Ralph G. Neas

Ralph G. Neas (born May 17, 1946, in Brookline, Massachusetts, and raised primarily in St. Charles, Illinois) is best known for directing a series of national campaigns that marshaled strong bipartisan majorities to strengthen and protect the nation's civil rights laws during the Reagan-Bush presidencies. He is also known for chairing the national coalition that helped defeat the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork. Senator Edward Kennedy, in 1995, in a Senate floor statement called Neas "the 101st Senator for Civil Rights." That same week, Senator Carol Mosely-Braun (D-Il)—the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate—called Neas "one of our Nation's foremost civil rights leaders."Neas has served as Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; the President and CEO of People For the American Way (PFAW) and the PFAW Foundation; President and CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care; and President and CEO of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA). He served for eight years as a chief legislative assistant to Republican Senators Edward W. Brooke (Mass.) and David Durenberger (Minn.) and remained a Republican until October 1996.