George J. Mitchell

George J. Mitchell
File:George J. Mitchell.jpg
United States Senator from Maine
In office May 17, 1980 – January 3, 1995
Preceded by	Edmund Muskie
Succeeded by	Olympia Snowe
17th United States Senate Majority Leader
In office January 3, 1989 – January 3, 1995
Deputy	Alan Cranston Wendell H. Ford (Whips)
Preceded by	Robert Byrd
Succeeded by	Bob Dole
2nd Deputy President pro tempore of the United States Senate
In office 1987–1988
President	Sen. John C. Stennis
Preceded by	Hubert Humphrey (1978)
Succeeded by	Vacant
Personal details
Born	(1933-08-20) August 20, 1933 Waterville, Maine
Political party	Democratic
Profession	Lawyer

For other persons with a similar name, see George Mitchell

George John Mitchell, GBE (born August 20, 1933) is a former Democratic Party politician and United States Senator from the state of Maine, and currently serves as Chairman of the global law firm DLA Piper US LLP and also as the Chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast. He was the United States Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995. He was also Chairman of The Walt Disney Company from March 2004 until January 2007.

On August 10, 2007, ABCnews reported that Sen. Mitchell was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Early career

Mitchell was born in Waterville, Maine. His father, George John Mitchell, was a day laborer at Colby College and his mother, Mary Saad, was a textile worker who immigrated to the United States from Lebanon at the age of eighteen. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1954. In 1961, Mitchell received his law degree from Georgetown Law School — he has since 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. Mitchell practiced law in Portland, Maine, 1965–1977 and was assistant county attorney for Cumberland County, Maine in 1971.

Political career

Senate Majority Leader portrait

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, but was appointed United States Attorney for Maine by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Mitchell 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.

Electoral History

¹ Appointed to the office by then-Governor Joe Brennan in 1980 following the resignation of Ed Muskie to become Secretary of State

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 as U.S. Special Envoy to Northern Ireland. Mitchell first led a commission that established the principles on non-violence to which all parties in Northern Ireland had to adhere 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. He was succeeded as special envoy by Richard Haass.

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, US LLP, a global law firm.

On March 4, 2004, Disney's board of directors, on which he had served since 1995, 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 that led dissident Disney shareholders Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold to criticize the appointment of Mitchell, 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 Procter 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.

In 2007, he became a visiting Professor in Leeds Metropolitan University's School of Applied Global Ethics and the University is developing a new Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution bearing his name.

Baseball's Steroids Investigation

Main article: Mitchell Report (baseball)

On March 29, 2006, ESPN learned that Mitchell will head an investigation into past steroid use by Major League Baseball players. 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. To this day he is known to have held meetings with only two active players, Jason Giambi, who was ordered to meet Mitchell by Commissioner Selig in light of his public admissions on the issue, and one additional player whose name has yet to come to public light. No details of either meeting have been released to the public at this time.

Mitchell released a report of his findings to the public at 2PM ET on December 13, 2007. The report is includes the names of about 50 former and current players for whom evidence of use of steroids or other prohibited substances exists. This list includes names of MVPs and All-Stars, such as:

Roger Clemens, Andy Pettite, Miguel Tejada, Denny Neagle, Paul Lo Duca, and David Justice

Mitchell has taken on a role similar to that of John Dowd, who investigated Pete Rose's alleged gambling in the late 1980s.

Quotes

• "My parents had no education. My mother couldn't read or write English. She worked nights in a textile mill. My father was a janitor at a local college in our hometown."
• "Conflicts are created and sustained by human beings. They can be ended by human beings."

See also

• Sigma Nu LEADership learning program
• Interview with George Mitchell

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)

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