Micah Lasher has spent his life on the West Side and his career in public service, fighting for a more just, fair, and equitable New York.

 

Micah has served at all three levels of government, most recently as Director of Policy for the State of New York under Governor Kathy Hochul. He played a leading role in writing sweeping gun safety laws immediately after the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, and helped enact comprehensive legislation to protect abortion providers and patients in the wake of the Supreme Court’s horrendous Dobbs decision. 

 

Micah was part of the effort to make New York one of the first states in the nation to index the minimum wage to rapidly rising inflation, helped make new buildings statewide all-electric, and was one of the architects of a $1 billion plan to reverse decades of State disinvestment in mental health care. And Micah helped craft a housing plan that The New York Times called the “first serious attempt by a New York governor since the 1960s” to tackle racist, exclusionary zoning and build hundreds of thousands of units of housing.

 

With a deeply felt sense of obligation to his community, Micah has been involved in a range of important causes, both locally and nationally. He has served on the Board of the Riverside Park Conservancy for nine years, and as Chair for the last four and half. During that time, the Conservancy has tripled its capacity to make park improvements, expanded the North Park Initiative to better address longstanding inequity in funding and services for a park that runs north to the George Washington Bridge, and successfully advocated for more than $400 million in City support to fund infrastructure projects, including the first restoration of the Soldiers & Sailors Monument in sixty years. Micah also served on the board of Everytown, the national gun safety organization, and for fifteen years on the board — ultimately as Vice Chair — of the Community Service Society, New York’s leading anti-poverty organization.

 

Starting out in public service as an aide to Congressman Jerry Nadler, Micah worked on West Side issues and helped constituents solve problems and get what they needed from their government. He went on to serve in the New York City Department of Education and then as Director of State Legislative Affairs for the City of New York under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, representing more than fifty city agencies before State government and fighting for the City’s fair share from Albany.

 

Later, as Chief of Staff in the Office of the New York State Attorney General, Micah helped lead a complex government and law enforcement agency of 1,800 employees, 23 bureaus and fifteen offices.  He was integrally involved in virtually all of the Office’s significant matters, including landmark investigations into fossil fuel companies, the case against Donald Trump’s “Trump University,” unprecedented work to stop misconduct by landlords and building owners, statewide efforts to ensure access to local public schools for the children of undocumented immigrants, and the establishment of a special prosecutor for police-involved deaths.

 

Micah and his wife, Elizabeth, live on the Upper West Side—ten blocks from where he grew up—with their three children, Nate (13), Ben (11), and Phoebe (7). They are members of Congregation Rodeph Sholom and a proud public school, little league, and chess family.