Steele at ease as Republican, comfortable on campaign trail
Of working-class family, strong Catholic values
By Tim Craig
Sun Staff

October 27, 2002

It was his big break.

A former congressman gave Michael S. Steele, then a law student, a free ticket to the 1988 Prince George's County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner. Steele, who had just moved from Washington to Largo, wanted to plunge into local partisan politics.

"I got to the event, and I was all psyched to be there," said Steele, who was already a low-level volunteer for the national Republican Party. "I was thinking, 'Wow. Maryland, they've got a state party, they have a county party. They have an organization.'"

But within minutes Steele felt a crushing disappointment as he was largely ostracized at the gathering. Only the keynote speaker - Elizabeth Dole, who was then transportation secretary - bothered to talk to him.

"I was not welcome at all," recalls Steele, who is now the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. "I was an outsider, a new face."

His friends and family told him the icy reception was a clear sign that, as a black man, he was not welcome in the Republican Party. But Steele decided he was not giving up that easily.

"A lot of people said they would have just walked away, but I had a different conclusion," Steele said. "I knew the only way to change the Republican Party was to get involved and turn this party around to make it more warm and welcoming."

Now, more than a decade later, Steele is one election away from possibly becoming the second-highest-ranking Republican official in the state and the first African-American popularly elected to statewide office.

Steele, 44, said his life story - from childhood, to college, to seminary, to the corporate world - makes him uniquely qualified to be on the Republican ticket with Robert. L. Ehrlich Jr.
 

Inspired by Reagan

It's the same life story that caused him to become a Republican - a party he has identified with since the 1980 presidential election, when Ronald Reagan was running for his first term as president. He said he was attracted to Reagan's folksy brand of conservatism.

"I know for a lot of blacks, they hear Ronald Reagan and they say, 'Oh, my God,'" Steele said. "But if you listened to the man he made a lot of sense, he talked about the core values my mother and grandmother talked about.

"For me, the [Republican] party was a very, very comfortable fit."

Steele takes the same level of comfort onto the campaign trail. Whether he is talking to sportsmen on the Eastern Shore or African-Americans in Baltimore, he knows how to tailor his message in an attempt to maximize its effect on voters.

Steele appears particularly at ease campaigning in the African-American community. During a recent campaign swing through Baltimore, Steele visited several West Baltimore nursing homes and pleaded with the black audience to give the GOP ticket a chance.

He talked to the elderly audience - most of them lifelong Democrats - using words such as "we" and "us" and phrases such as "brother" and "sister." He even said the word "blunt," which is a street term for a marijuana cigarette.

"My party has not been the most user-friendly to our people," Steele told a dozen people at the Liberty Village Senior Center. "The reality is this is a new day for our party because I am in the leadership of this party."

He goes on to tell how a working-class kid from a family of Democrats living in the Petworth neighborhood of Northwest Washington now finds himself on the GOP ticket for governor.

Born in 1958, Steele was adopted as an infant by Maebelle Turner and William Steele, who migrated from the South to work in Washington.

His adoptive father died of alcoholism at the age of 36 when Steele was 4. Steele's mother worked long hours earning minimum wage at a laundry company to support the family.

Steele's mother remarried a few years later, but she remained the head of the household, raising Steele and his sister, Monica Turner Tyson.

"It was your typical African-American household. ... The women are very, very, strong." Steele said.

He and his sister grew up in a strict household based on his parents' Catholic faith and a strong work ethic.

"We didn't look at work in our house as a chore," said Tyson, 36, whose estranged husband is boxer Mike Tyson. "It was just something we knew we had to do."

A product of Catholic schools, Steele attended Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, a school that catered mostly to lower- and middle-class African-Americans.

He excelled in academics, taking a particular liking to British history, and was a standout thespian. He also played soccer and took a leadership role in student government.

"He was Mr. Charisma," said Jim Mumford, principal of Archbishop Carroll, who was one of Steele's teachers. "He was very popular, very respected, and it was clear he had intellectual gifts."

During Steele's senior year - the same year he was class president - the student body voted him "man of the year."

"He approached everything with deep spirituality," said the Rev. Edson Wood, the former dean of students at Archbishop Carroll, now chaplain at the U.S. Military Academy.

Steele received a partial scholarship to attend the Johns Hopkins University, where he majored in international relations. Steele's mother, who worked extra hours to pay the remainder of her son's tuition, had wanted him to go to Georgetown.

"When I told her I got into Hopkins, she looked at me and said, 'Is it Catholic?'" Steele recalls. "I said 'no' and she looked at me, shook her head and walked away."
 

Testing the priesthood

At Hopkins, Steele said, he was a typical college student but during his senior year he faced a "pivotal crossroads."

"If I ever was going to be a priest, that was the time," said Steele, noting that he had been intrigued with the priesthood since he was 4. "It was a calling, it was part of who I was."

