Michael Malbin

Michael J. Malbin is a professor in Department of Political Science, State University of New York at Albany, and has also been a staff member in various [[U.S. Republican Party organizations.   His speciaties include legislative politics, elections, and campaign finance as well as a course entitled Founding the American National Government, and runs the department's Washington Semester Program in the spring (www.ualbany-dc.net) Since 1999, he has also been executive director of The Campaign Finance Institute, a nonpartisan research and educational institution affiliated with George Washington University in Washington D.C.

Prof. Malbin's recent books include The Election After Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (forthcoming 2005), Life After Reform: When the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Meets Politics (2003) and the latest edition of Vital Statistics on Congress, which he co-authors with Norman Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann.

Campaign finance reform
In 2005, he testified to the Democratic National Committee, on behalf of the Campaign Finance Institute, urging reform of public financing of elections.

Previous research
During 1997-98, Prof. Malbin was a Guest Scholar at The Brookings Institution, where he finished his work on The Day After Reform: Sobering Campaign Finance Lessons from the American States (co-authored by Thomas L. Gais.) For several years before that, he was director of the Center for Legislative and Political Studies at SUNY's Rockefeller Institute, where he was the principal investigator in for Presidential Congressional Relations for a collaborative, multi-university grant funded by the National Science Foundation.

Politican and government
Before joing the University of Albany's faculty, he worked for the Iran-Contra Committee, where he was the primary author of the Minority Report. He also worked for the House Republican Conference and as speech writer to Dick Cheney as Secretary of Defense.

He was also a presidential appointee to the National Humanities Council from 1990-94 and has been a visiting professor at Yale University. Before government service, he was a resident fellow at The American Enterprise Institute (1977-86) and a reporter for National Journal (1973-77).

Education

 * Ph.D. Cornell University, 1973