Note: the campaigns of John Liu for comptroller and Eric Gioia for public advocate declined to participate.
Ben Branham
Communications Consultant
Branham works for Global Strategy Group, a public affairs firm and political consulting firm. Katz hired the firm and Branham has worked on the campaign as a “de-facto press secretary” since February.
While he has worked on other accounts with the Global Strategy Group, he has not previously worked on any other political campaigns.
Branham grew up outside Chicago and attended college at the University of Illinois.
After finishing school, he moved to Boston and got involved with a local non-profit.
He then came to New York City on a 9-month fellowship with the NYC Urban Fellows program, which places people less than three years out of school in city agencies.
He ended up at the Department of Small Business Services (SBS) in the Bloomberg administration. When the fellowship ended, he was hired as SBS press secretary, and then acting chief of staff.
In 2006, he left the job to get a master’s from Harvard’s Kennedy School. When he finished school last spring, he returned to New York and joined the Global Strategies Group.
He worked a bit on the account when the company worked for Eliot Spitzer and then David Paterson, but otherwise his communications work has been with agencies and other non-political accounts.
Ahsaki Benion-Habersham
Finance director
Benion-Habersham took a quick break from intense campaigning this summer to get married. After the wedding upstate, she and her husband stayed up there for a short honeymoon.
Then Benion-Habersham was quickly back to work.
An attorney, Benion-Habersham started out volunteering on the campaign. She has not worked in politics before, although she says she has long been interested in it.
Benion-Habersham grew up in Harlem and attended Amherst College and Yale Law School.
She worked as a corporate securities attorney and was laid off before she began volunteering for the campaign.
Jonathan Trichter
Campaign manager
Trichter is a self-described “campaign cowboy.”
He was born and raised in Manhattan, and attended Emory University, where he majored in philosophy.
“What could you possibly do with that?” he jokingly asked about his chosen course of study.
The answer, for him, was politics. After graduating college, he worked on numerous New York campaigns including city-wide, state-wide and congressional races.
Highlights of his campaign work include Mark Green’s first successful public advocate run in 1993, Carolyn McCarthy’s 1996 congressional run, Eliot Spitzer’s first successful campaign for attorney general in 1998 and Fernando Ferrer’s unsuccessful run for mayor in 2001.
He has worked on dozens of congressional campaigns across the country.
Trichter also has a background in public finance. He was an investment banker at JP Morgan and left the company after they merged with Bear Sterns.
Citing his interest in where the public sector and capital markets intersect, Trichter began talking to Katz after leaving JP Morgan. He ended up running her campaign.
Rex Barr
Field directorBarr has known he wanted to get into politics for a long time. He grew up in Philadelphia and earned his undergraduate degree in political science and communications.
While in Pittsburgh for school, Barr did some work with Libertarian candidate Tony Oliva’s unsuccessful mayoral campaign in 2007.
After college, he went straight to Fordham University for its masters program in election campaign management.
One of his professors at Fordham referred him to Trichter, and he joined the campaign while still taking classes.
Team David Weprin
Bob Olivari
Field director
Olivari worked with Weprin’s father, Saul, when Olivari was a court officer and Saul was a member, and eventually the speaker, of the New York State Assembly.
Olivari said he sees the late speaker’s commitment to fairness reflected in his son.
Olivari is still a court clerk, though he intends to retire soon.
In his current capacity on the Weprin campaign, Olivari has a variety of responsibilities, including labor coordination and working on relationships with unions. His work is mainly in Brooklyn and Staten Island, where he was raised.
Olivari attended Stony Brook College, where he majored in American history. He went on to get a graduate degree in Latin American history from Stony Brook as well.
There were no jobs where he could use that knowledge of Latin American history, so he started working in the courts system in 1973. He was secretary to the court officers union in Staten Island and vice president of New York State court clerks association, where he did a lot of legislative work.
He estimates that he has also worked, in various roles, in at least 40 local campaigns.
Olivari worked on Mario Cuomo’s campaigns in 1982, 1986, 1990, and 1994.
Olivari also ran Bill Murphy’s four re-election campaigns for Staten Island district attorney.
In 2001 and 2005, he worked as the “Staten Island guy” on Fernando Ferrer’s mayoral campaigns.
Kathy Huang
Deputy campaign manager, finance director
Huang attended college at Binghamton with her City Council Member (and one of her boss Weprin’s competitors), John Liu.
“We knew of each other,” she said. “I wouldn’t say we are best friends.”
After Binghamton, Huang went on to law school at Philadelphia’s Temple University.
Huang’s first foray into politics was Morgenthau’s 2005 re-election campaign.
“I got involved because of Eben,” she said. “He sort of dragged me into this.”
