\u201cPolitics is not about winning elections, it’s about defending democracy, defending individual rights, and improving lives,\u201d says Daniel Squadron, a Fieldston Alum of the class of \u201898 and former New York State Senator. Currently, Squadron works for The States Project, an organization he co-founded, that fuses ethics, politics and democratic reform at the level of state legislatures across the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether they realize it or not, every kid at Fieldston \u201cknows\u201d Dan Squadron. Every time someone says \u201cwe bleed orange,\u201d they are intoning Squadron. Every time they \u201cinvoke the orange,\u201d they are tapping into Squadron\u2019s campaigning, as a student, and an alum, to hold on to crucial aspects of Fieldston\u2019s traditions; to not buy into trendy branding and marketing strategies, right here at school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Squadron has always been a political animal. Before representing the thousands of constituents in his district, in southern Manhattan and Brooklyn, Squadron represented his class as FSG president, only then it was called the principal’s advisory committee, or PAC. Squadron had lost the position in previous years. In 7th grade, after a medical leave of absence from school, he returned on the day of the elections and was permitted by his grade dean to run as a write-in candidate. The elections were held in the cafeteria and in his speech, Squadron mentioned something about an initiative for better food and he told me \u201cthe whole cafeteria staff came out of the kitchen and sort of just stared at me.\u201d Looking back, he says that he definitely wouldn’t say that again and that the people who work in the cafeteria do not get nearly enough credit for the quality of food they’re putting out. For Squadron, the art of politics is about learning and re-thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Fieldston, Squadron said he \u201cwas like the kid from the movie Rushmore<\/em>.\u201d He acknowledged that this is a dated reference for me, but said that I was still able to \u201cget the picture.\u201d He was precocious and he was everywhere. He says, \u201cmy senior year I did everything but school: I was student body president, I wrote and directed a play, I acted in some plays, I was the PA announcer for the football games… I loved my classes and my teachers and I had never been so engaged and involved in the community as I felt then\u2026 and you know every now and then I had to show up to class.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Squadron says that the school’s founding principles have inspired him and pushed him on the path to politics. “Fieldston’s founding principles are something to live up to in a way that’s really inspiring.\u201d The quotation etched above the stage in The Great Social Hall (Adler Hall), the room where the Founder\u2019s Day ceremony is held, \u201cThe place where people meet to seek the highest is holy ground \u2026 speaks to the humanist values of our institution and being a part of a place that has foundational values that are worth trying to live up to, instead of needing to run away from, is a common theme throughout my life.\u201d The philosophical understandings of the Ethical Culture movement coupled with the ethics curriculum are the foundational principles of politics in which he believes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After graduating from Fieldston, he attended Yale. He remarked, \u201cBecause of my grades at Fieldston, I was a little worried I would be unprepared, but, somehow, the Fieldston education really prepared me for Yale, which was exciting.\u201d He did say, however, that Yale and Fieldston differed in that Yale, unlike Fieldston, is a place that needs to explain and even mend some of its founding principles. He says, of the positive foundational principles of Fieldston, \u201cI missed that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Yale, he did not go to graduate school but, instead, \u201cwas taught by the absolute best possible graduate level teacher for American politics and public service.\u201d He is referring to Senator Charles Schumer, the Majority Leader of the United States Senate from New York State. After college, he was hired by Senator Schumer to be what Squadron calls his \u201cso-called body person.\u201d This meant that Squadron \u201ccarried his coat, took his messages, and got him sandwiches.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He told me two incredible anecdotes from his time with Senator Schumer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Squadron worked with Senator Schumer in 2004, an election year, therefore they were governing and campaigning at the same time. Squadron felt like he couldn’t take any time off, so he showed up to work with a fever and sore throat. He and the senator were supposed to go upstate to campaign and they met in Midtown Manhattan before traveling upstate. Squadron told me, \u201cI got in the car, and he always sat in the front seat, and he looked in the rear view mirror and he said, \u2018what’s wrong with you?\u2019 and I said \u2018I’m sick, I’m sick, but I’ll be fine Chuck,\u2019 but then he said \u2018nope, no way. You’ll die. Get out, go home, and go to sleep.\u2019\u201d Even with his campaign and senatorial responsibilities, Senator Schumer still treated his staff with respect and patience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Squadron then told me of Schumer\u2019s love for the job. As a senator, especially during campaign season, Schumer and his team would have \u201cthese really long days and [Senator Schumer] is out there and he’s got a lot of press conferences and traveling to all sixty-two counties every year. And we’d get in the car to drive from one county to another and it would always be a long drive. But he’d get in the car and he would hit the dashboard and he’d say that was so great, wasn’t that great? What a great state this is.\u2019 The cameras were off and the doors were closed and his secret truth comes out, and what it was is that he absolutely loves it and he really believed in what we were doing.