Michael Steele Bio
Michael Stephen Steele (born October 19, 1958) is an American politician, attorney, and political commentator. He served as the seventh Lieutenant Governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007 and as Chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 2009 to 2011, becoming the first African American to hold either position. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Georgetown University Law Center, Steele built a career that spans law, state-level executive office, national party leadership, and broadcast commentary. Since leaving the RNC, he has remained a prominent voice in American political analysis and writing.
Early Life and Background
Michael Stephen 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, and his mother, who had been born into a sharecropping family in South Carolina, worked for minimum wage as a laundress to support her children. She later married John Turner, a truck driver, and the family was raised in the Petworth neighborhood of Northwest, Washington, D.C., a community Steele has described as stable and racially integrated.
Steele attended Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C., where he participated in the glee club, the National Honor Society, and several drama productions, and was elected student council president during his senior year. In 1981, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in international studies from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. After graduation, he worked for one year as a high school teacher at Malvern Preparatory School in Pennsylvania, teaching world history and economics. He then spent three years preparing for the Catholic priesthood at the Augustinian Friars Seminary at Villanova University, leaving prior to ordination to enter public service.
Path to US Politics
Steele earned a Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown Law School in 1991 and was admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania after initially failing the Maryland bar exam. From 1991 to 1997, he worked in Washington, D.C., as a corporate securities associate at the international law firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, specializing in financial investments for Wall Street underwriters. He later left the firm to found the Steele Group, a business and legal consulting firm, and subsequently joined the international law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae as a partner.
Steele’s political rise began in the 1990s. He became chairman of the Prince George’s County Republican Central Committee and was a founding member of the centrist Republican Leadership Council in 1993. In 1995, the Maryland Republican Party selected him as their Republican Man of the Year. In December 2000, he was elected chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, becoming the first African American ever elected chairman of a state Republican Party. He also served as an alternate delegate to the 1996 Republican National Convention and a delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention.
Michael Steele Career
Early Career (1990s–2002)
During the 1990s, Steele established himself in legal practice and Republican politics. After clerking his way up at major international law firms, he co-founded the Republican Leadership Council, a political action committee described as fiscally conservative and socially inclusive. He made numerous appearances as a political pundit on Fox News and other media outlets, building a public profile that would later support his run for statewide office.
In 2002, Robert Ehrlich, the Republican candidate for Maryland governor, selected Steele as his running mate for lieutenant governor. The Ehrlich-Steele ticket won the November 2002 general election, 51 percent to 48 percent, even though Maryland had not elected a Republican governor in nearly four decades. Steele’s most prominent efforts for the Ehrlich administration included reforming the state’s Minority Business Enterprise program and chairing the Governor’s Commission on Quality Education in Maryland.
National Stage Breakthrough (2003–2008)
As Lieutenant Governor from 2003 to 2007, Steele chaired the Minority Business Enterprise task force, actively promoting an expansion of affirmative action in the corporate world. In 2005, he was named an Aspen Institute Rodel Fellow in Public Leadership and received the Bethune-DuBois Institute Award for his efforts to improve education in Maryland. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, he delivered the Republican counterpoint to Barack Obama’s keynote address, marking his first major national exposure, and in April 2005, President George W. Bush appointed him to the U.S. delegation at the investiture of Pope Benedict XVI in Vatican City.
Steele formally announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate on October 25, 2005, and won the Republican nomination without serious primary opposition. He lost the general election to Democrat Ben Cardin on November 7, 2006, 44 percent to 54 percent. One day after conceding defeat, he was reported to be interested in the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. In February 2007, Steele became chairman of GOPAC, a political action committee that supports state and local Republican campaigns and trains future candidates, succeeding former U.S. Congressman J.C. Watts. He also rejoined the international law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf as a partner in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office. He coined the phrase Drill Baby Drill during the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota.
Republican National Committee Era (2009–2011)
Steele launched his campaign for the RNC chairmanship on November 24, 2008, and on January 30, 2009, he won the position in the sixth round of voting, with 91 votes to Katon Dawson’s 77. Selected in the aftermath of President Obama’s election, Steele was seen as a charismatic counter to the nation’s first Black president. In the fall of 2010, he launched the Fire Pelosi Bus Tour, which covered more than 14,000 miles, visited 48 states and over 100 cities, and encouraged Republican turnout in the midterm elections.
Under Steele’s leadership, the RNC broke fundraising records by raising more than $198 million during the 2010 congressional cycle. In November 2010, Republicans won 63 House seats, the largest pickup since 1938, and retook control of the House, along with six Senate seats, seven governorships, and over 600 state legislative seats. In December 2010, Steele declared his intention to run for re-election as RNC chairman, but he withdrew from the race after the fourth ballot on January 14, 2011. After seven rounds of balloting, Reince Priebus was elected to succeed him.
Notable Events and Milestones
Steele’s career-defining moments include becoming the first African American elected chairman of a state Republican Party in 2000, the first African American Lieutenant Governor of Maryland in 2003, and the first African American chairman of the Republican National Committee in 2009. He has also drawn attention for his candid public commentary, including a 2009 remark on CBS’s Face the Nation that he, rather than Rush Limbaugh, was the de facto leader of the Republican Party, and his later critical public commentary about President Donald Trump, including a 2018 MSNBC interview in which he called Trump racist. His January 4, 2010 book, Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda, was published by Regnery Publishing.
Michael Steele Career Wins
Michael Steele’s career is marked by a series of historic firsts and significant electoral accomplishments within the Republican Party, particularly as a barrier-breaking African American leader at both the state and national levels.
National Committee Chairmanship
Steele’s most prominent party leadership achievement came on January 30, 2009, when he won the RNC chairmanship in the sixth round of voting. His tenure coincided with the 2010 midterm cycle, in which the RNC raised more than $198 million and Republicans won 63 House seats, the largest pickup since 1938, along with six Senate seats, seven governorships, and over 600 state legislative seats.
Other Wins & Achievements
Steele’s other notable accomplishments include his selection as Maryland’s 1995 Republican Man of the Year, his designation as an Aspen Institute Rodel Fellow in Public Leadership in 2005, and his receipt of the Bethune-DuBois Institute Award that same year for his work to improve quality education in Maryland. In 2018, he was named a faculty fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, where he leads seminars.
Michael Steele Family
Family Background and Political Lineage
Michael Stephen Steele was born at Andrews Air Force Base and adopted as an infant by William and Maebell Steele. His father died in 1962, and his mother, originally from a South Carolina sharecropping family, worked for minimum wage as a laundress while raising her children. She later married John Turner, a truck driver, and the family settled in the Petworth neighborhood of Northwest, Washington, D.C. Steele’s sister, Monica Turner, later married and divorced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson.
Personal Life
Michael Stephen Steele has been married to Andrea Derritt since 1985. He earned a BA from Johns Hopkins University in 1981, studied for the Catholic priesthood at Villanova University, and later received his JD from Georgetown University Law Center in 1991. After leaving the RNC in 2011, he was hired by MSNBC as a regular political analyst and became a columnist for the online magazine The Root. In 2018, he was named a faculty fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. In 2020, he endorsed Joe Biden for president and appeared in an advertisement for The Lincoln Project. In 2024, he co-hosted The Weekend on MSNBC and, in May 2025, began co-hosting The Weeknight.