Mike Lux
Encyclopedia
Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Political Action at People For the American Way
People For the American Way
People For the American Way is a progressive advocacy group in the United States. Under U.S. tax code, People For the American Way is organized as a tax-exempt 501 non-profit organization.-Purpose:...
(PFAW), and the PFAW Foundation, and served in the Clinton White House from January 1993 to mid-1995 as a Special Assistant to the President for Public Liaison. He also played a role in five different presidential campaign teams. In recent years, he co-founded the influential progressive blog OpenLeft.com, and served in a key liaison role to the progressive community upon being named to the transition team for Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
.
Lux serves on the boards of several progressive organizations, including the Arca Foundation. In addition to serving on the board, he was a co-founder of Americans United for Change, Center for Progressive Leadership, Grassroots Democrats, PoliticsTV, Progressive Majority, and Women's Voices Women Vote. He also played a role in helping launch the Center for American Progress
Center for American Progress
The Center for American Progress is a progressive public policy research and advocacy organization. Its website states that the organization is "dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action." It has its headquarters in Washington D.C.Its President and Chief...
and Air America
Air America
Air America was an American passenger and cargo airline established in 1950 and covertly owned and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division from 1950 to 1976...
.
Early years
Lux was born and raised in Lincoln, NebraskaLincoln, Nebraska
The City of Lincoln is the capital and the second-most populous city of the US state of Nebraska. Lincoln is also the county seat of Lancaster County and the home of the University of Nebraska. Lincoln's 2010 Census population was 258,379....
. He graduated from Lincoln Northeast High school and attended Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
. Early in his career, he worked with the VISTA program with Southeast Nebraska Small Farms Action Group. He then went on to become the Executive Director of Iowa Citizen Action Network. During the 1988 election cycle he served on the senior staff for the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden
Joe Biden
Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama...
, and later, Paul Simon. He then co-founded The Strategy Group with David Wilhelm
David Wilhelm
A former campaign operative who rose to prominence as chair of the Democratic National Committee in the 1990s, today Wilhelm is an entrepreneur and impact investor devoted to building sustainable jobs and wealth in small town America....
and was PAC Director and chief lobbyist for the Iowa AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
.
1992 Bill Clinton for President
In 1992, Lux took a leave of absence from the AFL-CIO when asked to serve as National Constituencies Director on the 1992 Clinton/Gore campaign. During the campaign, he was a part of the famous 1992 war room. After winning the election, he served on the 1992 Presidential transition team in a similar role.1993-1995 White House
After a successful election, Bill Clinton appointed Lux as Special Assistant to the President for Public Liaison. Describing his job, Lux has been quoted as saying:If you weren't an elected official or a reporter, we dealt with you. So we dealt with CEOs. We dealt with labor union folks. We dealt with trial lawyers. We dealt with public-interest groups. We dealt with trade associations, multi-client lobbyists. We dealt with everybody.
In this role, Lux was responsible for outreach to constituencies around the major 1993-94 health care reform battle. He organized several key events such as the first national clergy breakfast, the first state opinion leader's days, and the first bill signing ceremony of the Clinton presidency. He served in the 1993 budget war room and the 1994 health care war room, and was the White House staffer who organized the coalition to fight the school lunch cuts the Republicans were pushing in 1995, the first issue they were soundly defeated on after taking control of Congress.
1998 Work Against President Clinton's Impeachment
In the late 1990s, Lux joined People For the American WayPeople For the American Way
People For the American Way is a progressive advocacy group in the United States. Under U.S. tax code, People For the American Way is organized as a tax-exempt 501 non-profit organization.-Purpose:...
