Soares Talks About His Opposition to Drug Laws at Fundraiser

Liz and I both showed up for Albany County District Attorney David Soares’ small fund-raiser in Manhattan last night.

Two things stood out:

First, Soares talked about his family’s experience, which put him on the path to opposing mandatory drug sentencing laws, also know as the Rockefeller Drug Laws, an issue he campaigned on when he swept into office, beating a Democratic incumbent.

After explaining how his older brother would go the corner to catch a bus to work as part of a summer job program when they were kids, Soares explained, “The Reagan administration came in and those programs disappeared. But my brother and his friends would still show up on those corners, because economic opportunities still existed there. Except, those were not the kind of economic opportunities that were part of, you know, the legitimate economy.”

In addition, I noticed that even though Assembly Democrats are in conference in Brooklyn, only one came to the event, Albany's Jack McEneny, who, along with fellow attendee State Senator Eric Schneiderman, are long-time supporters of Soares.

As a bonus, the one-liner of the night came from McEney’s introduction of Soares. He gave this description of the place they both represent: “But in Albany, which, in all due respect, can be a little inbred, [he] definitely was not an insider.”