From Press Release
May 22, 2006

The Board of Trustees of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center today named Paul Helmke, the former three-term Republican mayor of Fort Wayne (IN) to lead the organization as President.

Helmke is an attorney and is highly regarded for the courage and integrity he has demonstrated throughout his political career. He served as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and is known in political circles as deeply committed to bipartisan cooperation. The announcement of his selection comes as mayors across the U.S. are engaging aggressively and publicly in efforts to fight illegal gun trafficking - an issue on which the Brady organization recently announced a broad grassroots based campaign.

“Paul Helmke is a brave, smart man, a dynamic leader who has always put principle before politics and results before partisanship. We are very excited about what he will bring to this incredibly important fight,” said Phyllis Segal, Chair of the Board.

Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, a Republican and former mayor of Indianapolis, said “My good friend Paul Helmke has been an outstanding civic and legal leader in Indiana. As a three-term mayor of the state’s second largest city, Fort Wayne, he led the reinvigoration of neighborhoods, improvements in community safety and the expanded reputation of the city. His positive personality will serve him well in this new leadership role.”

Former President Bill Clinton called Helmke “fabulous - a smart, good man and a good choice. I would select him in a heartbeat.”

Urban experts applauded the selection. “We welcome Mayor Helmke back to the public arena he stood with us on during his time as President of the Conference of Mayors - a bipartisan focus on illegal guns,” said Tom Cochran, Executive Director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which has treated illegal guns as a major priority since 1968. “With Mayor Helmke as our partner, we will continue working to rid the nation of this deadly menace.”

Helmke, who will start work July 1, takes over the reins of the nation’s leading gun violence prevention organization at an important time for the cause. Gun violence prevention supporters - the overwhelming majority of American citizens according to poll after poll, are pitted against forces in Washington (DC), who have allowed military'style semiautomatic assault weapons back on America’s streets, limited the legal rights of gun violence victims to seek justice in the courts, padlocked the First Amendment rights of journalists to access government information about crime guns and handcuffed federal law enforcement trying to shut down corrupt gun sellers.

“We need common sense measures to reduce and prevent gun violence,” said Helmke. “We will fight hard to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, children and individuals with a history of mental illness. It’s an honor to be able to lead this wonderful organization at a very exciting time - a time when mayors all over America are standing up and demanding action.”

Helmke is currently an attorney with the firm Helmke Beams LLP in Fort Wayne, where he served as mayor for three terms from 1988 until 2000. He served as elected President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors from June 1997 until June 1998. Helmke was President of the National Conference of Republican Mayors and Local Officials in 1993 and has served as a Republican precinct committeeman and delegate or alternate to numerous Indiana and national Republican Conventions.

Helmke won a hotly contested primary for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in Indiana in 1998 but then lost to former Governor, now Senator, Evan Bayh.

Helmke’s exposure to the horrors of gun violence began as a teenager when two of his closest friends were involved in an accidental, near-fatal shooting.

While mayor, he dealt repeatedly with the scourge of illegal weapons that were flooding all of America’s cities. He joined with local clergy who were led by the Rev. Ternae T. Jordan, Sr. of the Greater Progressive Baptist Church. Helmke partnered with Jordan on a project called Stop the Madness, combating youth violence in Fort Wayne, and the two men became friends. After their friendship began, the minister’s own son, 15-year-old Ternae Jordan Jr., was struck in the head by a stray bullet from a gunfight on the street while waiting for his mother to pick him up after a piano lesson at a local YMCA.

“For a couple of days there, it was close. We thought we were going to lose him,” said Jordan, now the Minister at the Mt. Canaan Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “The mayor helped us keep the faith. He came to the hospital and he stayed, and he joined us in taking the message to the public about the cost of gun violence. “Our 15-year-old son is now our 27-year-old son,” Jordan said. “And we are so grateful to God for that, and I am so grateful for the support that Paul Helmke gave us in those devastating days.” The Stop the Madness Program has expanded to other cities. (For more on the program, visit www.stopthemadnessinc.com.)

 The Brady Campaign recently announced a sharpened focus for the coming years on advocating for steps to combat illegal gun trafficking. The organization will work for three key reforms at the state and Federal level, which will shut down sources of illegal guns without interfering with legal gun ownership:

• Strengthening law enforcement tools to crack down on corrupt gun dealers,

• Extending Brady Background checks to all gun sales, and

• Stopping large volume gun sales that supply traffickers.

Brady staff, affiliated activists at the grassroots in Million Mom March chapters and state-based gun violence prevention organizations are asking mayors across the country to join the coalition of mayors announced last week in New York City by mayors Michael Bloomberg of New York and Thomas Menino of Boston. “We’re very excited about Paul joining us - and it’s wonderful to have a former mayor help us build a coalition of mayors,” said Marsha McCartney, the Million Mom March member of the Brady Board of Trustees.