After helping the Morgenthau campaign to resolve a legal issue, she started working on the campaign as a volunteer.
For a year after the campaign she stayed on with Morgenthau, working out of the public information office and doing special projects.
Prior to her brush with politics, Huang worked for a number of city agencies.
She did some volunteer work for DA candidate Cy Vance but has now turned her attention to working full-time for Weprin.
Eben Bronfman
Campaign manager
Having worked for Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau (D) since 1985, Bronfman is on leave now to run Weprin’s campaign.
Bronfman would have been working on Morgenthau’s campaign again this time around, but when Morgenthau decided not to run for re-election Bronfman chose not to get involved in the DA race.
“It would be like choosing which child,” he said, of deciding which of his former colleagues’ campaigns to join.
Bronfman was born and raised on Manhattan’s West Side, though he now resides in Queens. His father served as a district leader, and politics always felt like a natural career path to him.
He attended John Jay for both college, where he majored in political science and public administration, and for a master’s degree criminal justice and sociology.
He has been working in New York politics for 30 years, mainly in Yonkers. Bronfman worked for Dick Gottfried in the State Assembly for 10 years and has also worked for Tom Suozzi in Suffolk.
Deputy campaign manager
Collymore started out as deputy director of central Brooklyn for the campaign, but was recently made the deputy campaign manager.
She was born and raised in Brooklyn and attended Long Island University and Hunter College. She has worked in her parents’ business, which over 30 years has had various incarnations, including a laundromat and a coffee shop.
Working in an independent business, Collymore started to get interested in local community issues. She has worked as a community organizer and is now organizing a new political club called The Parliament.
Collymore has also been a political journalist for the Queens Ledger and Brooklyn Downtown Star newspaper.
She has worked for Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz and on campaigns for Brooklyn district attorney Charles Hynes.
Before joining the Weprin campaign, Collymore was also campaign manager for former district leader Bill Saunders in Brooklyn. Saunders recommended her to the Weprin campaign.
Team David Yassky
Danny Kanner
Communications director
Originally from Long Island, Kanner majored in government and politics at the University of Maryland.
He interned on Eliot Spitzer’s campaign for governor while still in college. After graduating in 2006, he worked in the governor’s compliance office. He was a junior press officer and special assistant to the governor.
When Spitzer resigned, Kanner stayed on with Paterson and helped in the governor’s office for a while.
Kanner then decided to take a job in Missouri as communications director for Chris Koster’s campaign and transition team for attorney general.
Kanner enjoyed the time in Missouri, but after his seven-month stint with Koster he felt ready to come back to New York. He came home looking for work, and soon found the Yassky campaign.
James Katz
Field director
Katz graduated from Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government a little over two months ago. But he decided to put off actually practicing the law to work for Yassky.
His background is in politics and organizing, and old boss and mentor of his from 1199 SEIU called and suggested joining the Yassky campaign. Katz decided that his heart was in politics and that Yassky was a candidate he believed could do a lot of good.
In addition to his work for the SEIU, Katz worked in 2004 for America Coming Together and John Edwards’ first presidential campaign. He focused on field work in Nevada.
Katz also did some early work for Andrew Cuomo in the 2006 attorney general race and for John Hall in his congressional race that year before going to Boston for graduate school.
The native New
Yorker got his undergraduate degree from Brown University.
Cathy Mitchell Toren
Campaign manager
Mitchell Toren has been working for Yassky on and off for a long time.
Most recently before this campaign, she served as the development director at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
But prior to that break, she had been Yassky’s Council chief of staff. And she was his finance director for several years, including when Yassky ran for Congress in 2006.
She worked “very peripherally” with Andrew Rasiej during his campaign for public advocate. But otherwise, she has chosen against working for politicians other than Yassky.
Born in Minneapolis, Mitchell Toren moved to Atlanta when she was 10 years old. She went to the University of Georgia, where she majored in art history. And she moved to New York because her husband is a New Yorker. But she considers herself more of a Midwesterner than anything else.
Rodney Capel
Senior strategist
Capel first met Yassky years ago, when the two worked for Chuck Schumer. They worked together again after Yassky was elected to the Council and Capel, as deputy chief of staff to Speaker Christine Quinn, worked with Yassky on small business issues.
Capel has worked in politics his entire life. He grew up in Harlem and his father is a longtime close aide to Rep. Charlie Rangel.
Capel attended Syracuse University, where he majored in political science. He went on to graduate school at George Washington University, where he attained a master’s in political management.
He stayed on in DC for four years, working for the Department of Education during the Clinton administration.
