by the White House website, Mehlman was nominated by President Bush to be a board member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial committee.

1 Personal
2 Education
3 Career
4 Republican Party chair
5 Controversies
- 5.1 Phone jamming scandal
- 5.2 CNN Transcript Controversy
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Personal

Mehlman is the son of Judith A. Mehlman and Arthur S. Mehlman, a director of MuniMae and formerly a partner at KPMG, for which he was the head of the firm's auditing department in the Baltimore/Washington region.^[1] Mehlman's brother, Bruce Mehlman, works as a lobbyist at Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti. ^[2]^[3]

Mehlman is Jewish and lives in Washington, D.C..

[edit] Education

Mehlman received his undergraduate degree in 1988 from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1991. He was a classmate of Senator Barack Obama. He is a member of Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity - XI Chapter.

[edit] Career

Mehlman practiced environmental law at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C. (1991–1996) and assisted campaigns in Massachusetts (William Weld's 1990 gubernatorial campaign), Ohio, Virginia, Texas, and Georgia as well as the 1992 and 1996 Presidential campaigns.

Mehlman was Congresswoman Kay Granger’s (TX-12) Chief of Staff and Congressman Lamar S. Smith’s (TX-21) Legislative Director. Mehlman served George W. Bush as the field director for his 2000 campaign and later became the White House Director of Political Affairs. He managed the Bush presidential re-election campaign in 2004. In January 2005, the American Association of Political Consultants gave Mehlman the "Campaign Manager of the Year" award for his management of the Bush/Cheney presidential ticket. ^[4]

He currently works at the Washington law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.^[5]

[edit] Republican Party chair

Mehlman was Bush's choice to replace Ed Gillespie as the chair of the Republican National Committee and was elected to the post on January 19, 2005.

He announced after the November 2006 general election that he would not seek re-election to another term as Republican National Chairman. One of his top deputies, RNC political Director Michael DuHaime, announced in December that he would become Campaign Manager for Rudy Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign.

Mehlman addressed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) a full year before Bush addressed the civil rights organization.^[6] In his address to the NAACP on July 14, 2005 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mehlman apologized for the Republican Party's failure to reach out to the black community in the aftermath of 1964's Civil Rights Act, stating, "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization... I am here as Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong". ^[7]^[8] In a CNN interview a couple of days after the speech, he reluctantly mentioned the "Southern Strategy" by name. ^[9]

Although Mehlman's speech seemed to suggest a new approach towards the African-American community, most have considered the approach to be unsuccessful, with several polls indicating that Republicans have not improved in terms of African-American approval. A Washington Post poll shows that Bush's approval rating among African Americans fell to two percent at one point,^[10] and a report card issued by the NAACP gave "F"s to a majority of Congressional Republicans, although the report card covered a wide variety of issues, with multiple ones not dealing mainly with African Americans.^[11]

As head of the RNC, Mehlman played a key role, along with Karl Rove, in executing the Republican Party's long-term plan for electoral dominance. This is discussed at length in Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger's book, One Party Country.^[12]

During his tenure as Chairman of the RNC, Mehlman co-founded the United States Senate Advisory Committee (better known as the USSAC), a federal political committee which advises on domestic and foreign policy and protects at-risk Republican Senate seats. Mehlman stepped down as Chairman of the RNC voluntarily at the end of 2006.^[13] He was replaced by Mike Duncan and Mel Martinez.

[edit] Controversies

[edit] Phone jamming scandal

Main article: 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal

A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at the 2005 criminal trial of James Tobin, the Northeast political director for the RNC in 2002, show that he made 115 outgoing calls - mostly to the same number in the White House office of political affairs - between September 17 and November 22, 2002. At the time, the office of political affairs was headed by Mehlman. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting, a three-day period during which the criminal phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out, and then abruptly shut down.

Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same phone number. In April 2006, Mehlman issued a statement on the matter, noting that his deputy for the Northeast states routinely discussed election business with RNC officials, and categorically stated that "none of my conversations nor the conversations of my staff, involved discussion of the phone-jamming incident."^[14]^[15]

[edit] CNN Transcript Controversy

Comedian Bill Maher referred to Melhman as a closeted gay man in a November 8, 2006, appearance on CNN's Larry King Live. It became a controversy when CNN edited out Maher’s comments in later taped editions of the appearance and removed the reference to Melhman's sexuality from the transcript of the show. Faced with prior rumors of his sexuality, Mehlman denied that he was gay in May 2006. “I’m not gay,” Mehlman told the New York Daily News, “but those stories did a number on my dating life for six months.”^[16] Melhman announced he would step down from his Chairman post the day after Maher's appearance.^[17]