Stanley Michels
American politician

Stanley Michels was a politician and member of the Democratic Party who was elected to the New York City Council and served from years 1978 to 2001.
Early life
Stanley Ernest Michels was born in Manhattan on January 28, 1933. He was the son of Lewis and Anne Strasberg Michels. His parents owned a handbag factory. He has a sister named Ellen Grant.
Michels graduated from Hobart College (now known as Hobart and William Smith Colleges) in 1955 and received a law degree from Cornell in 1958. He then served in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps. While in private law practice in New York, he was also a legal counsel to the State Department of Taxation and Finance.
Michels married Molly Sokoloff in the year 1960. They have a son named Jeffrey.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Stanley Michels” is american politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Stanley, Michels and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q110272837. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 2001, 1933 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stanley Michels” 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.