In February 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed Frederick Schaffer as the Chair of the City’s Campaign Finance Board. The Board, which will be thirty years old next year, is responsible for enforcing New York City’s campaign finance law, monitoring campaign contributions and disclosures, overseeing the public matching funds program and enforcing the rules. Schaffer takes the reigns as the Board heads into the 2017 mayoral campaign.

Schaffer was born and raised in Brooklyn. One of four boys, his father was a businessman and his mother a school teacher and then homemaker. Schaffer entered Harvard undergraduate in 1964, at the beginning of the era of public interest law. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in history before going onto Harvard Law School. After receiving his J.D. in 1973, Schaffer worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in its civil litigation division for five years. (more…)