WikiPortallus: Mike Duncan.html

Career

Duncan is active in numerous professional and nonprofit organizations. He served as chairman of a state university^{citation needed} and currently serves as chairman of the Board of Trustees at Alice Lloyd College, a private four-year liberal arts college in Pippa Passes, Kentucky.¹ He has served as Chairman for the Center for Rural Development in Somerset, Kentucky, a $30 million state-of-the-art regional center emphasizing telecommunications, training, and development. President George W. Bush appointed him to the President’s Commission on White House Fellows in 2001. Duncan is a trustee of the Christian Appalachian Project, the fifteenth largest private social services agency in America. Duncan is a former chairman and current director of the Kentucky Governor’s Scholars Program. His student-mentoring program, in its 26th year, was featured on CBS News Sunday Morning and in the Los Angeles Times.

Professionally, Duncan was President of the Kentucky Bankers Association and a Director of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank Cincinnati Branch. In 1989-91, during a sabbatical, he worked in the Bush White House as Assistant Director of Public Liaison. His public service has been recognized with several distinctions including honorary degrees from Cumberland College and the College of the Ozarks.

He has served as General Counsel of the Republican National Committee (RNC) since July 10, 2002. He previously was elected Treasurer of the RNC in January 2001. Duncan, in his third term as National Committeeman from Kentucky, has served the party at every level from precinct captain, county chairman, state chairman, and national officer. He has been a delegate to the 1972, 1976, 1992, 1996, and 2000 Republican National Conventions and is one of the few persons ever to serve on the four standing convention committees. Mike Duncan and his wife Joanne are 1974 graduates of the Centre College of Law. Duncan received his undergraduate degree from Cumberland College. They live in Inez, Kentucky, and have one child, Rob, a recent University of Kentucky and Centre Law School Graduate. The Duncans are the principal owners of two community banks with five offices in eastern Kentucky.²³

Record as RNC Chairman

U.S. House of Representatives: -21
U.S. Senate: -7 (8 if Senator Coleman (R-MN) is defeated)
Governorships: -1

Criticism

Shawn Steel, Republican National Committeeman from California, writes of Duncan:

"Duncan has been the Invisible Chairman, installed in January 2007 by Karl Rove to be unobtrusive — a mission he has carried out brilliantly. Many, if not most, Republican leaders and activists don’t know who he is. For example, when Duncan was a guest recently on the "Hugh Hewitt Show," the radio host asked Duncan why this was the first time this RNC chairman had ever asked to come on the show and address millions of his fellow Republicans. Duncan couldn’t give an answer other than he’d been busy for the past year. I suppose that’s one way to look at it. Another way is he hasn’t provided the kind of leadership the Republican National Committee needs in this day and age.” Politico: Mike Who?