John Sullivan

John T. Sullivan, Jr.,

John T. Sullivan Jr. has had a wide and varied public career on the state, llocal and national level. His Most recent political endeavor involved serving as Upstate Coordinator for the Cuomo/Hochul campaign for Governor of NY. He was also Upstate director of Bill Samuels’ Efffectiveny.org, a good government group for several months before joining the Cuomo campaign. He retired in 2009 as New York State’s Deputy Medicaid Inspector General for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. He joined the OMIG office in 2008 after having served as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Attorney General’s Watertown office for five years. He served under both Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo. He briefly re-entered state service from June-December 2015 as an ALJ for the NYS Labor Department, and has recently re-retired. He is a published author ( “Forks in the road” pub. Dec. 16th 2015 Authorhouse), and ha Memoir/Autobiography entitled " Pee Not your Pants-Memoirs of a small town Mayor with big time ideas". Also volume 2 Forks in the road, and his latest. Book, “The live 25 in Hi Fi Jive...Memoirs of a teenage disc jockey”.

An attorney with more than 35 years of experience, Mr. Sullivan began his political career at age 23, when he was the youngest person in the county’s history to have been elected to the Oswego County Legislature. He went on to become the Mayor of the City of Oswego and also served as chair of the Oswego City Charter Revision Commission. As mayor of Oswego from 1988-92, along with his wife, he is credited with starting Oswego’s famous annual Harborfest celebration. A graduate of SUNY Oswego, he majored in political science, and then went on to graduate from Syracuse University’s College of Law. He served as chair of the SUNY Oswego College Council, as well as a council member, and as counsel to both the cities of Oswego and Fulton, and as attorney to the Oswego City School District.

He had a successful law practice in Oswego for nearly 30 years. In 1995, he was named co-chair of the New York State Democratic Party. He served as co-chair of the New York State delegation to the Democratic National Convention in 1996, and as a member of the Electoral College, also in 1996. He was a member of the Democratic National Committee and a founding member of the New York State Democratic Rural Conference.

He taught political science at SUNY Oswego as an adjunct professor and taught New York State Politics and Government at SUNY Albany’s Rockefeller School of Government for the spring 2009 semester. In 2009 he was a finalist in the quest for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the 23rd Congressional District in the race to succeed John McHugh, who has been named by President Obama as the new Secretary of the Army.

He is a dynamic public speaker, and has been a keynote speaker for several high profile events, including the Crested Butte, Colorado “Community Forum”, and as a graduation speaker at SUNY Oswego. He has broad experience in media, having been a radio announcer/news director for ten years while in college and graduate school, and has been a frequent guest on local and statewide tv news programs, as Mayor, State Democratic Co-Chair, and as Assistant Attorney General. He also has taught at SUNY Oswego as a Communications Studies Professor, teaching Mass Media and the Law.

He taught American Government courses for Pittsburg State University, in Pittsburg, Ks., for Missouri Southern State University in Joplin , Mo., and for Northeast Oklahoma University in Miami, Ok. from 2010-2013. He returned to his native NY in May of 2013, and has been a regular guest op ed columnist for the Albany N.Y. Times Union, and the Syracuse Post Standard. His columns have also been featured in the NY Post and NY Daily News. He writes a regular monthly column for the Oswego Palladium Times entitled “ Forks in the road”.He resides inOswego,NYN., where he practices law , and does some consulting, on a part time basis