Capel has been with a number of New York and national campaigns. He has done campaign work for Charlie Rangel, Carl McCall, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton. He ran the Kerry campaign in New York State in 2004, and was director of the state Democratic Party from 2005-2006.
Dolev Azara
Finance directorAzara started her career in politics at age 19, when she interned for Rep. Anthony Weiner. She never left politics after that.
Azara later went on to work for Weiner. She has also worked for state Sen. John Sabini, as well as for Sean Maloney during his campaign for attorney general.
She had done some work for Yassky before, during his run for Congress. Mitchell Toren reached out to Azara when she was putting a campaign team together.
Originally from Brooklyn, she majored in political science at Brooklyn College. She has stuck with what she knows, working in fundraising exclusively for New York politicians.
“I should spread my wings,” she joked.
Matt Wing
Communications Director
Wing spent 2008 in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina.
Working as political communications director on the Obama campaign for A Change to Win, a national labor movement led by seven unions and six million members, he traveled the country during the general election, doing press in local markets.
The work was mainly in small towns, like Youngstown Ohio or Flint Michigan, though he did make it to Las Vegas while in Nevada (“not for fun, for work—I don’t gamble,” he said).
Wing had just finished working for the Obama campaign when Waldman called him about joining the City Council office as communications director. Earlier this summer, he switched over to working on the campaign.
Wing grew up in Brooklyn Heights and attended Bard College.
After graduating from Bard, Wing had a non-partisan fellowship with the New York State Senate. He next worked in Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s press office.
Mollie Grace Mebert Meikle
Fundraising and compliance, and volunteer and intern coordinating
Mollie has always been politically active. Growing up in Dover, New Hampshire with her parents heavily involved in the Democratic Party, Meikle was immersed in politics.
She attended Bard College. After graduating, she worked for America Coming Together in 2004. Later that year, she worked for Avi Green, a candidate for state representative in Massachusetts.
Meikle worked in Maryland for now-Rep. John Sarbanes while he was in the House of Delegates. In 2006, she worked for Andrea Silbert’s lieutenant governor campaign in Massachusetts.
She also worked at Mass Vote, a Boston non-profit on voter education and mobilization. Her work there focused on ensuring that people had understood their voting rights and expanding the number of people who vote in Massachusetts.
After leaving Mass Vote, Meikle moved to New York City, ending up living in de Blasio’s Council district in Brooklyn. She was unfamiliar with New York politics, and friends suggested she get in touch with de Blasio.
Meikle signed on with him in December of 2007 and has been with him ever since.
Jillian Waldman
Campaign manager
After studying government as an undergraduate at Cornell University, Waldman spent six months in 2003 at New Jersey Public Interest Research Group before moving to New York City.
The native Philadelphian met de Blasio soon after arriving in the city, and began working as a fundraising consultant for him in 2004. She stayed in the role through 2005, when she left to move to California.
In California, Waldman spent a year at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation as major gifts officer. She then consulted for the John Edwards for President campaign in California.
During her time away, Waldman kept in close touch with de Blasio. In January 2008, she came back to New York to be his Council chief of staff. At the beginning of the summer she moved over to her current position as campaign manager.
Tyquana Henderson
Political operations
Henderson has known de Blasio for 10 years, going back to when the two worked together on Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2000. She later worked as his deputy chief of staff after he was elected to the Council in 2002, and started on the campaign fulltime in May.
Henderson spent five years as a lobbyist for Yoswein New York. Clients ranged from Ikea to the Brooklyn Philharmonics to the New York Academy of Medicine.
She has worked on a number of campaigns before working for de Blasio, including Peter Vallone, Sr. in his 1998 gubernatorial primary and in his 2001 mayoral campaign, comptroller Carl McCall in the 2002 gubernatorial primary and former Assembly Member Roger Green in 2002.
Last year Henderson did a brief stint at the Port Authority, working in the office of minority and women-owned businesses. She also started the political consulting firm Connective Strategies, which focuses on political organizing, community organizing, strategic development, and constituency organizing.
Last year she also served as field director in Rep. Edolphus Towns’ re-election campaign.
Henderson grew up in Brooklyn, attended college at Long Island University and earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix.
Team Mark Green
Alyson Grant
Finance directorGrant grew up in Boca Raton, Florida—or as she calls it, the sixth borough. Her parents and others had migrated down from New York, and she and many of her friends migrated back up.
So her choice to come to New York after graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in political science and anthropology, was not unexpected. She has been working in city and state politics on and off since graduating five years ago.
Grant’s first job after college was serving as deputy campaign manager and finance director for Assembly Member Jonathan Bing’s 2004 re-election campaign.
She left politics, working for over two years at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. She then served as program director for a program called Reform Jewish Voice in New York State, at the Union for Reform Judaism.
