Mr. David A. Keene:
Since December 1984, David A. Keene has been the Chairman of the American Conservative Union, the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots conservative lobbying organization. Until most recently, he also served as the Chairman of the ACU Foundation, the organization that oversees CPAC, the largest gathering of conservatives in the country, exceeding 7,000 participants in 2008.
Keene began his political career early, already National Chairman of Young Americans for Freedom while at the University of Wisconsin Law School. He left Wisconsin to become a Special Assistant to Vice President Spiro Agnew and then Executive Assistant to New York Senator Jim Buckley. In 1976, he served as the Southern Regional Political Director for Ronald Reagan’s Presidential campaign.
He later served as National Political Director for George Bush’s 1980 Presidential race, as well as Senior Advisor to former Senator Bob Dole. He has been a John F. Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, a First Amendment Fellow at Vanderbilt University’s Freedom Forum, and a member of the Board of Visitors at Duke University’s School of Public Policy. He continues to advise and participate in campaigns across the country including his most recent role as senior advisor to the Mitt Romney for President Campaign.
Keene is also currently a Managing Associate at the Carmen Group, a Washington lobbying firm. He has written extensively on U.S. politics and is a regular guest on political talk shows, Boston and National Public Radio and various news segments. He wrote a regular column for the Boston Globe for many years, and for the last ten years has written a weekly column for The Hill, a newspaper covering Congress. He is a regular contributor to the American Spectator, Human Events, and The Washington Times, among others.