COMMUNITY MAN “I never had a huge legislative agenda. Every one of my bills had a very specific focus on helping my district. I wasn’t interested in writing bills for their own sake but looked for things that impacted the communities I represent” (Photos: Amit Levy)

T

he story that has brought me to New York State Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder’s district office in the Rockaways on a sunny July morning has a distinct “man bites dog” feel to it. Am I really here to speak with an admired politician who’s actually leaving his post after just five years and not due to scandal or ambition for higher office? An elected official who decided that being away from his young family six months out of the year wasn’t right for him? What are there still people like that in government?

I had interviewed Goldfeder three years ago a year after Hurricane Sandy the cataclysmic superstorm that hitNew Yorkon October 29 2012 just a year after he was first elected. The storm damaged or devastated 85 percent of his constituents’ homes including his own — earning his turf the sobriquet of “the Disaster District.”

Phil and I had toured Far Rockaway in October 2013 to reminisce about those difficult days and assess how recovery efforts were proceeding. My Mishpacha magazine account of that interview is now prominently showcased on the walls of his legislative office and I get a laugh when I introduce myself to his staff as “the assemblyman’s biographer.”

But here we are nearly three years later and Phil Goldfeder still retains the same enthusiasm for his work and his district that I had seen back then. He concedes that “the more I talk about it the more I get depressed that I’m leaving. It’s the greatest gift to have a job where you go to sleep at night being excited that the next morning you can get up and go to your work. My father never had a passion for what he did but to his great credit he did it to support his family. But I’m one of the luckiest guys in the world because I love what I do and I’m surrounded by great people. Unfortunately I couldn’t always pay my bills but that’s a separate story.”

Ultimately it wasn’t the unpaid bills that convinced Phil to explore opportunities beyond government but the impact on his family which just recently grew and now includes two boys and a girl under age seven. After half a decade of spending five nights a week in Albany during the six-month legislative session — a sacrifice he’s quick to credit entirely to his wife Esther — he came to the realization that for his “own personal life to spend time with my family to watch my new baby grow up this was the right time to move on.”

Phil Goldfeder can brush shoulders with Mayor Bloomberg or VP Biden but working for his district is what really counts. “The more I talk about it the more I get depressed that I’m leaving”