Interview with Mayor Jeff Katz
- akillian-russo
- Apr 11, 2017
- 2 min read
“When We Moved Here in June of 2003, That Was the Most Amazing Thing…”- Jeff Katz, Mayor of Cooperstown, Interviewed By Lily Shanker
Mayor Jeff Katz was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1962. He first came to Cooperstown in July of 1973, as an 11 year-old, and came here every summer since 1980. As a child, he was a huge reader, and loved books of all kinds- especially baseball books.
He attended Sachem High School, a very large school with about 1,500 people just in his class! In school, he was interested in politics and attended a mock trial in Manhattan in front of a real judge and created a case!
Mr. Katz attended Binghamton College as a political science major. In college, he took Russian literature, which grew to be a passion of his.
He came to Cooperstown because he was a huge baseball fan, and his wife, Karen is originally from Upstate NY, so they would come to Cooperstown every year, and they occasionally thought that they would buy a house, vacation here, and maybe move here. They have 3 sons: Nate, 26, Robbie, 24, and Joey, 21. Nate is autistic, and was going into high school, and where they lived in Chicago would be a huge school, like Sachem, where Mayor Katz attended, which would be quite overwhelming. They thought, “Well what if we bought a house and moved here when Nate goes into high school.” So that’s exactly what they did!
In 2005, he was asked to run for 1 of the 6 village trustees. He won and became a village trustee. After his 3 year term, he was re-elected. When he and his family moved here in June of 2003, he wasn’t planning on running for mayor, but he was asked, so he ran. He ran for mayor, then he won and became mayor. In 2010, he ran for mayor, but lost to another man, and became deputy mayor. He didn’t give up, and ran again. He has been the mayor of Cooperstown for 5 years and 1 month, and he will always be known as one of the most productive mayors Cooperstown has ever had.
Listen to this informative and entertaining interview to learn more about Cooperstown’s mayor.