, a major liberal organization working on constitutional issues and advancing the liberal movement. Once the name Monica Lewinsky
Monica Lewinsky
Monica Samille Lewinsky is an American woman with whom United States President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an "improper relationship" while she worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996...
began to appear above the fold
Above the fold
"Above the fold" is a graphic design concept that refers to the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper, or in case of webpages, the part of a page that's visible without scrolling. Most papers are delivered and...
on every newspaper in the country, he was put right in the middle of the ensuing political battle. He has said that he was "appalled" at what the President had done, but nevertheless also thought the impeachment campaign the Republicans began to wage against the President was a mockery of the Constitution. He and his colleagues at PFAW decided that given their vested interest in both combating the right and protecting the Constitution, they were the perfect organization to step into the middle of the issue.
Lux, along with PFAW and a handful of "Clintonites" such as James Carville
James Carville
Chester James Carville, Jr. is an American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. Carville gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the successful presidential campaign of then-Arkansas governor Bill...
, believed it to be politically disadvantageous to ignore the issue, and instead launched an ad campaign with the theme "It's time to move on". These ads were met with hostility from top Democratic Party leaders and consultants. Many of them began to publicly comment on the ads, saying that they were detrimental to the party as a whole, and that supporters should not be donating to PFAW.
Lux and PFAW soon partnered with Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, whose similar internet petition campaign was gaining ground quickly. PFAW along with a group that would become MoveOn.org worked to both rally grassroots groups around the cause and to deliver 500,000 signatures to members of Congress. The campaign was hailed by many as one of the key moments in the efforts to defeat impeachment of the President.
Co-Founding Progressive Strategies
In 1999, Lux co-founded Progressive Strategies L.L.C., a political consulting firm located in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, that works with a wide range of progressive entities, offering an array of services. According to their website:
We assist a variety of clients, such as issue advocacy groups, Political Action Committees (PACs), individual donors, new media pioneers, bloggers and socially responsible businesses with strategies that will help to build and manage their overall goals. We work actively to create and maintain comprehensive issue-based campaigns, incorporating all of the major tools of successful organizations including: public opinion research, Internet organizing and netroots outreach, fieldwork, paid advertising, earned media, political outreach and new media tools, including web video and podcasting. We also advise major funders and donors on how they can target their giving to have the most significant impact possible...
Clients include but are not limited to:
- ActBlue
- Planned Parenthood
- NAACP Voter Fund
- USAction fund
- Center for Community Change
- Health Care for America Now
- League of Conservation Voters
- Democracy Alliance
- Progressive Majority
- Americans United for Change
While at Progressive Strategies, Lux has received substantial media coverage from national news sources, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Founding of American Family Voices
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
conceded that "American Family Voices has a talented leader, rich supporters, and some important friends in the press. That's more than enough to keep making trouble for George W. Bush."
OpenLeft
Chris Bowers
Chris Bowers is a blogger for DailyKos and a manager of their email list. He was a blogger and co-founder of OpenLeft, and was until July 2007 a front-page blogger for MyDD...
.
OpenLeft is a news, analysis and action website dedicated toward building a progressive governing majority in America. It was also founded with intent to bridge conversational gaps between party insiders and grassroots activists, as exhibited by its Right to Respond option. Since its launch, OpenLeft is considered to be one of the most popular and influential progressive blogs in the country. It has also seen rapid growth in viewership, and currently averages well over 100,000 unique visitors per week. National publications such as The Nation have taken notice of OpenLeft, saying that the site allows for "substantive debate that would otherwise not occur". Other notable projects have stemmed from OpenLeft, such as the Bush Dog campaign, the Searching for John McCain campaign, and Chris Bowers' election forecasting discussions.
Fellowship
In August 2008, the Campaign for Community Change announced it was receiving a grant from Atlantic Philanthropies to hire Lux as a senior fellow. Describing his role, he wrote on OpenLeft:
"I have been a big fan of Deepak Bhargava and the Campaign for Community Change’s work for a long time, I am looking forward to collaborating with this team to offer up my experience, insights and strategic advice, not only for the Campaign for Community Change, but also for the broader progressive community. Over the past years, the progressive movement has once again begun to rise and with the right vision, tactics and leadership, we can continue to inject the progressive vision of America into our public policy and into the great organizations that help to lead the charge on a day-to-day basis.