The following was written by Brian Hallenbeck of the New London Day on 05-Oct-2008

He's worked to build democracies in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. And he's keeping the peace in Stonington Borough.

Scott Bates, it's safe to say, believes in government. Democratic government. He foments it. He practices it. He teaches it.

Elected to the borough's Board of Warden and Burgesses in May 2007, Bates was the obvious choice to oversee police and emergency-management matters in the enclave of fewer than 1,100 people. He does, after all, have some relevant experience.

In 2002, he was appointed senior policy adviser to the U.S. House of Representatives' Select Committee on Homeland Security. And he was the principal author of the report, “Winning the War on Terror,” the tenets of which the 9/11 Commission incorporated in its findings. As vice president of the Center for National Policy, a nonpartisan think tank, he's urged Congress to take steps to secure nuclear material that could fall into the hands of terrorists.

”I've been to 55 countries, and I can tell you that the quality of life is better in those where the people have a say in their government,” asserts the 42-year-old Bates, who recently returned from a three-week posting in Iraq, where he helped Sunni officials prepare for provincial elections. He did so while working for a nonprofit organization that supports democratic practices and institutions around the world. (Bates, noting that some of the group's members have been targets of violence, asked that the organization not be named.)

This fall, Bates, who has written op-ed pieces for The Day and other publications, will team-teach “Politics of State and Local Government” at Connecticut College along with state Sen. Andrew Maynard, D-Stonington, the former borough warden. In the spring, Bates will teach “Prospects for Democracy in the Middle East” at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

He may find it refreshing to address students who have some grasp of the basics.

Sent to Afghanistan soon after the Taliban was defeated in 2002, Bates worked with delegates to a United Nations-sponsored gathering of tribal chiefs who sought to form a new government. “We got questions like 'What is democracy?' “ he says.

A year earlier, in the wake of the war in Kosovo, Bates worked to introduce Kosovars to democratic institutions, persuading the government there to pass a freedom-of-information act.

”That was the best thing I ever did, working daily with people trying to build a democracy,” he says. “I'd have 200 students in a room of 100 chairs. It was so cold, I lectured wearing a parka. … When I left, I told them, 'I'll be with you in your free capital one day.' “ While in Kosovo, Bates met his future wife, Lisa Tepper, a U.S. diplomat then stationed in neighboring Montenegro. They have a 2-year-old son, Jacob.

Bates, whose father was a Coast Guard officer, grew up in the Seaport Heights section of Mystic. In 1984, he graduated from St. Bernard High School, signed up for the draft and, though he'd been raised in a Republican-leaning household, registered to vote as a Democrat.

He graduated a semester early from the University of Dayton, hoping to work on Colorado Sen. Gary Hart's campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.

When Hart's campaign imploded amid scandal, Bates sent his resume to Joe Lieberman, then Connecticut's attorney general, who was seeking to unseat Republican Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. Bates joined Lieberman's campaign, which was successful. Bates found he “enjoyed the political fight.”

After a year at the London School of Economics, he landed in Washington, D.C., and eventually took a job in Virginia state government. As director of the House Democratic caucus, he worked with Gov. Doug Wilder, the first African-American elected governor of a U.S. state. ”He took me onto his legislative staff, and we passed 95 percent of our bills,” Bates says, including a measure limiting handgun purchases to one a month. He found himself forging consensus in meeting rooms full of Republicans, which showed him “what you can accomplish when you don't care about re-election.” Virginia governors are prohibited from serving consecutive terms.

Wilder, briefly a presidential candidate in 1991-92, named Bates to complete an unexpired term as secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia. At 26, Bates was the youngest person ever to hold such a state Cabinet position. He recommended appointments to state boards and commissions and championed ethics reforms that required legislators to disclose the source of gifts they received and doubled the fees lobbyists had to pay to register with the state.

But, Bates says, he failed to “build a constituency.” Within a year, the legislature had overturned his reforms.

Bates went on to obtain a law degree at the University of Virginia, and managed Democrat Jim Turner's congressional campaign in southeast Texas in 1996. Turner won the seat vacated by Charlie Wilson, whose support for covert funding of Afghan rebels in the 1980s was the subject of “Charlie Wilson's War,” the 2007 movie that starred Tom Hanks. Bates also ran the Democrats' successful bid to win another Texas congressional seat in a special election.

Now, more than a decade later, the globe-trotting emissary considers his own turn as an elected official. He won one of the borough's six burgess seats with 226 votes, the most of any candidate.

”It's tough work,” Bates says. “You're responsible to your friends and neighbors. … (But) I know why I should do this - because my son's going to grow up here.”

And, he might have added, because he believes in government.
 

