George J. Mitchell
Encyclopedia : G : GE : GEO : George J. Mitchell
- For other persons with a similar name, see George Mitchell
Early career
Mitchell's father George was a day labourer at Colby College and his mother Mary Saad was a textile worker who immigrated to the United States from Lebanon at the age of 18. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1954. He was an attorney from the 1960s, receiving his law degree from the part-time program at Georgetown University. Mitchell received an honorary LL.D. from Bates College. He served as a trial attorney for the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice in Washington, 1960-1962, and then as executive assistant to Senator Edmund S. Muskie 1962-1965. He practiced law in Portland, Maine, 1965-1977 and was assistant county attorney for Cumberland County, Maine in 1971.Political career
In 1974 he won the Democratic nomination for governor of Maine, defeating Joseph Brennan who would later win the office in another election. Mitchell lost in the general election to independent candidate James B. Longley. Mitchell was appointed United States Attorney for Maine by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 and he served in that capacity from 1977 to 1979 when he was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Maine. Mitchell served as a federal judge until he was appointed to the United States Senate in May 1980 by the governor of Maine, Joseph Brennan, when Edmund Muskie resigned to become U.S. Secretary of State.He was elected to a full term in the Senate in 1982, reelected in 1988 and did not run for reelection in 1994. He rose quickly in the Senate Democratic leadership, serving as Deputy President pro tempore from 1987 to 1988. He then served as Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995. In 1994, President Bill Clinton offered him a seat on the Supreme Court. He declined, citing his desire to focus on the health care plan that was then before the Senate.
After politics
After leaving the senate Mitchell joined the Washington, D.C. law firm Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand; he later became the firm's chairman. He is also senior counsel to Preti, Flaherty, Beliveau, Pachios & Haley in Portland, Maine.Since 1995 he has been active in the Northern Ireland peace process. Mitchell first led a commission which established the principles on non-violence which all parties in Northern Ireland had to adhere to and subsequently chaired the all-party peace negotiations which led to the Belfast Peace Agreement signed on Good Friday 1998. Mitchell's personal intervention with the parties was crucial to the success of the talks.
Since 2002, Mitchell has been a Senior Fellow and Senior Research Scholar at the Columbia University Center for International Conflict Resolution, where he works to help end or avert conflicts between nations.
He has frequently been mentioned in the past in conjunction with potential appointment for the position of Commissioner of Baseball, but nothing to accomplish this has ever been effected. He also has been mentioned in both 2000 and in 2004 as a potential Secretary of State for a Democratic administration, due to his role as Senate Leader and the Good Friday agreements.
He is the Chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, and namesake of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship, which sponsors graduate study for twelve Americans each year in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
He is the founder of the Mitchell Institute, in Portland, Maine, whose mission is to increase the likelihood that young people from every community in Maine will aspire to, pursue and achieve a college education.
He is Partner and Chairman of the Global Board of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, a global law firm.
On March 4, 2004, Disney's board of directors, on which he had served since the 1990s, named him Michael Eisner's replacement as Chairman of the Board after 43% of the company's shares were voted against Eisner's reelection. Mitchell himself received a 25% negative vote, a fact which led dissident Disney shareholders Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold to criticize Mitchell's appointment, whom they saw as Eisner's puppet. On June 28, 2006, Disney announced that its board had elected one of its members, John Pepper, Jr., former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, to replace Mitchell as chairman effective January 1, 2007.
Mitchell also serves as a Director in the front office for the Boston Red Sox.
He served as co-chairman (with Newt Gingrich) of the Congressionally mandated Task Force on the United Nations, which released its findings and recommendations on June 15, 2005.
Baseball's Steroids Investigation
On March 29, 2006, ESPN learned that Mitchell will head an investigation into past steroid use by Major League Baseball players, including Barry Bonds.
Mitchell was asked by baseball commissioner Bud Selig to investigate steroids charges, mainly against Barry Bonds, brought by recent revelations in the BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative) trials of Victor Conte and Greg Anderson. Selig has said that revelations brought forth in the book "Game of Shadows" were, by way of calling attention to the issue, in part responsible for the league's decision to commission an independent investigation.
Mitchell will take on a role similar to that of John Dowd, who investigated Pete Rose's alleged gambling in the late 1980s.
As he is a member of The Walt Disney Company Board, whose ESPN division has a partnership with Major League Baseball, some have questioned whether or not Mitchell has a conflict of interest in heading the investigation.
Books
- Great American Lighthouses (August 1989)
- World on Fire: Saving an Endangered Earth (January 1991)
- Not For America Alone: The Triumph of Democracy and The Fall of Communism (May 1997)
- Making Peace (April 1999 - 1st Edition, July 2000 - Updated)
|- style="text-align: center;"
|- style="text-align: center;"
|width="30%" align="center" rowspan=""|Preceded by:
Robert C. Byrd
|width="30%" align="center" rowspan=""|Succeeded by:
Tom Daschle
|-
|-
|width="30%" align="center" rowspan=""|Succeeded by:
Bob Dole
|-
|- style="text-align: center;"
|- style="text-align: center;"
|- style="text-align: center;"
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.