Gail S. Shaffer
American politician
Gail S. Shaffer (born August 1, 1948) is an American politician and activist who served as the 59th Secretary of State of New York under Mario Cuomo.
Shaffer grew up on a family farm in Blenheim, New York. She graduated from Gilboa-Conesville Central School in 1966 as valedictorian. Awarded a full scholarship to Elmira College, she graduated as class valedictorian in 1970, and a Phi Beta Kappa member, with a B.A. summa cum laude in Political Science. She studied abroad for her junior year at Sciences Po. She also spent a semester of her senior year on a kibbutz in Israel.
Career
Shaffer began her career in publishing before entering politics in the 1970s. She served as a town supervisor for two years and then became special assistant to Peter A. A. Berle. She later served as the executive director of the Rural Affairs Council, which was chaired by then-Lieutenant Governor, Mario Cuomo.
Shaffer was elected in 1980, as a Democrat representing a five-county, predominantly Republican district to the New York State Assembly serving in 1981 and 1982, In November 1982, she was re-elected with 68% of the vote, but did not take her seat in the 185th New York State Legislature.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5517162. VIAF identifies the subject as 53396441. The Library of Congress control number is n95047878. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1966, 1970 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gail S. Shaffer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.