Brad Hoylman

Brad Madison Hoylman-Sigal (born October 27, 1965) is an American Democratic politician.

Hoylman-Sigal was also the chairperson of Community Board 2 in Manhattan, and the Democratic District Leader of the New York 66th Assembly District, Part A. He is also Trustee of the Community Service Society of New York, a former president of the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, and a former board member of the Empire State Pride Agenda, Tenants & Neighbors, Class Size Matters, and Citizen Action.

He attended West Virginia University (WVU; BA in political science and English literature, 1989), where Hoylman-Sigal was elected president of student administration and graduated summa cum laude with honors.

At WVU he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and received a Truman Scholarship and a Marshall Scholarship.

Hoylman-Sigal then attended Oxford University (Exeter College) on a Rhodes Scholarship.

He received a master's degree in political science (M.Phil., 1992).

Afterward, he attended Harvard Law School.

He graduated with a JD in 1996.

Hoylman-Sigal was an associate at law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison from 1996 to 1998.

He was an associate at Frankfurt, Garbus, Klein & Selz from 1998 to 2000.

From 2000 to 2012, Hoylman-Sigal served as executive vice president and general counsel of the Partnership for New York City, which represents New York City's business leadership and its largest private-sector employers.

In 2001, Hoylman-Sigal ran for the New York City Council in the first district, which includes Governor's Island and a portion of Lower Manhattan.

He placed second in a seven-candidate race, losing to Alan Gerson.

First elected in 2012, Hoylman-Sigal represents the 47th District in the New York State Senate, covering much of the west side of Manhattan in New York City.

He is chairman of the state senate Judiciary Committee.

Hoylman-Sigal was born in Phoenix, Arizona and grew up in rural Lewisburg, West Virginia.

He was the youngest of six children of Audrey Kennedy Hoylman, a public elementary school teacher, and James M. Hoylman, a process systems analytics analyst.

He is a former Eagle Scout in Troop 70, Lewisburg, West Virginia.

He attended Greenbrier East High School in West Virginia.

On June 11, 2012, Hoylman-Sigal declared his candidacy for the 27th District of the New York State Senate, running for the seat of retiring state senator Tom Duane.

He won Duane's endorsement, as well as the support of numerous local politicians and unions.

In the Democratic primary election held on September 13, 2012, he won 68% of the vote in a three-candidate field.

Hell's Kitchen activist and bar owner Tom Greco was his closest competition, winning 24% of the vote.

In the general election in November he was unopposed.

Assemblywoman Amy Paulin introduced the bill in 2012.

As of the bill's passage, only two other states (Louisiana and Michigan) retained laws explicitly banning paid surrogacy.

In June 2021, Mark Levine defeated Hoylman-Sigal in the Democratic primary election for Manhattan Borough President.

Hoylman-Sigal won the Democratic primary and general election (with 80% of the vote) in 2014, 2016 (with 96% of the vote), and 2018 (with 99% of the vote).

In December 2016, Hoylman-Sigal sponsored legislation known as the Tax Returns Uniformly Made Public (T.R.U.M.P.) Act, prohibiting New York State electors from voting for a presidential candidate who has not publicly released at least 5 years worth of tax returns no later than 50 days prior to a general election.

Lawmakers in 25 other states followed suit in producing legislation to compel presidential candidates to release their tax returns.

The idea was praised by the editorial board of The New York Times.

After the 2018 midterm elections, Hoylman-Sigal was appointed Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In the majority, Hoylman-Sigal passed multiple pieces of legislation including the Child Victims Act, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (or GENDA), and a ban on so-called 'gay conversion therapy.' Hoylman-Sigal also sponsored the TRUST Act, which was passed by the state Senate.

The bill would allow certain Congressional committees to perform oversight by reviewing the New York State tax returns of senior government officials; members of Congress suggested this could allow Congressional committees to review Donald Trump's tax returns.

City & State, a New York-based political news organization, characterized Hoylman-Sigal as "the person behind state Senate’s progressive bills."

As of 2019, Hoylman-Sigal was the only openly gay member of the New York State Senate.

In 2019, the Child Victims Act that Hoylman-Sigal sponsored was adopted.

It extended New York's statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse and created a one-year lookback window within which survivors would be able to initiate claims against their abusers in cases where the statute of limitations had expired, and allowed them to bring a civil lawsuit against their abuser or institutions that enabled or protected their abuser by the age of 55 (up from the age of 23).

Over 9,000 lawsuits have been filed under that law, including against the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and other groups that cared for children.

In early 2021, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill, sponsored by Hoylman-Sigal, to repeal New York's ban on paid gestational surrogacy.