Robert M. (Mike) Duncan
RNC General CounselRobert M. (Mike) Duncan was confirmed as General Counsel of the Republican National Committee in July 2002 and January 2005. He previously was elected Treasurer of the RNC in January 2001. Duncan, in his fourth term as National Committeeman from Kentucky, has served the party at every level from precinct captain, county chairman, state chairman, and national officer. He has been a delegate to the 1972, 1976, 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004 Republican National Conventions and is one of the few persons ever to serve on the four standing convention committees. Duncan was elected chairman of the Convention Credentials Committee in 2000 after chairing the RNC Committee on Contests for the Convention. He served as General Counsel to the 2004 Convention.
Mike Duncan has worked for Republican candidates for local, state and national office for over thirty years. In 1998 he took a leave of absence from his business and chaired Jim Bunning’s winning U.S. Senate race. Duncan is a long-time supporter and fundraiser for Senator Mitch McConnell and has worked in various campaign positions for Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. In 2000 he chaired the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Duncan was the Central States Chairman for the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign, working in Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. Duncan chaired the transition team for Governor-Elect Ernie Fletcher, the first Republican elected Governor in Kentucky in 36 years.
A civic capitalist, Mike Duncan is active in numerous professional and nonprofit organizations. He served as chairman of a state university and a private college. President Bush appointed him to the President’s Commission on White House Fellows in 2001 and nominated him to the Corporation for National and Community Service in 2005. Recently the U.S. Secretary of Commerce appointed Duncan to the Advisory Committee of the Strengthening America’s Communities Initiative. Duncan is a Trustee of the Christian Appalachian Project, the fifteenth largest private social services agency in America. Professionally, Duncan was President of the Kentucky Bankers Association and a Director of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank Cincinnati Branch. In 1989-90, during a sabbatical, he worked in the Bush White House as assistant Director of Public Liaison. His public service has been recognized with several distinctions including honorary degrees from Cumberland College and the College of the Ozarks.
Mike Duncan and his wife Joanne are 1974 graduates of the University of Kentucky College of Law. They live in Inez, Kentucky and have one child, Rob, an Assistant United States Attorney in Lexington, Kentucky. The Duncan’s are the principal owners of two community banks with five offices in eastern Kentucky. Their student-mentoring program, in its twenty