page_title: Michael Steele
section_title: After the chairmanship
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Steele / After the chairmanship
caption_attribution_description: English: Michael Steele speaking at Politicon in Pasadena, California.
context_page_description: Michael Stephen Steele is an American conservative political commentator, attorney, and former Republican Party politician. Steele served as the seventh lieutenant governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007; he was the first African-American elected to statewide office in Maryland. As lieutenant governor, Steele chaired the Minority Business Enterprise task force, actively promoting an expansion of affirmative action in the corporate world. Steele also served as chairperson of the Republican National Committee from January 2009 until January 2011; he was the first African-American to serve in that capacity.
  In the 1990s, Steele worked as a partner at the international law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae and co-founded the Republican Leadership Council, a "fiscally conservative and socially inclusive" political action committee. Steele also made numerous appearances as a political pundit on Fox News and other media outlets prior to running for public office. He made an unsuccessful run in the 2006 U.S. Senate election in Maryland, losing to Democrat Ben Cardin.
context_section_description: After his loss in the chairmanship election, Steele was hired by MSNBC to be a regular political analyst as of May 2011. He also was hired to be a columnist for the online magazine The Root, an African-American news and commentary site owned by The Washington Post Company.
  On C-SPAN's Washington Journal on the Sunday after the 2012 Obama reelection victory, Steele expressed some interest in running for RNC Chairman again. Steele emphasized the need to make conservative minorities feel comfortable and welcome in a party that offered them opportunities to launch political careers in counties and statehouses.
  In 2018, Steele was named a faculty fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, where he will lead seminars.
  In August 2020, Steele joined the Lincoln Project PAC and endorsed Joe Biden for president.
caption: Michael Steele in June 2016.
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