In a country that people have not yet decide if it is a melting pot, a garden salad or a tapestry of different people and ethnic backgrounds eight individuals of Greek descent are running for Congress and are asking for your vote. The five incumbents of Greek heritage who are up for re-election in the U.S. House of Representatives are Shelley Berkley, Gus Bilirakis, John Sarbanes, Zack Space, and Niki Tsongas. The three Greek-Americans aspire to join them are Jane Mitakides and Jim Trakas (a member of AHEPA), both of Ohio; and Dina Titus of Nevada.

Rochelle “Shelley” Berkley has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 1999, representing the First Congressional District of Nevada, which includes most of the city of Las Vegas as well as the Las Vegas Strip. Her grandmother was from Thessaloníki and part of the Greek Jewish community there. Berkley was born in New York City and then moved with her family to Nevada when she was a junior high school student. She attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and earned a degree in political science and served as the UNLV Student Body President. She then entered the University of San Diego, graduating with a degree in Law. She served in the Nevada Assembly from 1982 to 1984 and was involved in civic affairs locally. While in the state legislature, she advocated consumer safety laws, campaigned against drunken driving, and founded the Senior Law Project. Berkley was also appointed vice chair of the Nevada University System Board of Regents, serving at the position from 1990 to 1998. Elected to the House in 1998, she serves in the Committees on Veterans’ Affairs, and Ways and Means. As a representative, Berkley views her top priorities as to fight for affordable health care coverage for all Americans, veteran’s rights, and alternative energy. Berkley is known as one of the supporters of the drive to regulate online gambling. On October 10, 2002, Mrs. Berkley was among the 81 House Democrats who voted in favor of authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

Gus Bilirakis was born on February 8, 1963 in Gainesville, Florida. is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives for Florida’s 9th congressional district. Bilirakis was elected as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives to replace his father, Mike Bilirakis, who did not run for reelection after 23 years in the United States Congress. Before being elected to Congress, Gus Bilirakis had been a member of the Florida House of Representatives since 1998. He grew up in Tarpon Springs, Florida, as the second-generation son of Greek immigrants. His grandfather opened a bakery in that town. At an early age, Bilirakis began working at his family’s bakery. He attended Tampa Bay area public schools and continued to work in his grandfather’s bakery while growing up. Bilirakis graduated from Tarpon Springs High School and St. Petersburg Junior College. He then attended the University of Florida, where he graduated in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He received his law degree from the Stetson University College of Law in 1989. Bilirakis has a Tampa Bay area law practice, the Bilirakis Law Group, specializing in probate and estate planning, which he took over from his father. He has helped run his father’s campaigns for the past 23 years. He is co-chair of the Hellenic Caucus.

John Peter Spyros Sarbanes has represented the third district of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives since 2007. The district includes the state capital of Annapolis, central portions of the city of Baltimore, and parts of Howard and Baltimore counties. Sarbanes was born in Baltimore on May 22, 1961 and is the eldest son of former U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes. He received a B.A. cum laude from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1984 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1988. Sarbanes lives in Towson, Maryland with his three children and wife Dina, who he met at Harvard and wed in 1988. Dina Sarbanes is an Assistant County Attorney with the Baltimore County Attorney’s office. Sarbanes sought the Democratic nomination for Maryland’s third congressional district after then-incumbent representative Ben Cardin chose not to seek re-election in order to run for the United States Senate seat of John Sarbanes’ father, Paul Sarbanes. In the last election he won with a solid 64 percent of the vote. However, he had a hard time campaigning to win the Democratic Primary.

Zack Space of Dover, Ohio, is an American politician of the Democratic Party and presently serves in the U.S. House of Representatives for Ohio’s 18th congressional district. Space won the seat in the November 7, 2006 election, defeating state Senator Joy Padgett. Space’s seat was formerly held by Republican Bob Ney, who pled guilty to conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the Abramoff scandal. Republican Fred Dailey is currently running against Space in the 2008 election. Born in Dover, Ohio, in 1961, Space is the son of Socrates Space and Sandra Gallion. His grandparents immigrated to the United States from Greece in the early years of the 20th century. His grandfather and namesake, Zacharias Space, earned U.S. citizenship through service in World War I. Space attended Kenyon College in Knox County. While earning a degree in political science, he was awarded All-American honors in football and was named the 1982 Athlete of the Year at Kenyon. After his graduation from Kenyon, Space enrolled in the Ohio State University College of Law and earned his Juris Doctor in 1986. He is married to Mary Wade, the first woman judge in Tuscarawas County history. She was re-elected in 2005 with 64 percent of the vote.

