Mark Keam

Mark Lee Keam (born May 10, 1966) is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in the United States. A Democrat, he has represented the 35th District since 2009. His district encompasses a portion of Fairfax County, including the town of Vienna, Virginia, where he resides.^[1]

He was born in Seoul, South Korea and has lived in Vietnam, Australia and California, at different times of his life. He was formerly an aide on Capitol Hill, and was an executive with Verizon Communications until he left in 2009 to run for the Virginia General Assembly.^[2]

Early life

Keam was born to a Presbyterian minister in Seoul, South Korea, in 1966. His family later founded a church in Vietnam, before fleeing when the country fell to Communism in 1975. After a brief time living in Australia, he and his family eventually settled in Orange County, California. To help support his family, he worked odd jobs, from construction to collecting shopping carts from a retail parking lot. He received a Political Science degree from the University of California at Irvine and later earned a law degree from Hastings College of the Law.^[3]

Keam served as Senator Richard Durbin's chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2001 to 2007, when he left to join Verizon Communications as a Vice President and Counsel. In 2009, he took an unpaid leave of absence to run for the Virginia General Assembly.^[2]

House of Delegates

In 2009, Delegate Steve Shannon, the Democratic incumbent, did not seek reelection in the 35th district in order to run (unsuccessfully) for Attorney General of Virginia. Keam declared his intention to run for the seat. On Election day Mark Keam defeated Republican challenger James E. Hyland. He was sworn into office on January 13, 2010 at the State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia.

In February 2010, Keam and fellow freshman delegate James LeMunyon, a Republican, authored an op-ed in The Washington Post about their introduction of a bill to the General Assembly, which would attempt make the voting records of General Assembly members more accessible to the public. The bill passed the House of Delegates 86 to 13 earlier that month.^[4] A State Senate committee carried the bill over for a year, and it has not yet been voted on.^[5]

He told a local newspaper in his district in January 2010 that he can legislate from an immigrant's point of view; saying that "I want to be able to speak on issues where people say, ‘I’ve never met an immigrant in my life; I don’t know what you guys think about it,’... I want to be able to say, ‘Well, let me tell you what they think about it.’" He has also sponsored another bill which would raise the number of ESL, or "English as a second language" teachers in Virginia’s schools from 17 full-time positions to 30 full-time positions for every 1,000 students.

Keam says he will abstain from voting on any bill which would pose a conflict of interest due to him being on an unpaid leave of absence from Verizon Communications, and he will not introduce any telecommunications legislation to the House of Delegates.^[3]

Keam is one of only two Asian-Americans in the House of Delegates.

Committee assignments

• Finance
• Militia Police and Public Safety

Electoral history

Despite the landslide victory of Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonnell in the Governor's race, James Hyland was not able to take advantage of McDonnell's victory and was defeated by only 350 votes.^[6]

See also

Virginia elections, 2009
Fairfax County, Virginia

References

External links

• Mark Keam campaign site
• Virginia House of Delegates official Bio
• Mark Keam on Facebook
• Biography on Korean American Democrats of Virginia