Senator Arlen Specter ✝
the honorable Arlen Specter ✝
Former U.S. Senator for Pennsylvania
Arlen Specter was a former United States Senator from Pennsylvania. Specter was a Democrat, but was a Republican from 1965 until switching to the Democratic Party in 2009. First elected in 1980, he represented his state for thirty years in the Senate.
Specter first opened a law firm with Marvin Katz, who would later become a federal judge. Specter served as assistant counsel for the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy and helped devise the “single bullet theory.” In 1965, Specter was elected District Attorney of Philadelphia, a position that he would hold until he lost his re-election bid in 1973. On April 28, 2009, Specter announced that, after 44 years as an elected Republican, he was switching membership to the Democratic Party, On May 18, 2010, Specter was defeated in the Democratic primary by Joe Sestak, who then was defeated by current Senator Pat Toomey in the general election. Toomey replaced Specter on January 3, 2011.
In fall 2011, Specter was an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he taught a course on the relationship between Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, focusing on separation of powers and the confirmation process.
Arlen Specter passed away at his home in Philadelphia on October 14, 2012 from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Specter was hosted by The Common Good in 2007 for a Meet & Greet.
Read more:
Will Dunham, ‘Former senator Arlen Specter, 82, dies of cancer’, Reuters, 14 October 2012
Linda Greenhouse, ‘Senator Specter and the Law’, The New York Times, 20 May 2010
Brian Montopoli, ‘Sen. Arlen Specter To Become a Democrat’, CBS, 28 April 2009
Eric Spiegel
Eric Spiegel
Businessman
Eric Spiegel is the President and CEO of Siemens USA and is responsible for growing the U.S. business in the company’s largest market. With over $22 billion in sales including exports and approximately 50,000 employees in the U.S., Siemens is a global technology powerhouse that has stood for engineering excellence, innovation, quality, reliability and internationality for more than 165 years. Siemens has over 25 major manufacturing sites across the U.S. and is represented in all 50 states.
Twitter: @ericspiegel
Carol E. Lee
Carol E. Lee
Journalist
Carol Lee is a White House correspondent for NBC News. She was previously the White House correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, responsible for their coverage on politics, foreign affairs and domestic policy issues. She is currently president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, after serving on its board since 2010.
She has covered the White House since October 2008. She joined the Journal’s White House correspondence in 2011. Previously, she covered the White House for Politico, starting with President Obama’s transition in Chicago. Lee wrote a weekly column for the Journal’s digital politics page, “Capital Journal”. She now appears regularly on television and radio, including CNN, MSNBC, NPR and Sirius XM, as a commentator on the White House.
Lee spoke on the Midterm Elections Panel alongside Patrick Caddell, Anna Greenberg, Steve Kornacki, Jim McLaughlin, and Jefrey Pollock, moderated by John Harwood, at The Common Good in 2014.
Twitter: @carolelee
Governor Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Spitzer
Lawyer and Politician
Eliot Laurence Spitzer is an American lawyer, political commentator, and former Democratic Party politician. Currently, he is the host of Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer, a nightly news and commentary program on Current TV. Prior to that, he was the co-host of In the Arena, a talk-show and punditry forum broadcast on CNN from October 2010 to July 2011. He served as the 54th Governor of New York.
Prior to being elected governor, Spitzer had served as New York State Attorney General. Spitzer was born and raised in New York, by real estate tycoon Bernard Spitzer. He attended Princeton University for undergraduate studies and then Harvard Law School for his Juris Doctor. It was there that he met his future wife, Silda Wall. He went on to work for the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and subsequently the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to pursue organized crime. He launched the investigation that brought down the Gambino family’s control over Manhattan’s garment and trucking industries.
In the 1998 election, Spitzer defeated incumbent Republican Dennis Vacco by a slim margin to become New York State Attorney General. His campaign was financed by a controversial multi-million dollar loan from his father. As attorney general, Spitzer prosecuted cases relating to corporate white collar crime, securities fraud, internet fraud and environmental protection.
He most notably pursued cases against computer chip price fixing, investment bank stock price inflation, predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders, fraud at American International Group, and the 2003 mutual fund scandal. He also sued Richard Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange over a compensation package perceived to be excessive.
