Lawyer

Gary Ginsberg

Gary Ginsberg

Author, Lawyer, and Corporate Adviser

Gary Ginsberg is a lawyer, American political operative and corporate adviser, serving as a strategist in both the public and private sectors for more than 25 years. He was most recently the Senior Vice President and Global Head of Communications at SoftBank Group Corp. before leaving in 2020. Prior to joining SoftBank, Ginsberg served as Executive Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications at Time Warner and as Executive Vice President of Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs at News Corp.

Ginsberg began his career as a lawyer as an attorney at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. After that he served in the Clinton Administration at the White House’s Counsel office and the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1995, Ginsberg became Senior Editor and legal counsel for George, the magazine started by John. F. Kennedy, Jr.

In 2018, after being hired by SoftBank, Ginsberg has worked on a number of initiatives including the launch of a new global website and more sophisticated video content to sharpen the company’s messaging. Ginsberg is also the author of his new book First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (and Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents published in July 2021, which reached The New York Times Best Seller list.

On October 21, 2021, Gary Ginsberg participated in First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (and Unelected) People Who Shaped Our President's

Joyce Vance

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JOYCE VANCE

Former United States Attorney for Alabama

Joyce Vance served as the U.S. Attorney for North Alabama and was one of the first women nominated to the role of U.S. Attorney under President Obama. Her career has made her name be credited with pursuing public corruption prosecutions with integrity. Vance adopted a "smart on crime" approach to violent and recidivist crime, intending to prosecute the most significant cases facing the district so that communities would be safer. As U.S. Attorney, she was responsible for overseeing all federal criminal investigations and prosecutions in north Alabama, including matters involving civil rights, national security, cybercrime, public corruption, health care and corporate fraud, violent crime and drug trafficking. 

She has gone on to join MSNBC as a contributor and frequently provides on-air commentary regarding developments in legal issues that involve the Trump administration, including the ability to self-pardon.  Administration.

Joyce Vance participated in The Presidential Pardon with Joyce Vance and Jeanni Suk Gersen, on January 16, 2021.

Steve Bullock

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Governor Steve Bullock

Politician, attorney, 24th Governor of Montana

Governor Steve Bullock is a politician, attorney, and former professor. He was elected Montana’s 24th Governor in 2012 and reelected in 2016. Throughout his career Bullock has emphasizes his desire to bring people together and bridge partisan divides.

As Governor, he has fought on behalf of workers, students, and families, working with a Republican legislature to expand Medicaid, pass an Earned Income Tax Credit, and establish the state’s first public pre-K. He was also the first governor in the country to protect net neutrality through Executive Order.

Prior to his governorship, Bullock acted as the Attorney General of Montana, winning the election in 2008. While in this role he pushed for tougher drunken driving laws, a crackdown on prescription drug abuse, tackled the misclassification of employees as independent contractors by FedEx, and pursued the railroad industry for monopolistic business practices.

On May 14th, 2019 Bullock announced his candidacy for the 2020 Presidential Election, running on the Democratic ticket. Bullock made campaign finance reform a central cause of his campaign, continuing his political legacy to fight corruption in politics. As Attorney General he had taken this fight to the Supreme Court in the first challenge to Citizens United, and later passed one of the strongest campaign disclosure laws in the country. During his candidacy, Bullock has simultaneously been suing the Trump Administration to ensure that wealthy donors can’t hide their influence.

The Common Good hosted Bullock on July 17th, 2019, presenting 2020 Presidential Candidates: Governor Steve Bullock as part of the 2020 Presidential Candidates Series.

Twitter: @GovernorBullock

Scott Reich

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Scott Reich

Author, attorney

Scott Reich is the author of the acclaimed book, The Power of Citizenship: Why JFK Matters, and is in-house counsel at American Express, where he supports the company’s digital and mobile payments strategy and helps the business develop innovative ways to provide value to card members. He’s also an adjunct lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches a course on the American presidency. Prior to working at American Express, Reich practiced law at the international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and co-founded an online grocery business that aims to combat hunger while creating a healthier, more sustainable food system.

Reich serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations, including the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, and in 2010, he was appointed by the governor of New York to serve on the College Council of SUNY-Old Westbury. Reich has appeared on NBC, CBS, Fox, MSNBC, Bloomberg, WPIX, Larry King Now, and several national and local radio shows. He has also written for the Huffington Post.

Reich spoke at The Common Good in 2013: Exploring the Legacy of JFK: Citizenship and Public Service with Scott Reich.

Twitter: @ScottDReich

Martin O’Malley

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Martin O’Malley

Attorney, 61st Governor of Maryland

Martin O’Malley has served as the Governor of Maryland, Mayor of Baltimore, and a city councilor.

In 1999, O’Malley ran for Mayor of Baltimore. Widely considered an underdog candidate, O’Malley campaigned on the promise of reducing crime, improving schools, and rebuilding broken communities. He went on to earn 90 percent of the vote. In 2007, O’Malley was elected as Governor of Maryland. Under his leadership, Maryland made sweeping investments in public safety, college education, affordable healthcare, and economic growth. The state recovered 100 percent of the jobs lost during the national recession, and was one of only seven states to maintain a AAA bond rating. Recognizing the threat that climate change posed to Maryland’s coastal communities, O’Malley took action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, invest in renewable energy, and grow green jobs. He signed marriage equality into law, abolished the death penalty, and passed the DREAM Act to expand the opportunity of a college education to more local students.

