Michael Stephen Steele (born October 19, 1958) is an American politician, attorney, and political commentator who served as the seventh lieutenant governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007 and as chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 2009 until 2011; he was the first African-American to hold either office.
In the 1990s, Steele worked as a partner at the international law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae and co-founded the Republican Leadership Council, a "fiscally conservative and socially inclusive" political action committee. Steele also made numerous appearances as a political pundit on Fox News and other media outlets prior to running for public office. As lieutenant governor, Steele chaired the Minority Business Enterprise task force, actively promoting an expansion of affirmative action in the corporate world.
Steele made an unsuccessful run in the 2006 U.S. Senate election in Maryland, losing to Democrat Ben Cardin. From 2007 to 2009, Steele was chairman of GOPAC, a 527 organization that trains and supports Republican candidates in state and local elections. After serving one term as RNC Chair from 2009 to 2011, he lost his bid for a second term and was succeeded by Reince Priebus.
Since 2011, Steele has contributed as a regular columnist for online magazine The Root and as a political analyst for MS NOW, where he began co-hosting the prime time program The Weeknight in 2025. In 2018, he became a Senior Fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. In 2020, he formally endorsed Joe Biden for the presidency, after previously starring in an advertisement aired by The Lincoln Project.
Steele was born on October 19, 1958, at Andrews Air Force Base in Prince George's County, Maryland, and was adopted as an infant by William and Maebell Steele. His father died in 1962. His mother, who had been born into a sharecropping family in South Carolina, worked for minimum wage as a laundress to raise her children. After Steele's father died, she ignored her friends' appeals to apply for public assistance, later telling Steele, "I didn't want the government raising my children." She later married John Turner, a truck driver. Michael and his sister, Monica Turner, were raised in the Petworth neighborhood of Northwest, Washington, D.C., which Steele has described as a small, stable and racially integrated community that insulated him from some of the problems elsewhere in the city. Steele's sister later married and divorced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson.
Steele attended Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C., participating in the glee club, the National Honor Society and many of the school's drama productions. During his senior year, he was elected student council president. In 1981, Steele received a BA degree in international studies from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore City, Maryland.
After graduating from Hopkins, Steele worked for one year as a high school teacher at Malvern Preparatory School in Pennsylvania, teaching classes in world history and economics. He spent three years preparing for the Catholic priesthood at the Augustinian Friars Seminary at Villanova University, which he left prior to ordination to enter civil service.
Steele subsequently attended Georgetown Law School where he graduated with a JD degree in 1991. He failed the Maryland bar exam, but passed the Pennsylvania exam. From 1991 to 1997, Steele worked in Washington, D.C., as a corporate securities associate for the Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton international law firm, where he specialized in financial investments for Wall Street underwriters. He left the firm to found the Steele Group, a business and legal consulting firm.
After joining the Republican Party, he became chairman of the Prince George's County Republican Central Committee. He was a founding member of the centrist, fiscally conservative and socially inclusive Republican Leadership Council in 1993 but left in 2008, citing disagreements over endorsing primary candidates. In 1995, the Maryland Republican Party selected him as their Republican Man of the Year. He worked on several political campaigns, was an alternate delegate to the 1996 Republican National Convention and a delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention. Steele's Maryland biography identifies him as a member of the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity. In December 2000, he was elected chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, becoming the first African-American ever to be elected chairman of any state Republican Party.
Lieutenant Governor of Maryland
In 2002, Robert Ehrlich, who was running for Maryland governor, selected Steele as his running mate for lieutenant governor. The campaign was waged against Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who was running for governor, and Charles R. Larson who was running for lieutenant governor.
In the September primary election, Ehrlich and Steele had no serious opposition. In the November 2002 general election, the Republican Ehrlich-Steele ticket won, 51 percent to 48 percent, even though Maryland traditionally votes Democratic and had not elected a Republican Governor in almost 40 years. The Townsend-Larson campaign had been tainted by outgoing Democratic governor Parris Glendening's marital problems and backlash due to his strict enforcement of environmental regulations.
Steele's most prominent efforts for the Ehrlich administration were reforming the state's Minority Business Enterprise program and chairing the Governor's Commission on Quality Education in Maryland. Steele garnered criticism for his failure to oppose Ehrlich's reinstitution of the death penalty, despite claims of racial inequities in the use of the death penalty, Steele's own religious beliefs and his prior anti-death penalty pronouncements. In 2005, Steele was named an Aspen Institute Rodel Fellow in Public Leadership and was awarded the Bethune-DuBois Institute Award for his continuing efforts to improve the quality education in Maryland.
At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Steele gave the Republican counterpoint to Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address; it was Steele's first major national exposure. In April 2005, President Bush chose him to be a member of the U.S. delegation at the investiture of Pope Benedict XVI in Vatican City.
When Paul Sarbanes, Maryland's longest-serving United States Senator, announced in March 2005 that he would not be a candidate for re-election in 2006, top state and national Republican officials began pressing Steele to become their party's nominee for the seat. In April 2005, The Baltimore Sun announced the results of a poll it conducted, stating that Steele would run statistically neck and neck against either former NAACP head Kweisi Mfume, or Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin of Baltimore County. Steele formally announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate on October 25, 2005.
Steele won the Republican nomination after facing little opposition in the primary. His opponents were Democrat Ben Cardin and Independent Kevin Zeese (who was endorsed by the Green and Libertarian parties). The three candidates participated in three debates. Cardin primarily attacked Steele over his close relations with President Bush. Steele focused on low taxes, less government spending, free markets and national security. Steele lost the general election to Cardin on November 7, 2006, 44% to Cardin's 54%. Steele's former campaign finance chairman later alleged improprieties in Steele's handling of campaign funds, which Steele denied.
One day after Steele conceded defeat in the senate election, Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post reported that Steele was hoping to succeed Ken Mehlman as the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, who had the endorsement of President George W. Bush, got the position. In February 2007, Steele became chairman of GOPAC, a political action committee that helps fund state and local Republican campaigns around the country and is responsible for training future Republican candidates. He succeeded former U.S. Congressman J.C. Watts, a fellow black Republican. In April 2007, Steele joined the international law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf, as a partner in the firm's Washington, D.C. office.