President, North Star Opinion Research
Dr. Whit Ayres is the President of North Star Opinion Research, formerly Ayres, McHenry, & Associates Inc. Prior to establishing the firm, Ayres served as Senior Executive Assistant for Budget and Policy to Governor Carroll Campbell in South Carolina. He also served as a tenured member of the political science faculty at the University of South Carolina.
Ayres is the Co-Founder of Resurgent Republic with former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie. Resurgent Republic develops and disseminates creative conservative messages for the 21st century. The organization conducts periodic surveys and focus groups, and releases the results to the public through its Web site, www.resurgentrepublic.com. He also is the Chairman of the American Association of Political Consultants, (www.theaapc.org), a bi-partisan national organization that promotes the political consulting industry, protects political freedom of speech, and fosters ethical behavior in political campaigns.
Known for his expertise and sharp strategic insight, Ayres is a guest periodically on Fox News, CNN, and National Public Radio. His comments and analysis appear in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and numerous regional newspapers.
He graduated from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, with a major in political science, and received an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ayres is an active private pilot, flying his Beechcraft Baron throughout the eastern U.S., and he is a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. He is also the Virginia State Racquetball champion in his age division.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Over-Criminalization and Public Opinion - Podcast
Whit Ayres, George J. Terwilliger, Dean Reuter
Over the last thirty years, the number of federal criminal laws has increased by one-third....