Twitter: @EliotSpitzer
Read more:
Richard Bockman, ‘The Closing: Eliot Spitzer’, The Real Deal, 1 January 2019
Lilly Ledbetter
Lilly Ledbetter
Gender equality activist
Lilly Ledbetter began her professional life at Goodyear. Nineteen years after her first day at Goodyear, Lilly received an anonymous note revealing that she was making thousands less per year than the men in her position. She filed a sex discrimination case against Goodyear, which she won—and then lost on appeal. Over the next eight years, her case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where she lost again. The court ruled that she should have filed suit within 180 days of her first unequal paycheck, despite the fact that she had no way of knowing that she was being paid unfairly all those years. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg strongly disagreed with the decision and read her dissent from the bench. Ledbetter was not discouraged.
She became the namesake of Barack Obama's first official piece of legislation as president, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Today, she is a tireless advocate for change, traveling the country to urge women and minorities to claim their civil rights.
Ledbetter was honored with the American Spirit Award for Citizen Activism at The Common Good Forum & The American Spirit Awards 2014.
Twitter: @Lilly_Ledbetter
Brandon Stanton
Brandon Stanton
Author, photographer, blogger
Brandon Stanton is the author of “Humans of New York”, a photography and storytelling blog. Over the course of five years, “Humans of New York” (HONY) has built a devoted following of close to 20 million fans on several social media pages. Stanton has appeared on Ellen, Good Morning America, Nightline, MSNBC, CNN, has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Mashable, and dozens of other media venues. He has also been named a ‘person of the week’ on the ABC Evening News with Diane Sawyer, and a TIME Magazine “30 Under 30 Who are Changing the World.” He has photographed President Obama in the Oval Office and is the author of two #1 New York Times Bestsellers, Humans of New York, (2013) and Humans of New York: Stories (2015).
Stanton was awarded The American Spirit Award for Citizen Activism at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @humansofny
Representative Greg Stanton
Greg Stanton
Arizona Congressman, U.S. House of Representatives
Greg Stanton is currently Representative for Arizona’s 9th congressional district, having entered the office in 2019.
Stanton served as mayor of Phoenix between 2012 and 2018, when he resigned to run for Congress. Under his mayoral leadership, Phoenix became the first U.S. city to end chronic homelessness among veterans, and Stanton’s H.E.R.O. initiative is emerging as an example for how to match veterans —especially post-9/11 vets —with local employers and good jobs. Stanton attended Marquette University on the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, and earned a law degree from the University of Michigan. Before he was elected mayor in 2011, Stanton served nine years on the City Council and as Arizona’s Deputy Attorney General. He and his wife, Nicole, who is a prominent local attorney, are both working parents of two young children.
Twitter: @gregstantonaz
Cong. (ret) Jim Leach
the honorable Jim Leach
Academic, politician
James “Jim” Leach is a congressman and academic. He served as ninth Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2009 to 2013 and was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa (1977–2007).
Leach was the John L. Weinberg Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. He also served as the interim director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University from September 17, 2007, to September 1, 2008.
Previously, Leach served 30 years (1977–2007) as a Republican member of the House of Representatives, representing Iowa’s 2nd congressional district (numbered as the 1st District from 1977 to 2003). In Congress, Leach chaired the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services (1995–2001) and was a senior member of the House Committee on International Relations, serving as Chair of the Committee’s Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs (2001–2006). He also founded and served as co-chair of the Congressional Humanities Caucus. He lost his 2006 re-election bid to Democrat Dave Loebsack.
Michael Steele
Michael Steele
Politician
When he was elected Lt. Governor of Maryland in 2003, Michael Steele made history as the first African American elected to statewide office, and again with his subsequent chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in 2009. As chairman of the RNC, Michael Steele was charged with revitalizing the Republican Party. A self-described “Lincoln Republican”, under Steele’s leadership the RNC broke fundraising records (over $198 million raised during the 2010 Congressional cycle) and Republicans won 63 House seats, the biggest pickup since 1938.
As Lt. Governor of Maryland, Mr. Steele’s priorities included reforming the state’s Minority Business Enterprise program, improving the quality of Maryland’s public education system (he championed the State’s historic Charter School law), expanding economic development in the state and fostering cooperation between government and faith-based organizations to help those in need.
Mr. Steele’s ability as a communicator and commentator has been showcased through his current role as a political analyst for MSNBC. He is the author of Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda, which is a call to arms for grassroots America and co-author of The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis.
Steele spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @MichaelSteele
Read more:
Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg
Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg
Photographer, writer, philanthropist, businesswoman
Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg is an esteemed photographer, writer, philanthropist, and businesswoman. Lautenberg has successfully sold and exhibited her photography for a number of years and has received critical praise throughout her photographic career. Lautenberg’s photographs are included in both private and museum collections.