In 2015, O’Malley left office. In 2016, he ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Twitter: @MartinOMalley

Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

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Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

District Attorney of New York County

Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., became District Attorney of New York County on January 1, 2010. Mr. Vance is a recognized leader in criminal justice reform and proposed a compelling vision for moving the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office forward, with a focus on crime prevention.

Since taking office, Mr. Vance has reorganized and consolidated the resources of the District Attorney’s Office by creating the Cybercrime and Identity Theft Bureau, the Major Economic Crimes Bureau, the Special Victims Bureau, the Public Integrity Unit, the Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit, and the Hate Crimes Unit.  Additionally, the groundbreaking Crime Strategies Unit for the first time gives Manhattan Assistant District Attorneys, in partnership with the New York Police Department, a geographical understanding of the multifaceted crime issues in all of the communities they serve.

Mr. Vance began his legal career in the Manhattan DA’s Office during  Manhattans rampant crime era the 1980s.  As an Assistant District Attorney, Mr. Vance handled cases involving murder, organized crime, public corruption, and white-collar crime.  After leaving the DA’s Office, Mr. Vance and his wife Peggy McDonnell moved to Seattle, where Mr. Vance co-founded McNaul Ebel Nawrot Helgren & Vance,PLLC, which became one of the pre-eminent litigation firms in the Northwest.  During his time in Seattle, Mr. Vance taught trial advocacy as an adjunct professor at Seattle University School of Law.

In 2004, Mr. Vance returned to New York and became a partner at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer, P.C. Mr. Vance is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.  He served by appointment of the Governor of New York as a member of the New York State Appellate Division, First Department, Judicial Screening Panel, and was a member of the New York State Commission on Sentencing Reform.  Mr. Vance previously served as a member of the Criminal Justice Council of the New York City Bar Association, the Federal Bar Council, and the New York Council of Defense Lawyers.  He was a member of the Boards of Directors of the Fund for Modern Courts, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, and the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation. In July 2011, Mr. Vance was voted president-elect of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York. Today, he serves as co-chair of the New York State Permanent Commission on Sentencing.

Twitter: @ManhattanDA

Read More:

The New York Country District Attorney’s Office: Meet Cy Vance

Senator Arlen Specter ✝

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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

Governor Eliot Spitzer

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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:

Tim Mullaney, ‘Related Cos., Eliot Spitzer Propose Senior Living for Highrise Near Hudson Yards’, Senior Housing News, 12 June 2019

Errol Louis, ‘Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer Weighs in on the Mueller Report’, Spectrum News NY 1, 18 April 2019

Richard Bockman, ‘The Closing: Eliot Spitzer’, The Real Deal, 1 January 2019

Kenneth Mehlman

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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

Jeffrey Toobin

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Jeffrey Toobin

Freelance lawyer

Jeffrey Toobin began freelancing for The New Republic as a law student. He went on to become a law clerk to a federal judge and work as an associate counsel to Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh during the Iran-Contra affair and Oliver North’s criminal trial, before becoming an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn. He then took up a post in 1993 at The New Yorker, and became the first television legal analyst in 1994, at ABC.

He currently is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a senior analyst for CNN since 2002, and the author of five books. Toobin’s latest book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, has received awards from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Toobin was hosted by The Common Good in 2012: Aftermath: Supreme Court & Health Care with Carl Bernstein, Jeffrey Toobin & Susan Blumenthal.

Twitter: @JeffreyToobin

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

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Senator Amy Klobuchar

Senior Senator representing Minnesota

Amy Jean Klobuchar is the senior United States Senator from Minnesota. She is running in the 2020 Presidential Campaign and is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, an affiliate of the Democratic Party. She is the first elected female senator from Minnesota.

Klobuchar was county attorney of Hennepin County, the most populous county in Minnesota. She was a legal adviser to former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale and partner in two prominent law firms. Klobuchar has been named by the New York Times as one of the seventeen women most likely to become the first female President of the United States and by MSNBC as a possible nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Klobuchar served as Minnesota’s only senator between January 3 and July 7, 2009, due to the contested results of Minnesota’s senatorial election held the previous year.

Klobuchar spoke at The Common Good as part of the 2008 Democratic National Convention Panel.

Twitter: @amyklobuchar

William Hubbard

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William Hubbard

American lawyer

William N. Hubbard III is Chairman and President of Center Development Corporation, and served in similar capacities with its predecessor, Center Housing Partnerships.

Hubbard served in the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program and is a former Associate of the Wall Street law firm of Thatcher Profitt & Wood. He is also co-founder of the Environmental Action Coalition. Hubbard served as General Counsel to New York State Senator Thomas Bartosiewicz, was a member of the State Democratic Senator Advisory Committee; and was Finance Chairman for Assemblyman Peter Grannis, Chairman of the New York State Assembly Insurance Committee.

Hubbard is currently a Trustee of Citizens Housing Planning Council and the Citizens Budget Commission, a Director of the State Council on Waterways, and a Trustee of Trees New York. He serves on the National Governing Board of Common Cause.

Hubbard convened a panel on The Primaries and the Presidential Election at The Common Good in 2008.

Twitter: @williamChubbard