Meet Zellnor
State Senator Zellnor Myrie has emerged as one of New York’s most respected legislators and a fierce champion on issues ranging from gun safety and criminal justice to voting rights and abortion rights to health care and affordable housing.
From his first day in office he has been relentlessly focused on making New York more affordable and livable for all of us who call it home.
Focused on Affordability
Elected in 2018 from Central Brooklyn, Myrie was part of the crusading class of Democrats who finally ended decades of Republican control in the State Capitol. In his first six months in office, he helped pass the Reproductive Health Act to guarantee abortion rights in New York, groundbreaking climate change legislation, the Child Victims Act and tougher gun control laws, and the strongest pro-tenant rent laws in a generation. The New York Times hailed that extraordinary first session as a “heartening display of public service.”
“dynamic and passionate”
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8/28/18
Over the past five years, Senator Myrie has led the fight to bring the State’s antiquated voting laws into the 21st century. As Chair of the Senate’s Elections Committee, he pushed to introduce early voting to New York, closed the LLC loophole that gave the rich a backdoor path to evade contribution limits, and authored the John R. Lewis New York Voting Rights Act, which the NAACP and Brennan Center both praised as the strongest voting rights law in the nation.
A powerful advocate for affordable housing, Senator Myrie has championed key efforts to protect both tenants and homeowners—passing strong new rent laws to help vulnerable tenants, creating new paths to homeownership, and crafting legislation to stop deed theft.
Senator Myrie has led vital efforts to enhance public safety while ensuring a fairer criminal justice system. He cracked down on unscrupulous gun dealers and manufacturers by writing the nation’s first state-level gun industry liability law to keep dangerous weapons out of our neighborhoods. And working with business leaders and criminal justice reform advocates, Myrie wrote and fought to pass the Clean Slate Act, which gives more individuals who have paid their debt to society a chance to restart their lives and find good jobs.
Senator Myrie continues to champion policies that help working families — like his advocacy for universal afterschool programs — and to defend underserved, vulnerable New Yorkers, including his leadership in fighting the closure of SUNY Downstate hospital. And Myrie has been a strong advocate for LGBTQIA equality and the rights of immigrants.
Prior to his election to the State Senate, Myrie served as an associate at Davis, Polk & Wardwell where he clocked over 600 hours of pro bono legal work in a single year. Before that, he worked as a Legislative Director in the New York City Council, where he played a key role in drafting the Tenants’ Bill of Rights.
Myrie was born and raised in Central Brooklyn and is a product of New York City public schools. Raised by a mother who continues to inspire him, his parents came to New York from Costa Rica over 40 years ago drawn by the promise and opportunity the city has always offered hardworking immigrants. Senator Myrie is a graduate of Fordham University and Cornell Law School. He and his wife, former Assemblymember Diana Richardson, live in Central Brooklyn.