Michael Signer

Michael "Mike" Signer is the Mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia [1] and an author, advocate, political theorist, and attorney. He is a Virginia Democratic activist and former candidate for lieutenant governor. He is a lecturer at the University of Virginia.

Authorship

Signer is the author of Becoming Madison: The Extraordinary Origins of the Least Likely Founding Father (PublicAffairs 2015), a book about leadership and statesmanship that is also an intellectual and psychological biography of young James Madison and his rivalry with his nemesis Patrick Henry in the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

Signer wrote Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies,[2] a book on democracy, American history, and national security.

Signer has published articles, essays, and book reviews in the University of Richmond Law Review,[3] Corporate Counsel,[4] the Washington Post,[5] the New Republic,[6][7] and the Daily Beast,[8][9] In 2006, he wrote an article on progressive American exceptionalism titled "City on a Hill,"[10] in the inaugural issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He teaches nonfiction writing at Politics and Prose, a bookstore in Washington, D.C.[11]

Signer is the founder and managing principal of Madison Law & Strategy Group, PLLC, where since 2010 he has practiced corporate and regulatory law. He is co-Chair of the Business Law Section of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Bar Association. He also chaired the Pro Bono Committee of the Young Lawyers Conference of the Virginia State Bar.[12]

After graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law, Signer joined the Corporate Department of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr. In 2005, Governor Mark Warner of Virginia appointed Signer as one of two counselors in his gubernatorial office in Richmond, where he advised the governor on issues including executive clemency, civil settlements, FOIA requests, and state contracting policies. He was asked to chair a special committee on the repercussions of DNA analysis in criminal files.

After Governor Warner’s term ended, Signer returned to the Public Policy and Strategy and Government Litigation groups at WilmerHale.

He is a voting rights attorney. He was statewide director for the 2004 program directed by the Democratic National Committee. In 2010, he traveled to Panjshir Province, Afghanistan, as a member of a U.S.AID-sponsored mission to monitor Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections.[13] He also founded and co-chaired the New Electoral Reform Alliance for Virginia.[14]

Public service

He is chair of the Emergency Food Network, president of the Fifeville Neighborhood Association, and a member of the steering committee of the West Main Street Redevelopment Project in Charlottesville. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Center for National Policy. He is a principal and former board member of the Truman National Security Project, and is cChair of the New Dominion Project PAC, a Virginia-based political action committee.

In the 2008 elections, Signer was foreign policy advisor to the John Edwards for President campaign.[15] He was later senior strategist on the 2008 Congressional campaign of Tom Perriello. Signer was senior policy advisor at the Center for American Progress and later that year worked with John Podesta on President-Elect Barack Obama's State Department Transition Team.[16]

In 2009, Signer was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, receiving 21% of the vote.[17]

From 2009 to 2013, Signer was an appointee by Governor Tim Kaine to Virginia's Board of Medicine. He was a member of the finance committee for Terry McAuliffe for governor and later served as chair of Governor-elect McAuliffe's Transition Council on Homeland Security.[12] Earlier in his career, he was legislative aide to then-Delegate Creigh Deeds.

Signer created an Advisory Council on Innovation and Technology to link stakeholders in the Charlottesville technology sector. Governor Terry McAuliffe appointed him to the Council on Virginia's Future. During Signer's tenure as Mayor, Charlottesville was named by Entrepreneur as the #4 City in the U.S. for entrepreneurship.[18]

During Signer's tenure, the city council created an Open Data policy[19] and required agencies to register voters to vote online.[20]

As Mayor, Signer worked with the city council to create a Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces to address a controversy over Confederate statues in Charlottesville. The commission aimed to change the story in Charlottesville and tell the full history of race in the city through Charlottesville's public spaces.[21] Charlottesville also hired the city's first African-American police chief during Signer's tenure.[22]

Instruction

Signer teaches an advanced undergraduate seminar titled "Leadership, Statesmanship, and Democracy" at the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia[23] and a seminar titled "Race, Policy and the Past" for the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. For several years, he was visiting full professor at Virginia Tech’s Master’s Program in Public and International Affairs Program.

Early life and education

Signer graduated from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia[24] and magna cum laude from Princeton University. He earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was a Clerk at the Legal Aid Justice Center and Research Assistant to Professors A.E. Dick Howard and Michael Klarman. He was also president of the Law Democrats and co-founder of the UVA Chapter of the American Constitution Society. While at UVA, he also founded the UVA Coalition for Progress on Race in the wake of a racially motivated attack on a fellow student, and went on to co-found the Center for the Study of Race and Law.

Personal

Signer lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with his wife, Emily Blout, and their twin sons.

References

  1. ↑ "Mike Signer, Mayor, City of Charlottesville". Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  2. ↑ "Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies: Michael Signer: 9780230606241: Amazon.com: Books". amazon.com. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  3. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-06-05. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  4. ↑ http://www.corpcounsel.com/id=1202475339062
  5. ↑ "‘Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit’ by Dane Huckelbridge". Washington Post. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  6. ↑ Michael Signer. "Michael Signer Reviews Robert W. Merry's "Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians" - The New Republic". The New Republic. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  7. ↑ Michael Signer. "The Ironic Populist: How Herman Cain’s Insurgency Marks the Beginning of a New Political Era". The New Republic. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  8. ↑ "Why The Tea Party Won’t Go Away And More Wisdom From Matt Kibbe". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  9. ↑ "How to Beat the Demagogues". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  10. ↑ "Michael Signer for Democracy Journal: A City on a Hill". Democracy Journal. Archived from the original on 23 February 2015. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  11. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  12. 1 2 "Madison Law & Strategy - Michael Signer". madisonpllc.com. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  13. ↑ Signer, Mike (2010-09-09). "Election Protection in Afghanistan". Huffington Post.
  14. ↑ The Washington Post. "A. Michael Signer". Archived from the original on October 4, 2012. Retrieved 28 February 2011.
  15. ↑ "It's a Scary World. Don't Campaign Reporters Care?". washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  16. ↑ Shipman, Tim (2008-10-18). "Barack Obama's team is briefed by Bush staff after warnings about a terrorist attack". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 28 February 2011.
  17. ↑ Virginia Elections: Results Archived 2009-07-13 at the Wayback Machine.. Accessed February 17, 2015.
  18. ↑ https://news.virginia.edu/content/charlottesville-named-no-4-us-entrepreneurship
  19. ↑ http://www.cvilletomorrow.org/news/article/25034-charlottesville-city-council-endorses-open-data/
  20. ↑ http://www.newsplex.com/content/news/Charlottesville-council-votes-for-online-voter-registration-393307891.html
  21. ↑ http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/virginia-civil-war-monuments-new-south-214248
  22. ↑ http://www.c-ville.com/historic-hire-al-thomas-charlottesvilles-first-black-police-chief/
  23. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  24. ↑ "3 Dem Gubernatorial Candidates Clash in Richmond". Falls Church News-Press. Falls Church News-Press. 2009-02-15. Archived from the original on 2011-07-16. Retrieved 2009-02-12.
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