The Intersection of Law & Politics

At age 12, Richard St. Paul was in social studies class wondering how he could make the world a better place. “Something told me, ‘Become an elected official,’” he recalls. At home, he leafed through World Book Encyclopedia to a section on members of U.S. Congress and the inspiration took. A decade later, he was a White House intern.

“That was pretty awesome,” says St. Paul about his days at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “I most remember the clocks in the Situation Room, which were all set to Middle Eastern time to highlight where our chief conflict concerns were.”

His two passions—law and politics—kept intersecting. That section on Congress in World Book Encyclopedia? “I noticed most of them went to law school,” he says. “So I realized I needed to go to law school first.”

And it was at law school that he found his way to D.C.—first, in 1998, as a summer intern for U.S. Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA). A key project St. Paul worked on was researching ways to improve the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which granted states greater latitude in administering social welfare programs. “Child care was a major issue,” he says.

A year later, he was in the White House working for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. “I was one of the liaisons to the local and state governments who would call and say, ‘The Clinton White House has passed this initiative, which will help Main Street in your area in this way,’” he remembers.

So how did it feel to be a White House intern on the heels of the Monica Lewinsky scandal? “There wasn’t a lot of face time,” St. Paul says. “It was very strict: If you see them, walk by and say nothing. But I did get briefings from high-level officials, which was very cool.”

From there, he spent three years interning for Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania. “The governor had discretionary funds that he could give to certain projects,” St. Paul says. “I worked with different localities and municipalities who would apply for the funding, and then I would make a recommendation as to what entity should receive it.”

His work with Ridge, coupled with Michael Zak’s book Back to Basics for the Republican Party, which chronicles the history of the party from a civil rights perspective, swung St. Paul’s pendulum to the right; and at 26, after a gig with Legal Services in Yonkers, he joined the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign as West Virginia legal director. “I had a hundred attorneys deployed throughout the state ensuring ballot integrity, making sure that people were able to vote and that people weren’t campaigning in areas that they should not have been,” he says.

Offered a chance to stay on the Bush staff, he opted instead to join a small law practice in the Bronx, which was in the midst of working on a redistricting lawsuit in New Rochelle. “They took a majority Black district, District 3, and they put Black residents into District 1, diluting the Black vote,” he says. St. Paul sued on behalf the New Rochelle Voter Defense Fund. The settlement, he says, “ended up putting Black residents back into District 3.”

When the Village of Port Chester attempted to redistrict, St. Paul again sued and again prevailed. Then in 2008, he ran for a city council seat in New Rochelle and won by 16 votes. “I am a firm believer in ‘every single vote counts,’” he says.

For four years he sat on the council, advocating for economic development and lean government, which included a policy officering enhanced opportunities for women-owned minority businesses to partner with the city. He also fought to bring accountability to a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes pilot program for developers.

After an unsuccessful run for mayor, he opened his own civil litigation practice in White Plains in 2012. He’s busy with employment discrimination cases, including violations of New York’s CROWN Act, which prohibits employers and schools from enforcing “race neutral” grooming policies restricting natural hair styles. The firm also takes false arrest and excessive force cases. “Helping people enforce their federal and state rights is what we’re focusing on in terms of the intersection of law and politics,” he says.

He’s not done with politics yet—working with the National Black Empowerment Action Fund in an effort to bring transparency to the voting records of elected officials.

That 12-year-old kid who wanted to better the world is still there. “I enjoy being able to make a difference in people’s lives,” he says, “making positive change, sitting down with folks and collectively deciding the best path forward, reaching across the aisle and coming up with the best ideas.”