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Government

Senior Policy Advisor, House Select Committee on Homeland Security, 2003-2005

Chief of Staff, Congressman Nick Lampson (Texas-09), 2004

Secretary of State, Commonwealth of Virginia, 1993

Legislative Director, Office of the Governor of Virginia, 1992-1993

Chairman, Commission on Urban Virginia, 1993

Director, Rural Development Task Force, 1992

Research Director, Congressman Sidney Yates, 1989-1990

Non-Governmental Organizations

Senior Advisor, National Democratic Institute, 2007-2009

Vice President, Center for National Policy, Senior Fellow fo rNational Security, 2005 - Present

Country Director for Kosovo, National Democratic Institute, 2001-2002

Advisor on Governance, National Democratic Institute, 2001-2005

Academia

Professor of Government, Connecticut College, 2008

Visiting Professor of International Law, Indiana University School of Law, 2004-2007

Adjunct Professor of Homeland Security, National Defense University, 2005-2009

Professor of Political Science, University of Pristina, Kosovo, 2001-2002

Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1992-1994

Business

Rindy/Miller/Bates, Partner, 1999-2001

Crounse & Malchow, Vice-President, 1997-1999

Political

Town Councilman, Stonington Borough, Connecticut, 2007

Advisor, Premier of South Australia, 2001-2002

Campaign Manager, Turner for Congress, 1996

Deputy Campaign Manager, Wilder for President, 1991

Democratic Caucus Director, Virginia House of Delegates, 1990-1991

Joe Lieberman for U.S. Senate (Connecticut), Research Director, 1988

Community Service

Board of Police Commissioners, Town of Stonington, 2008
President, Stonington Community Center Board of Governors, 2006-Present
Vice-Chair, Stonington Free Library Board of Trustees, 2006-Present
Stonington Cemetery Association, Board of Directors, 2007-Present
Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, Board of Directors, 2007-Present
Senior Fellow, Truman National Security Project, 2006
Team Leader, CSIS-Heritage Foundation Joint Task Force on the Restructuring of the Department of Homeland Security, 2004

Trustee, Carnegie Mellon University-Australia, 2004-Present

Honorary Member, Kosovo Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms, 2002

 

Published Works

Homeland Security Priorities for the 110th Congress, Truman National Security Project, 2007
Winning the War on Terror, U.S. House Select Committee on Homeland Security, 2004
Virginia Viewpoint, weekly column on Virginia politics, syndicated in 22 newspapers, 1993-1998
Commentary on the Constitution of Malawi, University of Virginia, 1995
Compacts of Virginia, Commonwealth of Virginia, 1993
Plan for the Revitalization of Virginia’s Urban Areas, Commonwealth of Virginia, 1993
Strategy for Rural Development, Commonwealth of Virginia, 1993

Numerous articles published and commentary provided in U.S. and international newspapers including:

Presentations

Title	Location	Date
"Smart Power in the Age of Obama"	American Center- Tokyo, Japan	2009
“U.S. Policy in Asia”	Institute for Strategic Studies, Ulaan Baatar Mongolia	2009
“The Future of the U.S. Policy Toward Asia”	Tokyo Foundation	2008
“New Approaches to Combating Terrorism”	Des Moines Committee on Foreign Relations San Diego Committee on Foreign Relations	2007
“U.S. Policy in the Middle East”	Princeton Committee on Foreign Relations Connecticut Committee on Foreign Relations	2008
“Prospects for Democracy in the Arab World”	7th Doha Forum on Democracy and Development	2007
“China: Dangerous Nation or Peaceful Power?”	St. Johns University School of Law, Symposium on China	2007
“U.S. Counter-terrorism Policy in Central Asia”	Chinese Academy of Social Sciences	2006
“Inside the War on Terror”	Nashville Committee on Foreign Relations Denver Council on Foreign Relations Indianapolis Committee on Foreign Relations Casper Committee on Foreign Relations Birmingham Committee on Foreign Relations	2006
“The Rule of Law in The Gulf States”	Doha Conference on Democracy and Development	2006
“Human Rights and the War on Terror”	Midwestern Public Interest Law Retreat	2005
“The War on Terror and International Law”	Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis	2004
“Winning the War on Terror”	Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas	2004
“Border Security, Immigration and Civil Rights”	El Paso, Texas Chamber of Commerce	2004
“Earning the Public Trust: Transparency in Government”	Address to the Kosovo Central Assembly	2002
“Appeal for an End to Ethnic Riots”	20 minute televised address to the people of Kosovo, RTK-TV August 17	2002
“Democracy and Human Rights”	Address to members of the Afghan Loya Jirga, Kabul Afghanistan	2002
“Restoring Ethics in Virginia Government”	Testimony to the Joint Virginia House-Senate Committee on Ethics	1993
“Revitalizing Urban Virginia”	Lead speaker in public hearings of the Commission on Urban Virginia involving Members of Congress, local officials and community leaders	1993

Education

University of Virginia School of Law, Juris Doctor, 1996

London School of Economics, M.S. International Relations, 1989

University of Dayton, B.A. History, B.A. Political Science, Magna Cum Laude, 1987

University of Oslo, Program in International Relations, 1987