Niki Tsongas is the U.S. Representative for Massachusetts’s 5th congressional district and the widow of Greek-American U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas. She has three Greek-American daughters and she calls herself “Greek by Osmosis” She is the first woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts in 25 years and the first female Democrat elected to Congress from the state in 35 years. Niki was born to Marian Susan Wyman, an artist and copywriter, and Colonel Russell Elmer Sauvage, an engineer in the United States Air Force who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. She was a 1964 graduate from Narimasu American High School in Japan while her father was stationed at Fuchu Air Force Base and then spent one year at Michigan State before attending Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. After graduating from Smith College in 1968, she moved to New York City where she took a job as a social worker for the Department of Welfare. Niki has a law degree from Boston University and started Lowell’s first all-female law practice. In the last election she defeated her four opponents in the Democratic primary with a plurality of the vote, 36%. Her leading opponent in the general election, on October 16, 2007, was Republican Jim Ogonowski; in addition, there were two independent candidates and one from the Constitution Party. During her campaign she received endorsements from the three major newspapers in the area: The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and The Lowell Sun.

The Three Greek-American new comers:

Jane Mitakides is the Democratic candidate in the 2008 congressional elections for the 3rd Congressional District (map) of Ohio. On March 4th, 2008 she won the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio). Mitakides is married to John Mitakides with whom she has two children. She is a strong supporter of Hellenic issues, such as FYROM, Cyprus and she is also an active member of the American Hellenic Institute.

Jim Trakas is a former member of the Ohio House of Representatives, and is the Republican nominee for the United States House of Representatives in Ohio’s 10th congressional district. He is a 1987 graduate of The Ohio State University where he earned a B.A. in Social and Behavioral Sciences. In 1996 Trakas was elected Chairman of The Republican Party of Cuyahoga County where he served until 2005. In 1998, Trakas was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives representing the 15th district, later renumbered the 17th district, where he served until 2007. Trakas won the Republican Primary by 79.31 percent of the vote and stands a very good chance to get elected. He is a member of the Order of AHEPA and the American Hellenic Institute.

Costandina “Dina” Titus is a Democratic member of the Nevada Senate, representing Clark County District 7 (map) since 1988. She has been the Minority Leader since 1993. She is also a political science professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has taught American and Nevada government at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, for 30 years. Before her recent congressional run, she was considered likely to seek a rematch with current Republican governor Jim Gibbons in 2010. Gibbons defeated her in the 2006 gubernatorial campaign. On May 1, 2008, Dina Titus announced that she will challenge Jon Porter for the Third Congressional Seat in Nevada. The announcement was made in the Henderson Events Plaza Amphitheater, just below the Henderson Veterans Memorial, where she reminded her supporters that it was the fifth anniversary of Bush’s pronouncement of “mission accomplished” in Iraq. Her Greek grandfather ran a restaurant in Tifton, Georgia where she was born.

With information from: The Hellenic journal, Wikipedia, United States House of Representatives

AHEPA now has its own travel website at: www.ahepatravel.com. AHEPAtravel.com is powered by the same websites you normally use to book travel – Travelocity.com, Hotels.com and Cheaptickets.com – giving you the same great features and low prices! The site can take care of all your travel needs, including: plane tickets, cruises, hotels, rental cars and more.

Every time you use a travel website, the travel companies pay big commissions for your reservation. Now, when you book travel on the AHEPA website the organization will receive a portion of the travel commission.

