In June, David Siffert won a 15-vote victory to succeed 35-year incumbent Deborah Glick as the next state Assembly member representing the West Village, SoHo, NoHo and Tribeca. Now, as the campaign gives way to the work of governing, Siffert sat down with the Star-Revue to discuss their grassroots campaign, the importance of representation and their legislative priorities for their first term.
Siffert, a civil rights lawyer and adjunct professor at New York University who teaches about the state legislature, is poised to become the first nonbinary member of the State Assembly. Their (Siffert’s choice of pronoun) election would continue a tradition of trailblazing representation in the district: Glick became the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the Assembly when she was elected in 1990.
“Having firsthand experiences can be really helpful in explaining the need for certain kinds of legislation and protecting certain groups of people,” Siffert told the Star-Revue. “So I’m hopeful that I can use my experiences and my voice to help people who absolutely have really strong allies in the legislature already, but who might not have those firsthand experiences to explain the issue to people who don’t understand.”
Heading into June’s primary, Siffert was considered an underdog against Jeanine Kiely, a longtime district leader endorsed by Glick, and Ryder Kessler, a candidate backed by the Working Families Party and aligned with the Abundance movement.
But Siffert said they believed that the race would be won through face-to-face organizing.
“I knew from the beginning that this was going to be a race that was determined on the ground and in the field,” Siffert said. “Lower Manhattan still has real community infrastructure, meaning the bulk of the votes were going to be, if not people we meet personally, people who know people that we’ve met personally.”
Siffert’s ties to the Village Independent Democrats, where they previously served as president, and Downtown Independent Democrats helped provide an experienced network of impassioned grassroots organizers. The campaign also leaned heavily into social media, using short-form videos and online advertising to showcase Siffert’s policy expertise and connect with a wider audience, as well as placing old fashioned print advertising in both local papers: the Village Star-Revue and The Village View.
“We went from community event to community event, from living room to living room. We were out on street corners. We were meeting people where they were,” Siffert said. “But we weren’t just giving them a palm card. We were having deep conversations with them. We were getting to know them personally.”
Now, with the election behind them, Siffert is turning towards the work of governing. While campaigning as an outsider, their background as an advocate and activist has prepared Siffert for the work of building coalitions needed to pass legislation.
“I think there’s a big difference between being an outsider and being someone that struggles to build relationships,” Siffert said. “If you are an activist and you want your bills to pass, you need to build relationships with people to get those bills to pass.”
Legislative priorities
Many of Siffert’s legislative priorities, including expanding protections for immigrants and placing greater restrictions on government surveillance, stem from their decades-long career as an advocate.
Siffert recently served on the Immigrant Leadership Council of the New York Immigration Coalition, where they traveled the state meeting with immigrant organizations and people directly affected by immigration policy. Those conversations helped shape their support for the NY For All Act, which would expand protections for immigrants and make New York a sanctuary state.
“Beyond what I think is important, this is something where there’s real consensus on the ground among directly impacted people,” Siffert said. “And one thing I learned by being an advocate is how important it is to listen to the voices of those who are being affected.”
The NY For All Act did not pass during the last legislative session, but Siffert and other supporters remain optimistic about its prospects.
Siffert has also spent years working to curb the expansion and misuse of government surveillance technology. As legal director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, or S.T.O.P., they have focused on technologies including automated license plate readers, gunshot detection systems, social media monitoring and networks that connect public and privately owned cameras.
“We’re given a lot of different reasons for why these technologies are used,” Siffert said. “Some of these reasons may feel like good reasons. Some of these may feel like they’re an outlier scenario that’s an excuse for mass tracking of New Yorkers, and so thinking about which of these reasons we buy and which of these we don’t buy is really important.”
Artificial Intelligence
Siffert sees artificial intelligence as an emerging challenge to privacy and civil liberties. The incoming office holder plans to build on the work of outgoing Assembly member Alex Bores, whom they described as one of the legislature’s leading voices on AI regulation.
“I think we need to understand that AI is sort of exacerbating a lot of the pre-existing privacy risks by taking and making use of this data in ways that can be dangerous,” Siffert said.
Siffert said the rapid pace of technological change makes AI particularly difficult to regulate. Rather than attempting to regulate the technology itself, they argued, lawmakers should focus on its consequences.
“Because it changes so quickly, if you try to regulate how an AI system is built or works technologically, six months later, your laws are going to be out of date,” Siffert said. “Instead, if you talk about what the impacts are, the laws can be evergreen.”
Siffert must still get through November’s general election before officially taking office, but in the deep-blue 66th Assembly District, the general election is unlikely to pose a significant challenge. Barring an unforeseen upset, they will take office Jan. 1 as the district’s first new Assembly representative in more than 35 years.
