By Robert MacMillan washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, September 5, 2003; 9:00 AM
Mitch Bainwol stops talking and a puzzled look settles over his face. He's sitting at the Daily Grill on 18th and M streets in the heart of Washington, D.C., and something is not right.
He reaches for his Blackberry handheld messaging device, stares at the screen and says in a quiet, almost perplexed tone, "I haven't gotten any messages for an hour."
For Bainwol -- an influential lobbyist and former Republican congressional aide -- this is unusual. As the new head of one of the most controversial and powerful industry associations in town, he is a man in demand.
Bainwol, 44, was largely unknown outside the Beltway until last month when he accepted the top job at the Recording Industry Association of America.
But all that's about to change, as he prepares to lead the recording industry's campaign against the millions of people who illegally download and trade songs on the Internet.
Congressional staffers and the K Street lobbying community say that Bainwol is the natural choice to represent the world's biggest record labels in their race to stop Internet music piracy.
"He's bright, he's tough and his word is golden," said Greg Farmer, a senior vice president at Nortel Networks and at one time Bainwol's rival on the campaign trail.
It's Hip to Be Square
Music is not Mitch Bainwol's passion, and he's never used a file-sharing service like Napster or Kazaa. NCAA college basketball is where this Georgetown graduate's extracurricular interests lie.
Of medium height with short dark hair, the standard-issue white shirt and suit pants, Bainwol, looks like the part of a D.C. lobbyist. One Democratic operative described him -- apart from his ever-present Blackberry -- as "the world's least hip-seeming guy."
Hipness is not part of the RIAA job requirement, even if he's the new Washington voice of the music world's hottest acts. Representing the interests of the nation's largest recording companies -- and to a certain extent their stable of artists -- with unparalleled zeal is the primary mission. And, as his predecessor Hilary Rosen demonstrated in her seven-year tenure, a take-no-prisoners policy is the necessary modus operandi.
In interviews with numerous sources for this profile, a collective picture emerges of Bainwol as someone who has the rare combination of steely-eyed resolve, uncanny intelligence, a friendly attitude, the ability to tell it like it is and the tact required to achieve compromise when necessary.