If you don’t already know AHEPA stands for American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association. AHEPA is a service organization founded on 26 July 1922 in Atlanta, Georgia its goal is to support Greek-American charities, causes, and communities.It is probably the most well known American organization who promotes hellenism globally.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was trying to change the law that limits the terms a mayor can be in the office. This Thursday he won and the City Council vote, a move that clears the way for the billionaire independent to run again and dramatically changes the city’s political landscape.

By a 29-22 vote, the city council gave officeholders the option of three consecutive four-year terms. The existing law allows only two terms, and Bloomberg’s second finishes at the end of 2009.

The former CEO had said that he would like a third term because he strongly believed that his economic expertise could be very useful for the city in this era of economic hardship that we enter.

These may be good news for the Mayor but not for all those who were hoping to run for office in the next election. Greek-American billionaire John Catsimatidis was one of them who had a very good chance of becoming mayor of New York. Catsimatidis in an interview conducted at his 9th Avenue office for greekreporter.com had stated previously that he liked Mr. Bloomberg and thought that he is a very good mayor. This is what makes us think that he would not run against the current mayor. No comment have been made from Catsimatidis yet.

George Stephanopoulos is currently the Chief Washington Correspondent for ABC News and anchor of ABC’s Sunday morning political affairs program, “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” This past year, Stephanopoulos has interviewed every major Republican and Democratic candidate, and moderated debates for the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries.

George Stephanopoulos has a rare insight into presidential campaigns, unlike the majority of mainstream television journalists, since he used to work on the other side of politics, as a senior advisor to Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Although Stephanopoulos received his undergraduate degree in Political Science from Columbia University, a career in politics seemed unlikely after receiving his Master’s degree in theology from Balliol College at Oxford University in England, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

While Stephanopoulos’s father and grandfather were priests in the Greek Orthodox church, Stephanopoulos made a decision early on not to follow the same path. His father urged him to become a lawyer, but after graduating from Oxford, Stephanopoulos decided to go work for Ohio Congressman Ed Feighan in 1982 as a legislative assistant.

The first presidential campaign Stephanopoulos worked on was in 1988 for Michael Dukakis, who he felt an affinity for since they were both liberal Greek-Americans from Massachusetts. After the campaign, Stephanopoulos worked for House Majority Leader, Dick Gephardt, until joining the Clinton campaign.

Stephanopoulos was a leading member of the Clinton campaign along with James Carville and David Wilhelm. After the 1992 election, he became Clinton’s Communications Director and then Senior Advisor to President Clinton during his first administration.

However, all did not end well between Stephanopoulos and the Clintons. Stephanopoulos resigned from the administration shortly after the 1996 election and wrote a tell-all book called “All Too Human: A Political Education” published in 1999, which became a New York Times #1 bestseller. The book discussed Stephanopoulos’s struggles and clashes with President Clinton and First Lady Hilary during Clinton’s first term and the 1992 and 1996 Clinton/Gore campaigns.

Stephanopoulos made his transition into journalism when he joined ABC News in 1997 as a news analyst for “This Week.” In 2002, he began anchoring “This Week” replacing long-time host, the late David Brinkley, who went into retirement. The program’s title was changed to “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” to reflect this change. Stephanopoulos was named Chief Washington Correspondent for ABC News in December 2005.

Since making the switch from politician to journalist, Stephanopoulos has been criticized for being biased due to his liberal background. In response, Stephanopoulos told Greek Circle Magazine: “I ask people to judge me by my work. The longer I work in journalism, of course, the fewer questions there are.”

However, after the Democratic debate that he moderated with ABC News’ Charles Gibson in April 2008, he received criticism for being too aggressive and asking unfair questions to the Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton.

“The questions we asked were tough and fair and appropriate and relevant and what you would expect to be asked in a presidential debate at this point,” Stephanopoulos told the L.A. Times. “The questions we asked…are being debated around the political world every day.”

Stephanopoulos, as influenced by his father, believes his role in life is to make a difference in the world. In his commencement address at St. John’s University in 2007, he explained that “…trying to change people’s lives for the better; it’s what we’re called to do. Not to create a perfect world in a world of imperfect people, it’s just not possible. But a better world.”

As evident in his interviews with the most important world leaders and political candidates, Stephanopoulos will continue to play a role in future presidential elections by asking questions that inform and educate the public about those politicians who have the power to change the world.

