The Honorable George Mitchell
Former Senator for Maine, politician, businessman
George Mitchell is an American politician and businessman. Mitchell was appointed to the United States Senate in 1980 to complete the unexpired term of Senator Edmund S. Muskie who had resigned to become Secretary of State. Mitchell was elected to a full term in the Senate in 1982. In 1986, he chaired the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and was instrumental in his party regaining a majority in the Senate. Mitchell himself was reelected in 1988 with 81 percent of the vote, the largest margin in the history of the state of Maine. At the opening of the next session, he was elected Senate Majority Leader, the second most powerful elected official in the United States, a position he held for the next six years. For six consecutive years he was voted “the most respected member” of the Senate by a bipartisan group of senior congressional aides. In 1994, George Mitchell declined an appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States in order to remain in the Senate and pursue the struggle for universal national health care.
Since retiring from the Senate, Mitchell has taken up a variety of positions in politics and business. He has taken a leading role in negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, being specifically appointed United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland (1995-2001) by President Clinton and as United States Special Envoy for Middle East Peace (2009-2011) by President Obama. He was a primary architect of the 1996 Mitchell Principles and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and was the main investigator in two “Mitchell Reports”, one on the Arab–Israeli conflict (2001) and one on the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball (2007).
Mitchell served as chairman of The Walt Disney Company from March 2004 until January 2007, and later as chairman of the international law firm DLA Piper. Mitchell currently serves as a co-chair of the Housing Commission at the Bipartisan Policy Center. In addition to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Senator Mitchell has received awards and honors including the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Truman Institute Peace Prize, the German Peace Prize and the United Nations (UNESCO) Peace Prize.
Mitchel was hosted by The Common Good in 2015 for a Meet & Greet.
