Demetrios John "Mitch" Skandalakis was born on July 22,1957 and is an American lawyer and former Republican Party politician from Georgia who rose quickly to national prominence in the early-1990s.
19 Facts About Mitch Skandalakis
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Mitch Skandalakis was disbarred but later reinstated as an attorney.
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Mitch Skandalakis emigrated to the United States and became a prominent surgeon who taught at Emory University and was named by a Governor George Busbee to the Georgia Board of Regents.
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Mitch Skandalakis graduated from Emory University, where he founded a chapter of Young Americans for Freedom.
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Mitch Skandalakis then graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1982 and joined the law firm of conservative Georgia congressman Pat Swindall.
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Mitch Skandalakis ran for a seat in the Georgia State Senate in 1988 but lost.
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Mitch Skandalakis attracted national attention when he upset Martin Luther King III in a 1993 special election for chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.
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Mitch Skandalakis was re-elected to a full term in 1994, running as a moderate Republican and performing well among gay and African American voters.
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Mitch Skandalakis made headlines again in 1995, when he proposed that all amateur athletes be required to disclose whether they had AIDS.
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Mitch Skandalakis placed first among five candidates in the Republican primary, then defeated conservative State Senator Clint Day in a bitterly contested primary run-off.
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Mitch Skandalakis's campaign drew criticism for running "advertisements portraying one rival in racial stereotypes and another as a drug addict".
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Mitch Skandalakis got stomped by Taylor, while a surprisingly high turnout among African Americans helped produce a victory for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes and other Democrats running statewide.
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Mitch Skandalakis, who had returned to county government after his 1998 defeat, became part of a wide-ranging federal investigation into corruption in Fulton County government in April 2000, when the FBI was in investigating payments made to another commissioner.
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Apparently, from September 1997, Mitch Skandalakis was paid $5000 a month in legal fees, $75,000 in total.
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News of the investigation broke in the spring of 2000; by September Mitch Skandalakis had sold the family home in Alpharetta, while his family had moved to North Carolina.
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Mitch Skandalakis was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine and spend 100 hours in community service.
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The fitness board of the State Bar of Georgia recommended that Mitch Skandalakis be allowed to again be admitted as a Georgia attorney after he petitioned for reinstatement in March 2012.
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The record shows that since his conviction Mitch Skandalakis has shown remorse and has strived to act with integrity and responsibility through his hard work, his devotion to family, and as a volunteer in his community.
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On October 30,2013, Mitch Skandalakis again became a member of the State Bar of Georgia, and continued his post conviction employment as an executive with Waffle House.