10 months until Election Day

As Democrat David Yassky '86 leans back in his chair on the top floor of Brooklyn Law College, hands clasped behind his head, dirty white sneakers resting on the edge of his desk, two framed documents come into full view. Hanging on the far wall of his office are signed copies of the 1994 comprehensive crime bill and the Brady Bill, both of which he worked to legislate.

Yassky is in the midst of delicately recounting a story about how he got started on crime control — which is his primary focus — for Charles Schumer, who was then a representative in the House of Representatives and is currently New York's junior senator. Soon after, Yassky is answering the first of a string of telephone calls.

Two minutes after telling his wife that he would pick up the kids from soccer, he is responding to a reporter who is asking about the presidential debates.

He sits up and swivels his chair so that he faces the computer screen, his back to a wooden bookshelf crammed with legal books, binders, histories and a crime speech that he once wrote for Vice President Al Gore.

Every space on his desk is covered with highlighted photo copies, books with their spines facing up and Post-It notes on everything from the Second Amendment — Yassky is in the midst of writing a legal history of the Second Amendment — to the Parks Committee of Brooklyn.

He spends about five minutes threading his commentary carefully yet clearly on how Gore came out as the superior candidate in the second presidential debate.

Hanging the receiver up and returning to his reclining position, Yassky resumes his story at almost the exact point he left off.

Yassky literally is stretched out across many different issues.

Whether it has been interning with Bill Bradley '65 after his junior year at Princeton, staffing under Schumer, working a brief stint as a mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer or talking to reporters, Yassky has spent a lot of time "negotiating" during the last 15 years.

"I like the process of having 40 people around the table and getting them all to at least agree on a single thing," Yassky said. People need sound bites and highlight reels to be swayed on an issue, he explained.

"Without compromising your principles, you also have to know what appeals to people," Yassky said, speaking of endless hours and hundreds of pages spent trying to persuade citizens. "Good stuff needs to be packaged in a way to sell."

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Next September — long after the outcome of this Election Day has been determined and political interest wanes from its quadrennial fever — Yassky will try to sell himself as a city councilman to the voters of the 33rd District in Brooklyn.

Crime legislation and the inner-workings of American government were not always on Yassky's mind however — and neither was Princeton. Yassky, who grew up in a suburb of New York City and whose parents moved to the city before his high school years at Dalton, was headed for physics, math and Brown University.

After his second semester in Providence, physics and math had become tedious for Yassky. "I sort of just eked it out," he said. "It had just gotten too difficult, and I was no longer as interested in it." And just as science and math were flying over his head, politics was coming down to earth.

"I was always interested in politics," said Yassky, who had taken several politics and international relations courses. "My parents had told me all the stories about the Vietnam War and Watergate early on, and they had always fascinated me."

"It was the early '80s, you see, and America and Russia were still in the height of the Cold War," Yassky explained. "Everybody was fascinated by international relations. This was right before Reagan's evil empire speech, and arms control was on everybody's mind."

Yassky was no exception.

In between his freshman and sophomore years at Brown, professor Thomas Anton asked Yassky to research how a public policy program could be structured for the university. The program became the Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions.

In his memos to Anton, Yassky focused much of his research on the Wilson School. "That really was the model for the [Brown] program, and I realized that I really wanted to be there," Yassky said.

Yassky, who transferred directly into the Wilson School, finished off his last two years studying rigorously at Princeton. "I have great memories of Princeton," Yassky said. "I had some of the best professors: Amy Gutmann, Jennifer Hochshild, Sheldon Woblen are just a few, and the task forces were great experiences."

By the end of his senior year, Yassky's interests had shifted again to public policy issues like education, housing and immigration reform — a topic on which he did his senior thesis.

"I worked for Bradley at the end of my junior year," Yassky noted. "He was in the middle of his 1986 tax reform push, and I was developing bullet reports to send to committee members explaining why the tax reform was good for their state. You had to convince these people of what was good in the bill, so you had to market it."

Following graduation, Yassky spent two years working in New York City government and then headed to law school at Yale. Yassky was never even drawn to criminal law in New Haven. "I didn't particularly like criminal law at Yale," he explained. "I went down to D.C. to clerk for a judge, and then I decided it would be a good experience to work for Congress."

Schumer immediately struck Yassky. "He had incredible abilities to get things done," Yassky said. "He was one of the 10 smartest people I'd ever met, and I thought I wanted to work on banking reform." At the time, Schumer was a leader in Congress on the issue.

Instead of continuing to study tax reform and banking, Yassky's career took yet another turn. At the end of his job interview at Schumer's office, Yassky was offered a position as counsel for Schumer's committee on crime in the House of Representatives.

"I knew Schumer was the guy to work for, so I jumped at the opportunity," said Yassky, looking back on his start in criminal law, the subject of most of his work during the last 15 years.

"I basically took an issue — say auto-theft, for example — found out the issue, researched it for several weeks and came back with a memo for Schumer to present to the committee," Yassky said. In one of his memos, he advised Schumer to enforce the numbering of car parts because he had researched the "chop-shop" market for stolen cars — a process where automobiles are stripped of their parts, which are then sold separately on the market.

Coupled with this new legislation, car-jacking was made a federal crime. "Any reform in Detroit's view is bad," Yassky explained, referring to the automobile industry. "But, by putting that in the bill it became very easy to vote for, and we hadn't compromised any of our principles."

After a brief two-year stint as a mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer, Yassky returned to Washington to work with Schumer, this time as Chief Counsel to the House Subcommittee on Crime. This time, Yassky focused on gun control and the Brady Bill. "Again, I was communicating with all the staff from the different committee members and writing reports to convince the different members to vote the bill in," Yassky said.

Since 1998, Yassky has used his Washington experience at Brooklyn Law College, where he teaches mostly criminal law classes.

"After working for all these people, I now want to do this myself," said Yassky, who is currently running for the City Council.

There are 150,000 Brooklyn residents in five different areas — Williamsburg, DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill and Park Slope. Because the district is so spread out, Yassky has had a lot of campaigning to do.

"It is a lot of the same events — the New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, Independent Neighborhood Democrats and Center for Economic Opportunities meetings," Yassky said quickly switching his demeanor to that of a political candidate. "I'm a law professor — I like to talk to people firsthand. Democracy is a great process. I love going to the town hall meetings and discussing the issues on voters' minds."

Back-turned to his desk, Yassky flipped through three metal drawers of hanging folders with old memos and articles on crime he had written. Without turning his head, he began tossing copy after copy of newspaper articles and campaign fliers on top of the heap of books and research already on the desk.

His fingers flying through earmarked manila folders, Yassky began speaking like the presidential candidates he had just offered comments about. "One of the great lessons of the last eight years is that the government can work on crime," he said. "But there is also a terrific opportunity to improve the school system. At the moment there is a sense of hopelessness, but the public school system can work."

Yassky hopes to hire more teachers, pay them higher wages and decrease class sizes. "We have to put more money into education. We have to hold our principles accountable," he said in a stump-speech manner. "Brooklyn is terribly underserved by the parks."

On all these issues, Yassky sees substantial opportunities. "Working for a guy like Schumer really got that across to me — what you can do with your ideas," he said. "When you have energy, you can do a lot with your ideas."