Lautenberg co-hosted Michael Wolff with The Common Good in 2019.
Twitter: @bonnie_lauten
Ted Strickland
Ted Strickland
Psychologist, religious leader, politician
Ted Strickland is a former minister, psychologist, congressman and governor of Ohio. Strickland created one of the nation’s leading advanced energy laws, preventing runaway electricity rate hikes and making Ohio a national leader in green energy jobs. Strickland held tuition increases to the lowest rate in the nation and made Ohio the first state to offer free tuition to veterans from across the country. Under Strickland’s leadership, Ohio’s primary and secondary schools won the nation’s top prize for education innovation from the Education Commission of the States.
In Congress, Ted was instrumental in passing the Children’s Health Insurance Program that provides health coverage to millions of children nationwide. He was a leading advocate for funding the Appalachian Regional Commission and he voiced opposition to the Iraq War.
After serving as governor, Ted was nominated by President Barack Obama to be a public delegate to the 68th U.N. General Assembly. He also served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York. Most recently, Ted ran the Center for American Progress Action Fund where he spoke out on behalf of policies to strengthen America’s working families.
Strickland spoke at The Common Good in 2015 for a Meet & Greet.
Twitter: @Ted_Strickland
Jeanne Sullivan
Jeanne Sullivan
Businesswoman
Jeanne is a co-founder of StarVest Partners, a venture capital firm in NYC which was created in 1998 and raised $400 million, investing in technology enabled business services companies.
Sullivan serves on the board of the New York Venture Capital Association, is a member of the Women’s Leadership Board at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is an Athena Entrepreneur Fellow for Barnard College. Forbes cited Sullivan as “one of the women VCs changing the world – grooming the next generation of female entrepreneurs.”
Sullivan spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @gianna1212
Dr. Robert Lanza
Dr. Robert Lanza
Scientist, philosopher
Robert Lanza, M.D., is currently Head of Astellas Global Regenerative Medicine, and is Chief Scientific Officer of the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He was previously Chief Scientific Officer at Ocata Therapeutics. Dr. Lanza has hundreds of publications and inventions, and over 30 scientific books. He is a former Fulbright Scholar, and studied as a student with polio-pioneer Jonas Salk and Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter. He also worked closely (and co-authored a series of papers) with noted Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard.
Dr. Lanza was part of the team that cloned the world’s first human embryo, as well as the first to successfully generate stem cells from adults using therapeutic cloning. In 2001 he was also the first to clone an endangered species, and recently published the first-ever report of pluripotent stem cell use in humans. Lanza was recognized by TIME Magazine in 2014 on its list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” PROSPECT Magazine named him one of the Top 50 “World Thinkers” in 2015.
Dr. Lanza spoke about the field of stem cell research at The Common Good Forum 2015.
Twitter: @RobertLanza
Brian Sullivan
Brian Sullivan
Anchor of CNBC's Worldwide Exchange
Brian Sullivan is anchor of CNBC's Worldwide Exchange and is the network's Senior National Correspondent. Additionally, he has been co-anchor of CNBC’s Power Lunch and the host of Talking Numbers. He also writes for CNBC.com and the recently re-launched CNBC PRO.
He joined CNBC in May 2011 and is based at the network’s Global Headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Sullivan has more than 15 years of financial broadcasting experience, having served as an anchor at Fox Business Network and prior to that as producer, reporter and anchor at Bloomberg Television.
He has twice been nominated for the prestigious Loeb Award; one for being recognized as among the first financial journalists to highlight the risks of the housing bubble in 2007, and the other for the 2013 CNBC documentary “America’s Gun: The Rise of the AR-15.”
Twitter: @SullyCNBC
Amy Sullivan
Amy Sullivan
Journalist
Amy Sullivan is a Chicago-based journalist who has covered religion and politics as an editor at TIME, Yahoo, the Washington Monthly, and National Journal. She contributes opinion and news analysis to outlets including NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Sullivan co-hosts the podcast "Impolite Company" with Nish Weiseth. Her critically acclaimed first book, The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap, was published by Scribner in 2008.
Sullivan spoke about The Role of Religion in the 2008 Campaign at The Common Good alongside Jon Meacham and Steven Waldman, moderated by Paul Glastris and introduced by Richard Feigen.
