Leecia R. Eve

Leecia R. Eve

Democratic

BACKGROUND: Eve, 53, from Buffalo, is a Manhattan attorney who is vice president for government affairs at Verizon. Eve is the daughter of civil rights leader Arthur Eve, the longtime Buffalo assemblyman. Eve has worked as a staff aide for former Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Joe Biden.  She worked for then-Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo as deputy secretary for economic development. She lost a bid for lieutenant governor in 2005 in the Democratic primary but has maintained strong roots to the Harlem’s Democratic powerbrokers. She is an appointee of Cuomo as a commissioner of the Port Authority. She graduated from Harvard Law School and Smith College.

ISSUES: She has brought personal stories of her past to the campaign, such as when she sued governments over civil rights. She noted a 1990s case in which she sued for better conditions and rights for women incarcerated in Washington, D.C.: “One of my clients had her leg shackled to a bed as she brought a child into this world, in the nation’s capital in the most powerful nation on earth.” She said she will fight for social justice as attorney general within New York and against President Donald Trump in Washington. “We need a strong, fearless advocate now more than ever … I am that woman,” she said. Eve said she would revive an “AG for a Day” project of former Attorney General Robert Abrams of having an assistant attorney general visit communities and hear any New Yorker’s claim, including those about immigration, domestic abuse and environmental justice. Eve, in seeking to show independence from Cuomo, said his decision in 2014 to disband the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption eight months after he created it was “a big mistake.”