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Seminars at Steamboat concludes with debate moderated by NPR’s Ron Elving

Jennie Lay
For the Steamboat Pilot & Today
If you go What: “Future of the Democratic and Republican Parties” with Elaine Kamarck, Morris Fiorina and Ron Elving When: 5:30 p.m. Monday Where: Strings Music Pavilion Cost: Free. Tickets will be handed out at 4:45 p.m.

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — The Seminars at Steamboat season concludes Monday with a policy debate between Elaine Kamarck, of the Brookings Institution, and Morris Fiorina, of the Hoover Institution.

The “Future of the Democratic and Republican Parties,” which will be moderated by National Public Radio Washington correspondent Ron Elving, starts at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the Strings Music Pavilion. Doors open at 4:45 p.m., when free tickets will be distributed.

Elaine Kamarck

Kamarck is a senior fellow in the governance studies program as well as the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. She is an expert on American electoral politics as well as government innovation and reform in the U.S., Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations and developing countries. She focuses her research on the presidential nomination system and American politics and has worked in many American presidential campaigns.



Kamarck is the author of “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates” and “Why Presidents Fail And How They Can Succeed Again.” She has been a member of the Democratic National Committee and the DNC’s Rules Committee since 1997.

She has participated actively in four presidential campaigns and in 10 nominating conventions, including two Republican conventions. In the 1980s, she was one of the founders of the New Democrat movement that helped elect Bill Clinton.



Kamarck served in the White House from 1993 to 1997, when she created and managed the Clinton Administration’s National Performance Review, also known as the “reinventing government initiative.” Kamarck conducts research on 21st century government, the role of the internet in political campaigns, homeland defense, intelligence reorganization, and governmental reform and innovation. She is a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and makes regular appearances in the media.

Morris Fiorina

Fiorina is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. His current research focuses on elections and public opinion, with particular attention to the quality of representation: how well the positions of elected officials reflect the preferences of the public.

Fiorina has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. He has served on the editorial boards of more than a dozen journals on political science, law, political economy and public policy.

From 1986 to 1990 Fiorina was chairman of the Board of Overseers of the American National Election Studies. He has published numerous articles and books on national politics including “Congress — Keystone of the Washington Establishment,” “Retrospective Voting in American National Elections” and “Divided Government.” “The Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral Independence,” coauthored with Bruce Cain and John Ferejohn, won the 1988 Richard F. Fenno Prize. He is also coeditor of Continuity and Change in House Elections.

The third edition of his 2004 groundbreaking book “Culture War: The Myth of a Polarized America” with Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope was published in 2011. Most recently he coedited “Can We Talk? The Rise of Rude, Nasty, Stubborn Politics.”

Ron Elving

Ron Elving is senior editor and correspondent on the Washington desk for NPR News, where he is frequently heard as a news analyst and writes regularly for NPR.org. During his tenure as the manager of NPR’s Washington coverage, NPR reporters were awarded every major recognition available in radio journalism, including the Dirksen Award for Congressional Reporting and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Elving was previously the political editor for USA Today and for Congressional Quarterly. He has been published by the Brookings Institution and the American Political Science Association, and contributed chapters on Obama and the media and on the media role in Congress to the academic studies “Obama in Office” and “Rivals for Power.” His earlier book was “Conflict and Compromise: How Congress Makes the Law.” He has taught at American University, George Mason and Georgetown University.

For more information about Seminars at Steamboat and archives of past talks, visit SeminarsAtSteamboat.org.


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