At the same time, she was attending graduate school, getting a master’s in public policy from New York University’s Wagner School.
After finishing the program last year, she signed on as Elizabeth Crowley’s campaign manager for the special Council election last year. After Crowley lost the special, Grant went immediately to work for upstate Rep. Michael Arcuri as his finance director. She started with the Green campaign in February.
Ben Kallos
Policy directorKallos grew up in Manhattan and attended the State University of New York in Buffalo. He majored in psychology and communication and double-minored in philosophy and religion before going straight to law school.
After law school, he worked for Scott Stringer during his campaign for borough president. After being appointed to Community Board 8 in Manhattan, he became co-chair of the communications committee.
He also became a member of the Democratic Lawyers Council, where he worked as a regional coordinator for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand during her 2006 run for Congress. Not long after, he signed on as chief of staff to Assembly Member Jonathan Bing.
While in that job, Kallos announced his candidacy for Jessica Lappin’s Council seat and opened a campaign committee as she was considering running for public advocate. When she opted for re-election, Kallos decided not to challenge her.
Despite that setback, the situation turned out well for Kallos.
He talked to several public advocate and Manhattan district attorney candidates before deciding which campaign to join. In the end, he says, Green inspired him most.
Anne Strahle
Campaign manager
Strahle first began working for Green in March 1994, soon after he was elected public advocate for the first time. She started out as a community liaison, and by the end of his second term as public advocate had worked her way up to deputy chief of staff.
She was a campaign manager for his 2006 attorney general campaign, and then when Green became president of Air America radio, Strahle went to work for him in the new role.
Strahle’s career has largely centered on working for elected officials in New York City, including Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, for whom she served as deputy director of constituent services, and Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman during her last term in the early 1990s.
Strahle grew up in Queens and attended New York University for both her undergraduate and masters degrees, studying political science and public administration.
Team Norman Siegel
Bob Sann
Campaign manager
Sann has known and admired Siegel for 25 years.
Born and bred in the Bronx, Sann is a lawyer by training, and attended law school at the University of Pennsylvania.
Sann has worked in the advertising business as well as in progressive social issue media and filmmaking.
He has run political campaigns for 30 years in 20 states, including Siegel’s previous bid for public advocate.
While living in upstate New York, Sann worked on several campaigns in the conservative 20th congressional district. While they never won, Sann believes they laid the groundwork that made Rep. Scott Murphy’s eventual victory possible.
He and his wife are currently working on a documentary on Grandmothers Against the War about a group of grandmothers who were arrested when they sat in front of the Times Square Army recruiting center.
Richard Prins
All-purpose assistant
“I guess I’ve been trying to get Norman elected since I was 13 years old,” says Prins. “I’ve always been a huge fan.”
Growing up in Manhattan, the teenager was going through what he calls a “rebellious” stage, and was very interested in civil liberties. Prins found out about Siegel’s work from family friends who had volunteered for Siegel at the Civil Liberties Union.
Prins was also client of Siegel’s after being arrested protesting at the 2004 Republican convention. That led him to asking to get involved with the lawyer’s third campaign.
Prins attended Columbia University and studied creative writing.
He has previously volunteered for other campaigns and political organizations. He volunteered for Johnathan Tasini and Ralph Nader and also spent a summer with ACORN, which put him to work for Hiram Montserrate.Christine Speicher
Coordinates volunteers, works on events, strategy and media outreachBorn and raised in Greenwich Village, Speicher grew up going to protests with her politically active mother.
“We still keep our Christmas ornaments in a McGovern bag,” she said. “So it’s always been in my blood.”
Speicher started volunteering for Siegel campaign after she met Siegel at a Democracy for New York City event and offered to help.
She has worked in politics on and off, always as a volunteer. Her first job in politics was a summer job in high school volunteering for former Assembly Member Bill Passanante. More recently, she raised money and blogged as a volunteer for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign.
Speicher has also worked as a photo editor and reporter as well as in corporate communications.
Teresa Cantor
Campaign coordinatorCantor worked with Siegel’s campaign in 2005, organizing house parties and fundraising. The president of Three Parks Independent Democrats, a group that endorsed Siegel in that election, Cantor took that summer off to work for him.
And she has been working on this campaign for over two years, since May 2007.
Her previous political involvement has been as a volunteer: with Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, and with local campaigns like that former Council Member Phil Reed.
Cantor grew up just south of Indianapolis, Indiana. She first came to New York for art school, attending the New York Studio School of painting, drawing, and sculpture.
Cantor eventually moved away from art and into advertising. Over the years, she has worked in human resources, marketing, and recruiting.
All photos by Andrew Schwartz.
