Nominated by President George W. Bush, Democrat Cynthia L. Bauerly has served on the Federal Election Commission since May 2008. She was elected vice-chair in December 2009, and took over as chair in January 2011. Her term expires April 30, 2011, but she is expected to stay on anyway.

 

Bauerly was born in 1970 and raised by Michael and Sharon Bauerly. She is a graduate of Concordia College (1993) in Moorhead, Minnesota. In 1998, she received a Master of Public Affairs from Indiana University’s School of Environmental and her law degree from the university’s law school at Bloomington.

 

Following law school, Bauerly clerked for Judge Theodore R. Boehm of the Indiana Supreme Court in 1998 and Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the U.S. District Court for Central California in 1999-2000. Following the disputed 2000 presidential election in Florida, she worked on Al Gore’s recount team.

 

She worked at the law firm Jones Day in Washington, DC, specializing in appellate litigation, before moving to Capitol Hill.

 

From 2002 until 2004, Bauerly served as Senator Charles Schumer’s counsel on the Senate Judiciary and Rules Committees. In this position, she advised Schumer on a range of policy matters including election reform, campaign finance, technology, telecommunications, intellectual property, antitrust, legal process reform and immigration.

 

She returned briefly to private practice in November 2004, handling copyright, trademark and patent litigation for Fredrikson & Byron in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Among her clients was the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

 

From February until November of 2005, Bauerly was the policy director for Amy Klobuchar’s U.S. Senate campaign in Minnesota.

 

Bauerly then rejoined Schumer, this time as legislative director. She directed all aspects of the senator’s legislative agenda by setting and implementing legislative priorities, managing policy staff, advising on floor strategy, campaign finance and ethics policy, overseeing committee and subcommittee activities, and coordinating with communications staff.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Official Biography (Federal Election Commission)