Bio
Mike Zamore is the National Director of Policy & Government Affairs at the ACLU, where he leads efforts to harness the organization’s vast expertise, 4 million members and supporters, paid staff in every state, and electoral work to shape federal, state, and local policy.
Mike is a 22-year veteran of Capitol Hill, and spent over 14 years as the Chief of Staff to Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat first elected in 2008. As Merkley’s top aide, Mike managed a 50+ person staff and $4 million budget, counseled the Senator on legislative and political strategy, represented the Senator to various constituencies, and led two successful re-elections. Mike helped stand up the Senate office in 2009 and built a team that supported Senator Merkley in becoming one of the nation’s leading progressive lawmakers, developing groundbreaking legislation in climate policy, election integrity and campaign finance reform, LGBTQ equality, Wall Street accountability, and more. In guiding Senator Merkley’s efforts to reform the Senate’s archaic filibuster rules, Mike also became a leading expert in Senate procedure.
Prior to joining Senator Merkley, Mike was the Policy Director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, where he assisted the 2008 Senate candidates develop their positions on the issues. Mike earlier served as Policy Advisor to Representative Patrick Kennedy and spearheaded Kennedy’s legislative agenda, including mental health parity legislation that became law in 2008, and spoke frequently on health systems reform. Earlier in his career, he spent several years working on business development projects in the early days of post-Soviet Russia and clerked for Judge Allyne R. Ross on the Eastern District of New York.
Mike is the co-author of Filibustered!: How to Fix the Broken Senate and Save America and is an adjunct faculty member at American University’s Washington College of Law. He graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School, lives in Washington, DC with his wife and two sons, and is a reluctant runner, more enthusiastic than talented soccer player, and an avid if usually disappointed fan of the Cleveland Guardians.