Mitchell Elias Daniels Jr. was born in Pennsylvania, but spent his earliest years in Georgia before his family moved to Indiana in 1959.
He graduated from North Central High School in Indianapolis in 1967 and was named the state's Presidential Scholar - the top male high school student - by President Lyndon B. Johnson before heading to Princeton University on a scholarship to study public policy.(All four of Daniels' daughters share his initials, MED, just as Johnson's two daughters shared the initials LBJ.)
Despite his straight-laced reputation, Daniels was arrested for possession of marijuana while at Princeton and spent two nights in jail. He has disclosed the arrest on job applications and it appears to have had little or no adverse impact on his rise in Washington.
As a student, Daniels wasn't eligible for the draft to Vietnam. By the time he graduated Princeton in 1971, the war was winding down and Daniels' high lottery number (147) kept him from being drafted.
Working for Sen. Lugar
Daniels enrolled in Indiana University's law school and in 1971, took a job that would set the course for much of his adult life - as an intern in the office of then-Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar (R), where his duties included re-digging a pothole that road crews filled before Lugar showed up to do a photo-op with it.
When Lugar moved to Washington as a U.S. senator in 1976, he took Daniels along as an administrative assistant. Daniels quickly rose to become Lugar's chief of staff and finally earned his law degree from Georgetown University in 1979.
Daniels managed three of Lugar's reelection campaigns and when Lugar was tapped to run the National Republican Senatorial Committee (the Senate GOP's campaign arm) in 1982, he put Daniels in charge of the committee staff.
Reagan White House
Daniels was working for the Senate campaign committee when he was tapped for a junior position in President Ronald Reagan's White House in 1985. Daniels started as deputy assistant for intergovernmental relations, but soon became Reagan's chief political adviser.
Daniels arrived at the White House during a congressional investigation into the Iran-contra affair, the Reagan administration's secret and illegal guns-for-hostages scheme, and his primary job was damage control. But Daniels' assertion that the White House needed to be more forthcoming about its role in the scheme grated on Chief of Staff Donald Regan. Daniels left in 1987 to take a job at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank back in Indianapolis.
The Hudson Institute
Daniels took over as chief operating officer at the institute at a time when it was in financial peril.
The institute's founder, Herman Kahn, had died and Hudson was in debt. During his three-year tenure, Daniels was credited with turning the organization around financially.
Eli Lilly and Company
Daniels next moved to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, Indiana's largest company, handling the company's corporate relations. He advanced quickly, first to head the company's North American operations and then becoming senior vice president for corporate strategy and policy. Among his cost-cutting initiatives was the elimination of offices. Everyone, including Daniels, worked from a cubicle.
While at Eli Lilly, Daniels clashed with the Church of Scientology, which was running an ad campaign against one of the company's best-selling drugs, the anti-depressant Prozac. Daniels lashed out at the church, saying that any patient who benefited from the drug or therapy was "one less potential victim" for Scientology. Lilly rebounded financially and Daniels got much of the credit.
When he left Eli Lilly in 2001 to take a job with the George W. Bush administration, Daniels' retirement package totaled $27 million.
Marital History
It was during Daniels' time at Eli Lilly that Daniels and his wife, Cheri, divorced. She reportedly moved to California and remarried, leaving their four children to be raised by theri father in Indiana. In 1997, the couple remarried. The rocky marital history is said to have factored heavily on Daniels' decision ultimately not to seek the 2012 GOP presidential nod.
But in a May 2011 statement to the Indianapolis Star, Daniels denied that Cheri had ever abandoned their children and said she had always shared joint custody.
"The notion that Cheri ever did or would 'abandon' her girls or parental duty is the reverse of the truth," Daniels said.
Back to Washington
Thirteen years after he left Washington, Daniels returned in 2001 to become budget director for President George W. Bush.
Daniels helped design and push through Bush's massive tax cuts and drafted his budgets. Though Bush inherited a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, Daniels pushed to keep spending levels low, cutting agency budgets and programs, including some, like the Boys and Girls Clubs, that Bush himself favored. Daniels zeroed out the clubs' funding. Daniels' efficiency earned him the presidential nickname "The Blade" even though the budget surplus had become a $400 billion deficit by the time Daniels left the White House two years later.
Running for Governor
In 2003, Daniels returned to Indiana to run for governor. It was the first time Daniels had run for office and he claimed from the beginning that it was the only one he would ever seek. Bush, still popular in Indiana, campaigned for Daniels as did Vice President Dick Cheney and First Lady Laura Bush.
Daniels campaigned in all 92 of the state's counties on one of two Harley Davidson motorcycles he owns along with an RV. He easily defeated a more conservative candidate in a Republican primary before ousting Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan to become Indiana's first Republican governor in 16 years.
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Education: Extreme couponing
Daniels names Madison County judge to appellate court
via The Indianapolis Star
