Michael Steele Biography
Michael Steele is an American politician, attorney, and political commentator working for MSNBC as a political analyst. He joined the MSNBC news team in May 2011, after previously working for RNC.
Michael Steele Career
As head of the Prince George’s County Republican Central Committee, he became a Republican after joining the party. In 1993, he helped to create the moderate, fiscally conservative, and socially open Republican Leadership Council. But in 2008, he quit because he didn’t agree with the choices made about which primary candidates to support. He was named Republican Man of the Year by the Maryland Republican Party in 1995. During the 1996 and 2000 Republican National Conventions, he served as an alternate delegate and as a delegate. He also worked on several political projects. Steele was a member of the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity, according to his description from Maryland.
In December 2000, he was elected chairman of the Maryland Republican Party. This made him the first African American to ever be named chairman of a Republican Party in any state. In 2002, Robert Ehrlich chose Steele to be his running mate for lieutenant governor when he was running for governor of Maryland. The race was against Charles R. Larson for lieutenant governor and Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend for governor.
For the September primary, Ehrlich and Steele didn’t have any strong opponents. Ehrlich and Steele, a Republican ticket, won the general election in Maryland in November 2002 with 51% of the vote to 48% of the vote, even though the state usually votes Democratic and hasn’t had a Republican Governor in almost 40 years. The Townsend-Larson effort was harmed by the problems in Parris Glendening’s marriage and the negative reactions to how strictly he enforced environmental laws.
In March 2005, Maryland’s longest-serving US Senator, Paul Sarbanes, said he would not be running for re-election in 2006. This made top state and national Republican leaders start pushing Steele to be their party’s candidate for the seat. The Baltimore Sun released the results of a poll in April 2005, which showed that Steele would have an equal chance of beating either former NAACP head Kweisi Mfume or Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin of Baltimore County. Steele officially declared his run for the U.S. Senate on October 25, 2005.
Steele got the Republican nomination because he didn’t have to deal with much opposition in the primary. Democrats Ben Cardin and Kevin Zeese ran against him as independents. There were three debates with the three contestants. Cardin’s main attack on Steele was that he was friendly with President Bush. Steele cared about free markets, national defense, low taxes, and less government spending.
Steele lost the general election to Cardin on November 7, 2006, with 44% of the vote to 55% for Cardin. Later, Steele’s former campaign finance head said that Steele had done something wrong with campaign funds, which Steele denied.
Steele began his run for RNC head on November 24, 2008, when he launched his website. At the RNC’s sixth meeting on January 30, 2009, Steele beat Katon Dawson with 91 votes to 77. Steele was chosen as the RNC’s first African American head after President Obama’s election. Many in the GOP saw him as a charismatic alternative to the country’s first Black president.
After losing the race for chairman, Steele was hired by MSNBC in May 2011 as a regular political commentator. Also, he was hired to write a column for The Root, an online magazine for African American news and opinion that is run by The Washington Post Company. On the Sunday after Obama’s reelection in 2012, Steele talked about his desire to run for RNC Chairman again on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. Steele stressed how important it was to make conservative minorities feel at home and welcome in a party that gave them chances to start careers as politicians in towns and statehouses.
Steele is a teaching fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, where he runs seminars. He was given this title in 2018. Steele joined the Lincoln Project PAC in August 2020 and backed Joe Biden for president. Steele first said he wanted to run for governor of Maryland as a Republican in April 2021. Moreover, in July 2021, he set up an exploratory group to learn more about the process. Later that month, state delegate Lauren Arikan filed a complaint against Steele for campaign finance.
She said that he was using a 527 group to coordinate campaign activities without permission. Steele replied formally that these claims were false, saying that the group had not spent any money and was not breaking any Maryland campaign finance laws. Moreover, he said he wasn’t going to run for governor in January 2022. Steele later went to the inauguration of Wes Moore as governor-elect on January 18, 2023. Therefore, MSNBC said on November 30, 2023, that Steele would be co-hosting a new weekend morning show with Alicia Menendez and Symone Sanders-Townsend. On MSNBC, she works alongside Ari Melber, Jen Psaki, Katie Phang, Ali Velshi, Alex Witt, Symone Sanders-Townsend, and Joe Scarborough.
Michael Steele Education
Steele went to Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C., and was active in the National Honor Society, the singing club, and many of the school’s plays. He was chosen president of the student council during his senior year. Moreover, Steele got his BA in foreign studies from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore City, Maryland, in 1981.
In his first job after finishing Hopkins, Steele taught high school economics and world history at Malvern Preparatory School in Pennsylvania for one year. Additionally, he studied to be a Catholic priest for three years at the Augustinian Friars Seminary at Villanova University. He quit before he was ordained to work for the government.
After that, Steele went to Georgetown Law School and finished with a JD in 1991. He did not pass the bar exam in Maryland, but he did pass the test in Pennsylvania. Steele worked for the international law company Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in Washington, D.C., from 1991 to 1997 as a corporate securities associate. There, he focused on making investments for Wall Street underwriters. Afterward, he quit the company to start the Steele Group, a company that advises on business and law.
Michael Steele Salary
Steele earns a salary of about $57,000-$150,000.
Michael Steele Net Worth
Steele has an estimated net worth of about $1 Million – $7 Million which he has earned through his career as a political commentator.
Michael Steele Age
Steele was born on October 19, 1958, in Andrews Air Force Base, United States. He is 65 years old as of 2023, and she celebrates her birthday on the 19th of October every year.
Michael Steele Height and Weight
Steele stands at a height of 5 feet 10 inches tall (1.77m) and weighs 80kgs (176 lbs)
Michael Steele Family
Steele was born at Andrews Air Force Base, in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and was adopted as an infant. He was adopted by William Steele and Maebell Steele. His real father died in 1962, and his mother raised him while working as a laundress for minimum wage. Moreover, she was born into a sharecropping family in South Carolina. Michael has a sister named Monica Turner who was married to Mike Tyson, a former heavyweight boxing champion and later divorced.
Michael Steele Wife and Children
Steele is married to Andrea Steele, an American politician. The couple tied the knot on October 12, 1985. Moreover, the two are blessed with two sons; Michael Steele II and Drew Steele.
Michael Steele Podcast
Steele, who used to be the chairman of the Republican National Committee and is now the lieutenant governor of Maryland, hosts the show The Michael Steele Show. Michael leads a conversation about the most important political and cultural topics of the week in the style of a barbershop every week. Moreover, Michael has worked as a political analyst for MSNBC and has been involved in politics all his life. He now hosts a podcast that goes beyond traditional political lines to get to the bottom of problems and find real answers.
Michael Steele Book
Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda, Steele’s book, came out on January 4, 2010, and is produced by Regnery Publishing. Its ISBN is 978-1-59698-108-9. The Associated Press said, “Steele spends a lot of the book criticizing well-known GOP ideas like President Barack Obama’s policies, the $787 billion stimulus bill, liberal views on man-made global warming, and other topics.” Steele says that the GOP should “expose the reign of error’ inherent in liberal policies, contrast conservative and liberal principles, and highlight the damage done by Obama’s policies while explaining conservative solutions” to win back the public’s trust.
Michael Steele Social Media Platforms
Steele is very active on his Twitter, and Instagram pages. He has 358k followers on Twitter and 10.8k followers on Instagram.