Cumberland Today-Summer 01 - University of the Cumberlands

Alumni
SPOTLIGHT
R
obert Michael Duncan ‘71, currently resides
in Inez, Ky. The following article was written
by Frank E. Lockwood, and was published
in the Lexington Herald-Leader on
May 14, 2001. The article is reprinted by permission.
WASHINGTON — The President calls him
“Dunc.”
He knows every prominent Republican in
Washington, and he has his own office on
Capitol Hill.
But Republican National Committee treasurer
Robert M. “Mike” Duncan won’t be trading his home
in Martin County for a million-dollar rowhouse.
“I like it here,” said Duncan, “but this is not real.”
For Duncan, the chairman of Inez Deposit Bank, the real world is
in Eastern Kentucky, far away from the monuments and the marble.
That’s where Duncan’s grandfather was a postal worker, where
his father owned a country store, where he grew up and discovered
the power of politics — as a student body president at Cumberland
College and president of the Kentucky College Republicans.
It’s the place that called him back: after law school at University
of Kentucky and, later, after a yearlong fellowship at the White
House during the administration of George W. Bush’s father.
Even now, with a friend occupying the White House, the pull of
the mountains remains strong.
So Duncan telecommutes when he can, using his Palm
Pilot, phone and personal computer to track the Republican
Party’s money.
The rest of the time, Duncan, who took over the four-year post
in January after being selected by top national Republicans, flies
over or drives through the Appalachians and through the
Shenandoah Valley.
During Bush’s first 100 days in office, Duncan was in
Washington 40 days, watching over the party’s coffers.
There is a lot of money to watch. Each day, the RNC receives
about 7,600 donations. From there, the money is doled out to
Republican candidates and organizations across the country.
In 2000, the presidential election year, the RNC’s budget was
$253 million. In 2001, an off year, the budget is still $78 million.
The RNC has about 165 employees and occupies a white-brick
four-story building near the Capitol. It also has a mini-museum featuring
an Abraham Lincoln belt buckle, a “Pretty Girls for Nixon”
button, a Barry Goldwater for President cigarette lighter and a hat
Martin County Bank Chairman is GOP Power-Broker
once worn by Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In one room, phone solicitors ask Republicans to
send money. In another, workers stack up the checks.
“It’s like a mini-corporation. A pretty good-sized
corporation actually,” Duncan said.
It’s a big shop, but he knows most of the workers’
names.
On the fourth floor is Duncan’s office. His
shelves are packed with political mementos: a mouse
pad from Centre College vice presidential debate, a
baseball autographed by U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, and
pictures of Duncan with Colin Powell, Margaret
Robert Michael Duncan Thatcher, Bob Dole and George W. Bush.
He has his own parking space in the basement
garage, but often takes the subway instead.
Next door to the Republican headquarters, there’s a post hangout,
the Capitol Hill Club, where the waiters serve bottled water
from the mountains of France and the walls are covered with paintings
of presidents.
On a day last week when Duncan visited, former Interior
Secretary Manuel Lujan had lunch and Chief Justice William
Rehnquist visited. A West Virginia congresswoman stopped to chat
about the Kentucky Derby.
Duncan had been coming here for decades, and he’s met most of
the presidents whose pictures are on the walls.
He ran Bunning’s successful 1998 campaign. He considered running
for governor in 1999 but ended up serving as a regional chairman
for George W. Bush instead. He was responsible for Indiana,
Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia; four of the five went
for Bush.
He doesn’t often grab headlines, but he gets things done, says
Kentucky GOP Chairwoman Ellen Williams.
“He’s the fellow that can make the difference,” she says. “It’s not
always the fellow at the center of the photograph that can change
the direction of a community or a state or a nation.”
Duncan also works cheap; he receives no pay for his work and
pays his own expenses, Williams said.
Duncan also pushes hard to help young Kentuckians who want
to work in government. He has mentored scores of college students
from Eastern Kentucky, helping them get through college and
encouraging them to come home to Appalachia, said Republican
National Committeewoman Cathy Bailey of Louisville.
“Obviously he takes this message of compassionate conservatism
to heart and puts it into day-to-day practice,” Bailey said.
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