NEWS RELEASE

Posted: Feb. 27, 2003

LEE: KEY CAMPAIGN AIDES NAMED

WILMINGTON – Judge William Swain Lee announced today that he is naming Donald C. Mell III as campaign director for his 2004 run for governor. In addition to serving as a key advisor to Judge Lee, Mell will be responsible for defining the campaign’s message and developing the campaign’s policies and strategy. Mell will also handle communications and media relations for the campaign. 

Mell served as Lee’s New Castle County campaign chairman during the 2000 Republican gubernatorial primary. He was the principal liaison between the campaign and television, radio and print media, statewide. 

Mell spent much of the 1980s and early 1990s in the Middle East as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press and CNN and was stationed in Beirut, Lebanon, Rome and New York. During that time he covered various conflicts in the Middle East, among them the Gulf War, the Iran-Iraq war, the Lebanese Civil War and the Arab-Israeli conflict.  

Lee also announced that he is naming Patrick W. Murray as his political director. Mr. Murray will be a key liaison between the campaign and the state Republican Party. Murray will be the principal contact between the campaign and the party’s state, regional and local leaders. He will also be responsible for overseeing the Lee campaign’s Republican state convention organization as well as its Kent County organization. 

Murray is Kent County Regional chair for the Republican Party and has served in that position since 1998. He has also served on many important state party committees. Murray has extensive campaign experience and has held vital roles in a number of notable campaigns, which include those of both Presidents George Bush and George W. Bush, and Congressman Mike Castle. 

Murray has also served as chairman of the Council on Transportation and as secretary of Public Safety during Governor Castle’s administration.

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