Micah Lasher

Micah Charles Lasher (born December 18, 1981) is an American politician serving as a member of the New York State Assembly for District 69 in Manhattan in New York City since 2025.

He was previously the Director of State Legislative Affairs under New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Chief of Staff of NY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and the Director of Policy for New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

He is the Democratic nominee for New York's 12th congressional district in 2026.

Early life and education He was born in Manhattan to Stephanie Lasher and Albert C. Lasher. Lasher grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Lasher performed magic tricks on national television by the age of 13, appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman and on NBC's Today show.

In 1998 as a 16-year-old student at Stuyvesant High School ('99), he became an editor-in-chief of the school's student newspaper, The Stuyvesant Spectator. In 1999, after the school's assistant principal pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 15-year-old female student, Lasher condemned the fact that the assistant principal was only sentenced to three years' probation and was receiving a full pension.

He graduated from New York University in 2003 with a degree in sociology. While at NYU, Lasher spent a semester in London, where he was roommates with Aziz Ansari. From 2007 to 2009, he worked as a special assistant and chief aide to Jerrold Nadler.

In 2009, he was the Executive Director of Public Affairs and a lobbyist for the New York City Department of Education, as well as a trustee of the Community Service Society of New York, an antipoverty organization.

Executive Director of StudentsFirstNY In 2012, he became the Executive Director of StudentsFirstNY, the New York branch of a national education reform advocacy organization founded to promote the expansion of charter schools and the firing of ineffective teachers, and to oppose tenure.

Chief of Staff of NY State Attorney General In 2013, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman hired Lasher as Chief of Staff, a position in which he managed 1,800 people. In that role, he he helped coordinate a lawsuit against Donald Trump and Trump University. Lasher lost to Marisol Alcantara in the Democratic primary election, as she received a plurality of 32.7% of the vote, and Lasher received 31.6% of the vote–294 votes shy of her total.

Sidewalk Labs From 2017 to 2020, Lasher worked as Head of Policy and Communications at Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet Google company the goal of which was to innovate technology and urban design to improve cities. Sidewalk's primary proposed project, Sidewalk Toronto, was intended to be an innovative reinvention of Toronto's neglected eastern downtown waterfront, and Sidewalks Labs said it did not intend to own the data it gathered in public spaces and instead would relinquish control of the data to an independent organization to be established and named the Civic Data Trust. The proposed project generated controversy in Toronto over data privacy and surveillance and was eventually cancelled by Alphabet which cited economic concerns caused by the uncertainty of the economy experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic .

Director of Policy of New York State In November 2021, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul appointed Lasher as Director of Policy. During his tenure, Lasher participated in shaping and implementing state policy following Hochul’s ascension to the governorship after Andrew Cuomo's resignation. In his role, Lasher helped write a set of gun laws directly after the 2022 Buffalo shooting.

In April 2025, Lasher co-sponsored a bill requiring an audit of a state subsidy agreement with Elon Musk's Tesla in order to "identify waste, fraud and abuse committed by private parties to the contract."

Also in April 2025, he worked to rescue the Metro Theater, a landmark 1933 Art Deco movie theater on Broadway near West 99th Street on the Upper West Side.

In June 2025, amid concern President Trump might seek to strip federal laws governing housing discrimination, a New York State bill that he co-sponsored was adopted by New York State lawmakers.

In November 2025, in the wake of a rowdy and chaotic protest at the entryway of Park East Synagogue, which included chants of "Death to the IDF" and "Globalize the intifada," and an exhortation that "We need to make them scared!," Lasher said: "If you are standing outside a synagogue calling for 'intifada revolution,' you are not peacefully protesting. You are trying to intimidate and create fear among Jews, and that is never acceptable."

In December 2025, in the wake of President Trump's "mass deportations", Lasher cosponsored legislation to designate schools, houses of worship, and nonprofit offices as off-limits to federal agents trying to make administrative arrests or arrests without a judicial arrest warrant. That way, he said, "our neighbors can function freely in our communities and deal with the basic needs of life, and do so not in the shadows."

U.S. House of Representatives race

In September 2025, U.S. Representative Jerry Nadler announced that he would retire from his congressional seat when his then-current term ended; it was reported that Nadler planned on supporting Lasher in a prospective primary. On September 15, Lasher decided to run for Nadler's seat. The New York Times wrote of the district, New York's 12th congressional district: "Stretching from Union Square through Central Park, the district is home to more Fortune 500 companies, millionaires, and cultural landmarks than perhaps anywhere in the country," is "one of the oldest, best-educated and wealthiest districts in the United States," and that it is "one of the most Democratic congressional districts in the United States." He opposes legislation that would prohibit weapons sales to Israel. After Zohran Mamdani became the nominee of the Democratic Party in his campaign to become mayor of New York City, Lasher supported him, while at the same time writing that he hoped that Mamdani "can come to better appreciate the deeply personal and historical importance that the survival of Israel as a Jewish state holds for Jewish New Yorkers. I hope that he is able to see antisemitism when it takes the form of a double-standard being applied to Israel precisely because it is a Jewish state."

Lasher was endorsed by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, U.S. representatives Jerry Nadler and Nydia Velázquez, Governor of New York Kathy Hochul, former Governor of New York David Paterson, and former Attorney General of New York Eric Schneiderman.

Personal life Lasher lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his family. He is Jewish, and his family is a member of Congregation Rodeph Sholom.

Writings Micah C. Lasher, "Opinion: What's Fairer Than a Test?", The New York Times, May 10, 1997. Micah Lasher, "New York needs an Olympic goal: Paris shows how a city can improve its permanent infrastructure," The New York Daily News, August 18, 2024 . Micah Lasher, "Micah Lasher: Why I’m running for Congress this year," The New York Daily News, June 9, 2026.

Electoral history 2016

2024