In 1981, he entered the Augustinian Seminary in Villanova, Pa.

Steele appears somewhat uncomfortable talking about his time in the seminary. But to hear him explain it, he was there to prove to himself that he shouldn't become a priest.

He left the seminary in 1983 after coming to what he called a "simple" decision.

"It came down to 'Am I called to serve the people of God as a priest or in a business suit?'"

But Steele's faith has played a major role in shaping his political philosophy on social issues.

Unlike Ehrlich, he is opposed to the death penalty. He is also opposed to abortion. Steele is even reluctant to make exceptions for women who have been raped or are victims of incest.

"I don't think a man or woman should be in a position of playing God," said Steele, adding that if he were governor he would not seek laws to restrict access to abortion.

Abortion-rights supporters have used Steele's position to hammer at Ehrlich, who they say showed his true feelings on abortion by selecting him.

"Michael Steele is going to be a heartbeat away from being governor," said Dan Clemens, chairman of Planned Parenthood of Maryland. "That means a woman's right to choose is heartbeat away from being taken away."

Steele does break with the church's position in agreeing with Ehrlich's plan to allow slot machines at racetracks.

After leaving the seminary, Steele married Andrea Derritt, 43, whom he met at Hopkins. They have two sons, Michael, 14, and Drew, 11.

He also began working as a law clerk in Washington while earning his law degree from Georgetown University.

Steele then joined the Washington law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton, but left the $200,000-a-year job after six years when he realized he would never become a partner.

Almost immediately, he was hired as counsel for the Mills Corp., a Virginia real estate development company.

While pursuing his legal career, Steele followed through on the pledge he made to himself after the 1988 Lincoln Day dinner and became active in local Republican politics.

After several years of grass-roots involvement - sometimes looked down upon by the old-guard leadership - Steele won a seat on the Prince George's central committee in 1994. A few months later, he was named chairman of the party in a county where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 6-1 ratio.

Republicans said Steele has made the GOP more of a force in the county, even though the percentage of registered Republicans in the county declined during the 1990s.

"He worked very well in getting people organized and mobilized in spite of the odds," said Virginia Kellogg, a Prince George's Republican activist. Steele also became a nemesis to the county's Democratic establishment.

In 1996, he led the campaign to defeat a ballot initiative pushed by County Executive Wayne K. Curry that would have repealed the county's property tax cap.

Despite Curry's raising $400,000 to get the initiative passed, more than 60 percent of voters voted against it.

Steele's success caught the eye of leaders in the state Republican Party. In 1998, the Republican candidate for governor, Ellen R. Sauerbrey, recruited him to run for comptroller.

Despite grumbling from conservatives, Sauerbrey expected Steele to add ethnic diversity to the GOP slate and give the Democratic candidate, William Donald Schaefer, a run for his money. But Steele finished third in the GOP primary.

Steele says the campaign also caused him to leave his job at the Mills Corp. after 18 months. He said the campaign was "freeing," and three months after the primary he decided to start a consulting company, The Steele Group, which advises on networking strategies.

He acknowledges that his company has not been successful and has been at times a financial burden on his family. According to financial disclosure reports, Steele's company has never turned a profit.

Last year, two banks filed notice of intent to take liens on Steele's Largo townhouse, appraised at $115,000, after he and his wife missed several mortgage payments. He said he has caught up on his payments.

"It was a tough juggle, but I survived through it," Steele said. So that he can earn a living during the campaign, the Maryland Republican Party is paying Steele $5,000 a month to advise the party. Some Democrats have said the payments amount to Steele being a hired candidate.

Steele blames his financial difficulties partly on the energy he has put into being the unpaid chairman of the state party.

He became the only African-American state Republican chairman in the country in 2000 after he campaigned for almost a year to win the job.
 

Judged a success

By most accounts, Steele's tenure at the state GOP has been a success. Besides giving the party a new face, Republicans say, Steele boosted fund raising and laid the groundwork for Ehrlich's campaign this year.

He is also the first Maryland GOP chairman to serve on the Republican National Committee board of directors.

"He is probably the most active chairman we have ever had," said Paul Ellington, the executive director of the state Republican Party.

Steele said his biggest accomplishment was suing to have Gov. Parris N. Glendening's redistricting plan thrown out by the Court of Appeals.

In his role as chairman, Steele has also taken positions that put him at odds with the majority of leaders in his party. He supported the General Assembly this year when it restored voting rights to some felons. He also supports affirmative action.

If elected, Steele says, he wants to focus on economic development, particularly in the state's majority-black jurisdictions of Baltimore City and Prince George's County.

At the Liberty Village senior center, the voters seemed intrigued by Steele and his message, although many say they view him as a token candidate.

Still, some voters there said they were impressed with his life story and message.

"I'm going to vote for him and that Ehrlich," said M.W. Bradley, 79, a retired cosmetologist who says she has never voted for a Republican before. "But I might regret it."
 
 

Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun