Representative Daniel B. Maffei

Daniel Benjamin Maffei (mə-FAY; born July 4, 1968) is an American politician, academic, and federal official who represented central New York in the United States House of Representatives from 2009 to 2011 and again from 2013 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, he served two terms in Congress, first representing New York’s 25th congressional district and, following redistricting, New York’s 24th congressional district. Over the course of his career, he has also worked as a journalist, senior congressional staff member, political consultant, professor, and Commissioner of the Federal Maritime Commission.

Maffei was born in Syracuse, New York, and has maintained deep personal and professional ties to the city, where he currently resides. He graduated from Nottingham Senior High School in Syracuse in 1986. He went on to earn a B.A. in history from Brown University in 1990, an M.S. in journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1991, and an M.P.P. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1995. This combination of training in history, journalism, and public policy would later inform both his work on Capitol Hill and his teaching in higher education.

Upon completing his journalism degree at Columbia, Maffei began his professional career in broadcast journalism. From 1991 to 1993, he worked as a reporter and producer for WSYR-TV, the ABC affiliate in Syracuse. He then served as a part-time reporter for WWNY-TV in Watertown, New York, from 1993 until 1995. After his transition from journalism to public policy and politics, he later held a private-sector position as senior vice president for corporate development at the consulting firm Pinnacle Capital Management. He also became a frequent guest lecturer at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and served on the board of advisors of the Global Panel Foundation, a non-partisan non-governmental organization that works behind the scenes in conflict areas around the world.

Maffei’s career on Capitol Hill began in 1996 with an unpaid internship for Representative Eliot Engel of New York. Later that year he was hired as press secretary to U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, a position he held as Bradley prepared for and entered the 2000 presidential race. From 1997 to 1998, Maffei served as press secretary to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. After working on Senator Bradley’s presidential campaign from 1998 to 1999, he joined the staff of Representative Charles B. Rangel. From 1999 to 2005, he worked for Rangel as a senior staff member on the House Committee on Ways and Means, gaining experience in federal tax and economic policy. In 2005, Maffei returned to Syracuse to coordinate the successful re-election campaign of Mayor Matt Driscoll. Following that campaign, he decided to seek elected office himself and challenged nine-term Republican Representative James T. Walsh in New York’s 25th congressional district in 2006. Although he did not win, he mounted the first serious challenge to Walsh in years, coming within two percentage points of defeating the incumbent and carrying the City of Syracuse, the rest of Onondaga County, and Monroe County.

With Walsh politically weakened, Maffei entered the 2008 race for the same seat. On January 24, 2008, after Maffei had already mounted a strong opposition campaign, Walsh announced that he would not seek an 11th term. In March 2008, Mayor Driscoll announced that he would not run for the open seat, effectively clearing the way for Maffei to secure the Democratic nomination. Maffei ran unopposed in the Democratic primary on September 9, 2008. Initially it appeared he might face no major-party opposition in the general election, but on April 3, 2008, Onondaga County legislator Dale Sweetland, recently the narrowly unsuccessful Republican candidate for Onondaga County Executive, declared his candidacy. National political analysts rated the race as one of the most likely Democratic pickups in the country: RealClearPolitics rated the district as “Leans Democratic” and ranked it the third most likely House seat to switch parties, while CQ Politics, The Cook Political Report, and the Rothenberg Report similarly rated it from “Lean Democrat” to “Democrat Favored.” The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, writing in “The Fix,” twice in May and June 2008 described the race as a near-certainty for a Democratic takeover. On November 4, 2008, Maffei defeated Sweetland by a margin of 55 percent to 42 percent. He became the first Democrat to represent the Syracuse-area district since 1981, when it was numbered the 32nd District, and only the second Democrat to represent the Syracuse area in Congress since 1917.

Maffei took office in January 2009 as the representative for New York’s 25th congressional district and served in the 111th Congress. During his first term, he served on the Committee on Financial Services and the Committee on the Judiciary from 2009 to 2011, contributing to legislative work on banking, housing, financial regulation, and legal and constitutional issues. His tenure coincided with a significant period in American history marked by the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and major legislative initiatives in economic recovery and health care. In the 2010 midterm elections, Republican Ann Marie Buerkle narrowly defeated Maffei following weeks of absentee ballot counting and precinct recanvassing. Buerkle ultimately emerged with a 567-vote majority out of more than 200,000 ballots cast. Although Maffei had been favored to hold the seat—RealClearPolitics and other national handicappers had rated the district as “Leans Democratic” or “Democrat Favored”—he conceded the race on November 23, 2010, when it became clear that challenged votes would not change the outcome.

After leaving Congress, Maffei remained active in public affairs and academia. He became a frequent guest lecturer at Syracuse University and, in the fall of 2011 and spring of 2012, served as a visiting professor of environmental studies at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF), where he taught a graduate seminar on the politics of science and environmental policy. On August 24, 2011, he announced his intention to seek a return to Congress in the 2012 elections, running in the redrawn New York’s 24th congressional district. On November 6, 2012, Maffei defeated incumbent Republican Ann Marie Buerkle in the race for the redistricted 24th district, winning 49 percent to Buerkle’s 43 percent with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Although the race was called in his favor before midnight on Election Day, Buerkle initially declined to concede, stating on November 7 that she would wait until all ballots were counted; she conceded on November 9, 2012.

In his second period of congressional service, from 2013 to 2015, Maffei represented New York’s 24th congressional district in the 113th Congress. He served on the House Committee on Armed Services, where he was a member of the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces and the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities. He also served on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, acting as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and serving on the Subcommittee on Space. In these roles, he participated in oversight of defense programs, intelligence-related issues, and federal science and technology agencies, and contributed to the legislative process on matters ranging from national security to space and research policy. In 2014, Maffei sought a third, non-consecutive term. Republicans targeted his seat, and he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. In the general election he faced Republican John Katko, a former federal prosecutor. Maffei lost the November 2014 election by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent, the largest margin of defeat for an incumbent House member in that election cycle.

Following his departure from Congress in January 2015, Maffei continued his involvement in law, policy, and education. He worked as a senior adviser at the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and, during a four-month lapse in his later federal appointment, served as a professor of practice at George Washington University. In 2016, he was appointed a Commissioner of the Federal Maritime Commission, the independent federal agency responsible for regulating the international ocean transportation system of the United States. He served in that capacity from 2016 to 2018, and after a brief interval away from the Commission—during which he held his teaching post at George Washington University—he was reappointed in November 2018 to a term ending in 2022. Throughout his varied career, Daniel B. Maffei has combined legislative service, academic engagement, and regulatory experience while maintaining his roots in Syracuse and his affiliation with the Democratic Party.