Newmark Aims for Fresh Impact on Elections
As Democratic Lawyers’ Council takes shape in New York, other states follow
By John R.D. Celock
At the end of the 2004 election, Steven Newmark boarded a flight home from Florida. After spending the previous two weeks working for John Kerry’s campaign, the then 27-year-old fledgling election attorney was at a low point.
“It was one of the toughest flights of my life,” he said.
Short on cash and high on student debts, he shared a cab back to Manhattan with an older woman to save money. They talked about his role coordinating New York lawyers to go to represent the Democratic Party in key states during the election.
“She said to keep fighting,” Newmark said. “That lady inspired me to keep going.”
Initially at Fordham Law School, Newmark was considering a career in labor or tax law. The Sept. 11 attacks changed his focus. He applied to the Army’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, but failed the entrance exam. Without a permanent job, he worked as a contract attorney for several Manhattan firms. Without health insurance, Newmark recalls he was nervous to even step outside, for fear of getting injured.
“A lot of the problems with elections are not maliciousness, but incompetence.” — Steve Newmark
Then in early 2004, a college friend asked Newmark to run his insurgent campaign for Congress in Jersey City. He accepted the offer. Soon after, he began volunteering for the Kerry campaign, taking on increasing responsibilities in teaching election procedures to 1300 attorneys from New York who then went to work in other states.
“Steve walked in as a volunteer,” said well-known election lawyer Henry Berger, who mentored Newmark during the Kerry campaign. “He ended up running the export operation. Steve was the one who pulled it all together.”
After the campaign, he recalled the three-hour lines to vote in minority neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale, compared to fast-moving lines to vote he saw in the more suburban and Republican areas.
Comparing experiences over email with other attorneys he recruited and trained, he found an increasing number of voting rights stories. In response, he helped organize a meeting of attorneys and fellow Kerry campaign veterans. The New York Democratic Lawyers’ Council was born.
Lawyers from the group have held training sessions on state election law and have assisted candidates across the state. They conduct voter education sessions and advocate for voting rights. The group is also monitoring the state’s long-awaited process of overhauling voting machines.
Berger said Andrea Stewart-Cousins’ (D-Yonkers/Westchester) narrow victory over Republican State Sen. Nick Spano last year had much to do with the Democratic Lawyers’ Council’s monitoring of voting rights issues in Yonkers.
But Newmark himself has been in Washington for the past year, working for the office which oversaw the International Teamsters Union elections. While there, he helped organize and lead the D.C. Democratic lawyers group. Similar groups have sprouted in other states, and a national organization has begun to grow as well.
Meanwhile, he traveled to Albania for several weeks in February as part of a group of American attorneys assembled by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to monitor national elections there.
“A lot of the problems with elections are not maliciousness, but incompetence,” Newmark said. “The goal should be that voting should be easy and not difficult.”
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