\u201d Squadron even admitted that, although Squadron would sometimes get tired from doing the same event in five different cities a day, Senator Schumer never tired of it and loved every minute of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The ultimate testament to the Senator\u2019s character and Squadron’s close relationship with him is that, not only did he co-author Senator Schumer’s book called “Positively American”, but Senator Schumer and his wife introduced Squadron to Schumer’s wife’s chief of staff, Elizabeth Weinsten. The two got married and now have two children together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Squadron says that Schumer set him up for the rest of his life and mentored him during his political apprenticeship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After we had spoken about his time at the Schumer administration, I asked what led him to run for State Senate, and what the campaign entailed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Squadron told me that it was obvious to him that the New York State Legislature was the worst place in New York politics and the State Senate especially was run by a set of insider, old school, and often corrupt politicians. So, in 2008, when he was just 28 years old, he decided to challenge the Democratic 30-year incumbent who had been in office before Squadron was even born. \u201cI thought I had a 15% chance, but it was a good thing to do so I decided to run in the primary and I worked really hard and I knocked on 7,654 doors personally. I was really fortunate that people were willing to take a risk against an incumbent which is really rare and hard to do, including Chuck Schumer and others… I’d say that the day I decided to run I was certainly not the best person of the hundreds of thousands in my district to run, but after knocking on all those doors, I believe I was because I had talked to so many people about their perspectives and I had learned what they wanted, and how to get hired by them\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Squadron won the primary and, because his district was deeply Democratic, he was able to easily win the general election. He joined the State Senate and, at the time, was the youngest member, and yet, immediately made a name for himself. The first time he ever went to a live meeting of the State Senate, he spoke on the floor about new rules that were being put in place. And, the first time he ever went to a committee meeting, he ended up chairing it. His incredible start was indicative of the amazing work he would do in the State Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Squadron did incredible things for the Mitchell Lama\/affordable housing program in his district. He told me that when people first look at his district (Brooklyn along the waterfront and lower Manhattan – South Houston street to 14th street ) they often say \u201coh what a wealthy district.\u201d Squadron says, \u201cthat\u2019s certainly true about Brooklyn Heights, Tribeca, and Soho, but I also had more than 50,000 constituents who lived in public housing and tens of thousands who lived in Mitchell Lamas.\u201d In some ways, Mitchell Lama projects made for scores of affordable housing for working class, middle class, and professional New Yorkers and prevented the city from being a city of income extremes and homelessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Squadron was in office, there were efforts to privatize many Mitchell Lama buildings. So, Squadron and his team attempted to \u201cchange the eligibility so that, say, two teachers could have a chance to get in.\u201d He also sought to prevent the public housing system from going bankrupt. Squadron and his team noticed a provision in the first Obama stimulus bill that allowed public housing developments that were paid for and run by cities and states to be federalized and therefore get 60 to 80 million dollars more a year from the federal government to stabilize their finances. Squadron told me, \u201cI was able to work on, sponsor, and pass that bill. City public housing still has a lot of problems, but a big part is stabilizing it and I am proud of my work on that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n He also did incredible things for the public parks in his district, specifically Pier 42, Governors Island, and Brooklyn Bridge Park. Squadron says of his district, \u201cI represented more fish than people, more water than land, and a lot of the work that I did helped improve the governance and make sure that we have great parks in the district\u2026. I\u2019m really proud of the work that I did to make sure that those parks were run by the right folks and that they would have long-term finance plans.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked which of the three parks was most challenging to work on. He told me that \u201cthey were all deeply challenging\u2026 at Brooklyn Bridge Park I really wanted to fundamentally change some of the financing structure but also have the park be a place of active recreation\u2026 so there were real challenges in terms of trying to reduce the amount of housing and still make sure the park is funded. We worked to accelerate the funding I got and ensure amenities in the park.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In terms of Pier 42 and Governors Island, he said that \u201cPier 42 was surrounded entirely by public and subsidized housing, so it was basically an afterthought. I was able to get Senator Schumer to partner with me to get real money to Pier 42 and I think otherwise that neighborhood would have been left out of this waterfront renaissance. In terms of Governors Island, it was a classic ungovernable mess between the city and state. So even though I was a state official, I was able to help make a deal to push it to be clearly controlled by the city so that the mayor was both on the hook for its financing but also had the ability and authority to govern it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Clearly, Squadron was able to enact incredible change in these parks. But I wondered, was it difficult working across the aisle with individuals who did not share his views to pass this legislation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Squadron told me that I \u201cwould be surprised at how little there is of that [working across the aisle]\u201d in the state legislature. \u201cState legislatures get very very little public attention or focus, and, as a result, party affiliation,\u201d he suggested, is everything. It is a system of patrons and clients. Squadron resumed, \u201cSo, overwhelmingly, it\u2019s whoever controls the majority and the majority controls everything.\u201d \u201cIn nine years in office, I can count on one hand the amount of times that I worked across the aisle with a Republican who was willing to work with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of these instances was a bill surrounding maternal and child health programs for poor and first-time mothers. In a 2015 letter to The New York Times<\/a>, Squadron wrote, \u201cWhile federal support for Nurse-Family Partnership is critical, it is not the only way to expand the program. I have brought together a bipartisan group of lawmakers to call for universal Nurse-Family Partnership in New York State, which would make it available to all eligible first-time moms.\u201d He continued, \u201cWith nearly 40 years of data behind it, Nurse-Family Partnership has proved that its benefits extend well beyond lowered infant mortality; 15 years later, moms and their children are about half as likely to be involved in the criminal justice system. There is an urgent need for dramatic expansion. That is why states should pick up where the federal government has started and offer universal Nurse-Family Partnership now.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n