Michael Paraskevas  was always around the arts since his  mother worked with Broadway producer Harry Rigby  (Sugar Babies, Irene, No Nannett) when he was growing up. His mother always made it her business to bring Michael and his twin sister along to auditions and rehearsals.

She worked closely with Harry on a lot of shows. She was a strong supporter for Harry. The two of them were very good friends. “I remember a time when I was with my father picking up some frames in a shop and there was this sketchbook. I took one look at that and asked him if he would buy it for me. I thought I could fill that book with ideas and then, well for lack of a better word keep them close to me. It seemed like a nice orderly thing to do. I filled that book up with drawings and you know what? I still have it at our family home in New Jersey.”

At first Michael thought he would be a stage designer. But eventually he didn’t want to depend on such a large community of people to achieve that goal. Hence painting seemed to be a better way to go. Even though now he seems to be back at stage design with all the TV animation he is doing and the puppet show at www.thecheapshow.com.
Michael has been inspired by many artists like Gilbert Stone, Jack Potter, Robert Weaver, Sam Martine and Marshall Arisman. Marshall just happened to have taught him to just keep working at his craft and never give up.  Jack Potter was another wonderful teacher for drawing. Robert Weaver helped Michael to develop the plan for thinking of what to draw. Gilbert Stone was an exceptional teacher who seemed to be bigger than life for Michael. He was the most inspirational artist. “For those who knew him words really can’t describe what one learned from his classes. He taught me that the life of an artist was something special.”

Michel attended the School of Visual Arts a prestigious art college that offered the best in all that is art related. The idea that teachers were all working in the business made it very appealing for him. Michael could not be drawn to professors who just taught to make a living. He wanted ones that worked in the field.

Michael’s mother turned out to be a very talented writer who ended up collaborating with him on many projects. “I always knew she was somewhat different than other mothers. First off she knew a lot more than any of the kids’ mother’s I use to play with. She just didn’t talk like them she was very well read. She was also a good judge of people.”

His mother’s background in theater was a big help to Michael. But her writing of dialogue was superb. Michael was illustrating for a few magazines yet he soon realized that combining their talents, more can be achieved. Hence he approached his mother with an idea of her penning a children’s book and he would illustrate it. Essentially they went on to complete 22 books, three TV shows and one animated special for ABC. Some of the books completed are as follows: The Ferocious Beast, Junior Kroll, The Tangerine Bear, and Shamlanders etc. One of the books also ended up to be adapted to animation for a show on Nick Jr. called “Maggie and the Ferocious Beast”.  Besides that “The Kids from Room 402” was also optioned to be animated but would hopefully be released on DVD with all 22 episodes. The writers on that project were Lisa Kite and Cindy Beagle.

Presently, they are shopping around another project called Leo “Spats” Ratcatcher which Fox showed some interest. Yet they are awaiting a response. In the meantime Michael and his mother were busy working on a show entitled The Cheap Show a puppet show along with a new animated series called Taffy Saltwater for Saban.
When it comes to comparing his work to anyone he tends to leave it to his critics. His work can be viewed at the web site  http://web.mac.com/jrkroll/Land_of_the_Lost_Socks/Gallery.html. 
According to Michael children’s books are not in high demand as they use to be. “Not really. The business has changed. Harry Potter took care of that. Kids seem to grow up faster today and picture books like Hoppy and Joe are hard to get published. Today, it’s either very pre-school or Harry Potter young adult novel picture books. Almost every celebrity comes out with a book. An area they should keep out of.”

Michael admits that being part Greek has always seemed awkward to native Greeks who look at him differently. Yet he welcomes them with open arms. He has marketed the animated series “Maggie” in Greece. His books have been translated and are popular in countries like England and Ireland. His father is Greek and his mother German-Irish. Yet he recognizes his Greek roots wholeheartedly.

Michael and his mother Betty hope to carry this tradition forward and bring some fun stories to all children. Anyone who would be interested on learning more about Michael and his mother’s work can find it at   www.thecheapshow.com or at www.peterpepperpets.com.