Daniel Garodnick

Daniel Garodnick (born May 4, 1972) is the Council member for the 4th District of the New York City Council. He is a Democrat.

The district includes the Upper East Side, Central Park South, Grand Central Terminal, Tudor City, Waterside, Peter Cooper Village, Carnegie Hill, Stuyvesant Town, the United Nations as well as part of Yorkville and Turtle Bay in Manhattan.

Garodnick was born in New York City and is a graduate of Trinity School (1990), where he was president of the student senate and the model congress. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College (1994) where he served as class president for each of his four years. He earned a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2000), where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.

An attorney, Garodnick practiced as a securities litigator at the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. While there, he represented the Partnership for New York City in the successful Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit regarding public school funding. He also represented 13 same-sex couples seeking the right to marry in New York State.

Prior to joining the firm, he served as a law clerk to Judge Colleen McMahon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. He spent two years working for the New York Civil Rights Coalition.

In May 2008, Garodnick married Zoe Segal-Reichlin, associate general counsel of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. They have two children.

Garodnick was elected to New York City Council in 2005, winning 63 percent of the vote in the general election and defeating both the Republican and Libertarian candidates. In the five-way Democratic primary that year he won 59% of the vote. He won reelection in 2009 and 2013.

In 2007, Garodnick, along with Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, introduced the Tenant Protection Act. The bill, signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in March 2008, made harassment of tenants by landlords a violation of the housing code. Garodnick spearheaded a $4.5 billion tenant-backed bid to purchase Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village on behalf of the residents in order to preserve the properties as "affordable housing". Met Life sold the properties to Tishman Speyer in a highly leveraged deal for $5.4 billion.

Garodnick formerly served as co-chair to the Council's Infrastructure Task Force. In that role, Garodnick has advocated for infrastructure investments as a means of stimulating the economy, and explored measures to encourage the use of alternative energy.

On April 3, 2012 Garodnick announced that he would seek the democratic nomination for New York City Comptroller. On November 28, 2012 Garodnick dropped out of the Comptroller race, and immediately endorsed Scott Stringer, while pledging to run for re-election in District 4. Stringer had previously been running for Mayor. Garodnick was opposed in his bid for re-election by attorney Helene Jnane.