The National Commission on Federal Election Reform, overseen by former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, has named former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-IL) to replace former Senator Howard Baker as its operating co-chair. Baker was obliged to resign from the Commission in order to prepare to take up his post if and when the Senate confirms him as President Bush�s new ambassador to Japan. Congressman Michel will co-chair the commission with Lloyd Cutler, former White House Counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton.

Reshuffling positions in reaction to Baker�s departure, two commission members, former Senator Slade Gorton and Kathleen Sullivan, dean of the Stanford Law School, have agreed to assist as vice-chairs for the Commission and will jointly preside at the April 12 public hearing in Simi Valley, California at the Ronald Reagan Library. The Commission has also added three new members: Rudy Boschwitz of Minnesota, Christopher Edley of Massachusetts, and Michael Steele of Maryland.

A United States Senator from 1978 to 1991, Rudy Boschwitz served as an emissary to Ethiopia for President Bush in 1991, where he organized Operation Solomon - the airlift of an Ethiopian Jewish community to Israel during the Ethiopian civil war. President Bush awarded him the Citizen�s Medal in the same year for his achievements. He is Chairman of the Board of Home Valu Interiors (formerly Plywood Minnesota), a plywood manufacturing business in Minnesota.

Christopher Edley is a professor at Harvard Law School and the founding co-director of The Civil Rights Project, a Harvard think tank assessing the prospects for justice and equal opportunity under law for racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. In 1999 Edley was appointed to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He served as a senior advisor to President Clinton for the Race Initiative and as a consultant to the President�s Advisory Board on Racial Reconciliation. Also, in the Clinton administration, he served as Associate Director for Economics and Government at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Michael Steele is the chairman of the Maryland Republican Party. He works as a corporate securities attorney and is a principal of The Steele/Barnes Group, LLC. Currently on the Republican National Committee�s New Majority Council and the Catholic Task Force, he is also a member of the Prince George�s County Chapter of the NAACP and the Johns Hopkins Society of Black Alumni. He is a former member of the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees and the Board of Directors and General Counsel of the National Congress of Black Conservatives.

To learn more about the Miller Center and The Century Foundation, visit their websites.

http://millercenter.virginia.edu
http://www.tcf.org

# # #