Sussman is Green Party’s pick for NYS attorney general

BY ERIKA NORTON
GOSHEN — The Green Party announced that Chester civil rights attorney Michael Sussman is the party’s nominee for New York State Attorney General, a position up for grabs after Eric Schneiderman’s resigned in disgrace over reports that he abused four women.
At the state Green Party convention this weekend, Sussman, a Chester resident whose law office is in Goshen, made his case for seeking office by recounting his four decades of experience as a civil rights and constitutional law attorney.
“I am prepared, not really to take this fight to power, but to win this race,” Sussman said at the convention on May 19. “I have more experience as a trial lawyer and as an appellate lawyer than every candidate of both major parties put together.”
A longtime Democratic activist, Sussman said he switched his party affiliation to the Green Party due to his disillusionment with the current New York State Democratic Party led by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Sussman said he was going to run for Orange County Executive last year and had the Democratic Party nomination, but said he couldn’t run as a Democrat due to the corruption he saw within the party.
He said he now believes the values of the Green Party more closely represent those to which he adheres to than those of the current iteration of the Democratic Party.
Recently, Sussman has been involved locally in the legal efforts to stop the Legoland New York theme park project in Goshen, as well as the Competitive Power Ventures power plant in Wawayanda. Several years ago, he successfully stopped Orange County from selling the Valley View nursing home to a private operator.
He has also been involved in a number of discrimination and police brutality cases, including a class-action lawsuit by African-American and Hispanic state workers against discriminatory state promotional tests and represented the family of Pace University student DJ Henry who was shot to death by a police officer in 2010.
Most recently, Sussman is representing defendant Jeanne Ryan, the Goshen woman charged with 10 felony counts of aggravated animal cruelty after 10 horses were found dead in her barn.
In a statement announcing his candidacy, Sussman laid out the key issues he hopes to tackle if elected: public corruption, discrimination and segregation, inequities in the criminal justice system, recent fossil fuel infrastructure, and federal policies that punish immigrants, sanctuary cities and religious institutions.
“This is not a race about a third party or a subordinate party,” Sussman said at the convention. “It’s a race about who is the most qualified person to be attorney general of New York, and I will put my credentials next to anyone’s and everyone’s for that honor.”
See Michael Sussman’s letter to the editor announcing his candidacy on Page 12.