Twitter: @sullivanamy
Kenneth Mehlman
Kenneth Mehlman
Businessman, attorney, political figure
Kenneth Brian Mehlman is an American businessman, attorney, and political figure who served as the campaign manager for the 2004 re-election campaign of George W. Bush and Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2005 to 2007. In 2007, President Bush appointed Mehlman to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
On August 26, 2010, Mehlman came out as gay, making him one of the most prominent openly gay figures in the Republican Party.
Mehlman is currently a member and Head of Global Public Affairs for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, and is responsible for overseeing the firm’s global external affairs activities. He previously served as a partner at the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
Mehlman spoke at The Common Good’s Elections 2012 Forecast – Mehlman, Shrum, Wolffe – November 17, 2011.
Twitter: @MehlmanKen
Jesse LaGreca
Jesse LaGreca
Writer, protestor
Jesse LaGreca has worked as a freelance writer for the Daily Kos under the name Ministry Of Truth for the last three years and is one of their most frequent writers. He’s a member of various subgroups on the site, including their Anonymous forum, Environmental Foodies, and the Progressive Policy Zone.
LaGreca was a major activist during the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York and a frequent speaker on behalf of the movement. His introduction into mainstream media came when an unaired Fox News interview with Griff Jenkins was put on YouTube. In the clip, LaGreca spoke articulately and intelligently about the OWS movement and criticized Fox News for marginalizing the movement. He was named the face of “The Budding Stars of Occupy Wall Street,” according to the Atlantic Wire and was featured in various interviews from ABC’s This Week to The New York Observer.
LaGreca spoke at The Common Good on June 20th, 2012, alongside Todd Gitlin: The Power of Protest: Todd Gitlin & Jesse LaGreca.
Twitter: @JesseLaGreca
Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi
Author and Journalist
Matt Taibbi is a multitalented author and journalist who has covered politics, media, finance and sports, and in 2008 received a National Magazine Award for his columns in Rolling Stone. In February of 2014, he penned a goodbye in Rolling Stone magazine and moved to Glenn Greenwald’s First Look Media, where is he assembling a team of top-notch journalists and helping to launch a new magazine.
Taibbi spoke at The Common Good in 2014: Matt Taibbi on Corruption, Fraud and Inequality.
Twitter: @mtaibbi
David Kuhn
David Kuhn
Political commentator
David Kuhn is an author and political commentator. He is currently the Chief Political Correspondent for RealClearPolitics and a senior political writer for Politico.
Previously, he held the position of Senior Political Writer at CBS. His work has appeared in many other news outlets including The Washington Post, Salon.com, the Huffington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Kuhn’s book, The Neglected Voter, received wide praise. Kuhn regularly appears on C-Span, Fox News, CNN and other news shows to discuss politics.
David Kuhn is a political analyst and writer who has written several books that have been heavily praised, including his most recent one that was named on The New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2020." Kuhn has served as the chief political writer for CBS News online, a senior political writer for Politico as well as chief political correspondent at RealClearPolitics. He has also written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, National Review, New Republic, among other publications, and regularly appears on networks ranging from BBC to Fox News.
David’s most recent book, “The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution“ was recognized by the New York Times as one of the "100 Notable Books of 2020.”
His book is credited by famed strategist James Carville as “perhaps the best book ever on how Democrats lost the white working class” and in the WSJ, Senator Webb stated that Kuhn was an “unacknowledged prophet” for the “consistency” of his longtime “warnings about the reasons white working people were moving away from the Democrats [which] were largely dismissed by the news media and party elites.”
David Kuhn participated in The White Working-Class Political Revolution with Jim Webb, Charlie Cook, and Moderator Clyde Haberman on January 7, 2021. Kuhn, Webb, Cook, and Haberman discussed how the white working-class was driven away from the Democratic party and towards Republicans and how that schism continues to drive class conflict and political polarization today. The discussion also broached the Democrats inability to make inroads with this demographic and if white working-class voters support Republicans in spite of their own policy preferences.
Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
Economist
Paul Krugman is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is a best-selling author, columnist, and blogger for the New York Times, and is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes.
His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the “new trade theory,” a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to “that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge.” Krugman’s current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises. Some of his recent articles on economic issues, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American and other journals, are reprinted in Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist.
Paul Krugman was hosted by The Common Good in 2012: Nobel Prize Economist Paul Krugman on Reigniting the Economy.
Twitter: @paulkrugman