Jack Park, Senior Legal Advisor
- US Army JAG Corps
- Chair of the Alabama State Bar’s Military Law Section
- Visiting Legal Fellow for the Center for Judicial and Legal Studies at the Heritage Foundation
Jack Park is the Senior Legal Advisor for the American Constitutional Rights Union. Since the beginning of 2019, he has been in private practice in Gainesville, GA. There, Jack specializes in appellate and amicus work for ACRU, The Buckeye Institute, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, and others, as well as doing civil and constitutional litigation.
Jack served in the US Army JAG Corps on both active duty and in the Reserves. He represented the Government in appeals from court-martial convictions while on active duty and helped with instruction in criminal trial advocacy and other subjects at the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School while in the Reserves. Jack also served as Chair of the Alabama State Bar’s Military Law Section for several years and helped organize the Section’s annual Military Law Symposium, which was held for the 30th time in 2019. He is presently a volunteer with the Georgia State Defense Force.
After his release from active duty in 1985, Jack worked for the Birmingham, AL, law firm now known as Bradley. During his time there, concentrated his work on government contract and construction law cases. In 1995, he began working for the Alabama Attorney General’s Office. There, defended the State, its agencies, and officials when they were sued in voting rights, redistricting, and election law cases, institutional reform litigation, employment discrimination, and construction matters. For 22 months from 2007 to 2009, Jack worked as Special Assistant to the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community. He worked with the Inspector General and the office’s auditors, investigators, and support personnel to monitor the Corporation’s activities, report to Congress when appropriate, and assist in audits and investigations of the activities of the Corporation’s grantees. Jack then worked as a Visiting Legal Fellow for the Center for Judicial and Legal Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He assisted the other attorneys in the Center, including its Chairman, former Attorney General Edwin Meese, working on the Center’s Supreme Court, overcriminalization, civil rights, and civil justice projects. From May 2011 until the end of December 2018, Jack served as of counsel for the Atlanta law firm of Strickland Brockington Lewis. He served as a deputy attorney general for the State of Alabama to assist it in its work on and litigation involving the 2010 round of redistricting and worked on redistricting matters for the State of Georgia and Gwinnett County.
Jack is also widely published. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1977 with a B.A. in History and received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980.
Mike Mears, Senior Director of Strategic Engagement
Mike Mears comes to ACRU after 10 plus years at the Republican National Committee, where he served as the liaison to conservative groups and the faith community. in 2023 Mike was asked to fill the role of Chief of Staff to the Co-Chairman of the RNC.
Mike has labored in the conservative movement for close to 30 years, with stops including the National Right to Work Committee, the Leadership Institute, Susan B. Anthony List, Concerned Women for America PAC, and Family Research Council Action. Mike has also shoehorned opportunities to manage two conservative Congressional campaigns and start his own consulting business, Mordecai Strategies which assisted Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin campaign to engage the faith community.
Mike started his work life by starting his own cleaning service, Dirty Business Janitorial at the age of 19. His first foray into politics was when CAOSHA threatened to regulate home based business like Mikes out of existence and Mike started attending meetings to stop them. Mr. Mears caught the political engagement bug then and has never looked back. Mike’s passion is inspiring Americans to engage their local, state and federal government to develop a conservative and sensible voice in their community.
Married to Steffani since 1990, Mr. Mears has lived in the Northern Virginia area since 1997.
Joe Armacost, Producer, ACRU TV and Radio
Laura Williams, Center for Vulnerable Voters Training Coordinator
Juliana McMahan, Database Manager
Hans von Spakovsky
Hans von Spakovsky is recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on elections and election reform. He is manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in Heritage’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
He is the co-author with John Fund of the book “Who’s Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” (Encounter Books, 2012).
Before joining Heritage in 2008, Mr. von Spakovsky served two years as a member of the Federal Election Commission, the authority charged with enforcing campaign finance laws for congressional and presidential elections, including public funding.
He has served on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and on the Fulton County (Ga.) Board of Registrations and Elections. He is a former vice chairman of the Fairfax County (Va.) Electoral Board and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Board to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
A 1984 graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law, Mr. von Spakovsky received his B.S. degree in 1981 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Tom McHale, Director of Public Policy and Digital Media
Tom McHale is the Director of Public Policy and Digital Media for American Constitutional Rights Union and ACRU Action Fund.
Tom McHale is an author and Editor of American Handgunner magazine. He’s published seven books to date, most of which focus on Second Amendment-related topics, concealed carry, personal defense, and guns and shooting. During the past 10 years, Tom has published nearly 2,000 articles across a variety of publications.
His most recent book, The Practical Guide to the United States Constitution, provides an entertaining, factually accurate, “owner’s manual” for citizens of the United States of America. This practical guide covers the underlying concepts of natural rights and consent-based government. The book also clarifies how each of the three primary founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, work together to define the goals, theory, and mechanics of the American system. The heart of this book is a simplified walk through the contents and meaning of the founding documents.
Prior to his writing career, Tom spent 25 years working in the technology industry as a marketing executive and strategic alliances director. Over his tenure in the technology industry, Tom worked for companies including NCR, Verizon, two different internet startups, and spent 11 years with Microsoft. From his time immersed in the tech space, Tom understands not only the opportunities possible from the industry, but the potential dangers, pitfalls, and threats to privacy and freedom.
Tom also understands the challenges faced by the heart of the American economy — small business. He grew up in a family of small business entrepreneurs, taking part in the family business throughout his high school, college, and adult years. Later in life, he invested his life savings, started his own, and became intimately familiar with struggles entrepreneurs face dealing with not only the challenges of growing a business and meeting a payroll but counterproductive and often burdensome government regulations.
Tom is a graduate of Emory University with a major in Economics and a minor in Computer Science. He completed his Master’s Degree in Business Administration at the University of North Florida with a concentration in Finance and Marketing.