From Alma Mater to Assembly, Cashman Serves with Conviction
The newly elected state assemblyman from the North Country’s 115th District has made service and community building his life’s work since his early days in the cranberry country of Massachusetts.
Michael Cashman was elected to the unexpired seat formerly held by Assemblyman Billy Jones, who stepped down in September. Jones was soon after named vice president for strategic initiatives and workforce development at Clinton Community College.
Cashman’s trajectory from Carver, Mass. — home of Ocean Spray in Plymouth County —
to the New York State Assembly took him straight through SUNY Plattsburgh when he
arrived as a freshman fall 1999. He had looked at a number of schools in his search
for the perfect fit, but none spoke to him the way SUNY Plattsburgh did, he said.
It was the only school he applied to.
Found His Home
Following a meeting with then-director of Student Support Services, Dr. Michele Carpentier, Cashman told his parents this was it: He’d found his home.
“They said, ‘But you haven’t even seen the rest of the campus yet.’ But I knew,” Cashman said. With SAT scores lower than the threshold for early decision, Cashman began barraging Rich Higgins, former director of admissions, with daily emails. Three weeks later, Cashman received a note he still has.
“He that told me they were making an exception, and that I was the first student for the Class of 2003. I came to Plattsburgh, a first-generation college student with dyslexia.”
He went on to earn both his bachelor’s degree, in speech communication, and master’s, in counselor education student affairs, in 2003 and 2006, respectively. And throughout those years, a driving factor was service.
When he came to Plattsburgh, he told his grandfather, a Korean War-era veteran with whom he lived in Massachusetts, how much he loved the North Country — how he felt he’d found his place, his home.
Value Statement
“He told me that where you choose to live is a value statement in itself,” Cashman said. “Those words, and his lessons, have guided me every day since. I choose the North Country not just to live but to serve.” But he added his own prop to that, saying “Where a person chooses to serve is a value statement.”
As an undergrad at SUNY Plattsburgh, he was invited to sit on the United Way Allocations Committee by its director, the late Michael Mannix.
“I helped ID where United Way resources would go,” Cashman said. “It gave me an eye-opening understanding of the needs of the community and how incredibly giving this region is as it looks after its friends, family and neighbors.”
It helped feed his desire to serve. He ran for vice president for academics of the Student Association and then as its president. At the time, he said that he and his fellow SA officers wanted to empower students to advocate for themselves.
‘What Can I Do for Future Students?’
“We want students to understand and to engage in all aspects of the collegiate experience. Students should take it upon themselves to get involved,” he said at the time. “Seniors should ask themselves, ‘What can I do for future students?’ This is a community, and for it to grow and flourish, students need to get involved and encourage others to get involved.”
After graduation, he joined the staff of the university, first as coordinator of the
Cardinal Connections program and then as assistant director of alumni affairs for
student/alumni programs. He then moved to student affairs, where he was coordinator
of student activities and later, led Project HELP as assistant director of the Center
for Student Involvement. In 2015, he was awarded the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence
in Professional Service.
In 2022 he was appointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul to the SUNY Plattsburgh University Council and in 2024 he was one of six people nationwide to receive that year’s National LTRIO Achiever Award from the Council for Opportunity in Education. He was selected as having been an alum of Student Support Services, one of the three federal TRIO programs on the SUNY Plattsburgh campus. According to the COE, recipients of the award are selected for having “made significant contributions to their professions and communities.”
Town Council Seat
In that time, he ran for and was elected to the Plattsburgh Town Council.
“I wanted to get involved with my community,” he said. “Two years into that service, I was encouraged to run for town supervisor.” With the support of his wife, Olivia, whom he met their first days at SUNY Plattsburgh as freshmen, and later married on the steps of Hawkins Hall, he was elected supervisor of the Town of Plattsburgh. After 11 years with the university, he had to relinquish his job in the Center for Student Involvement.
His mantra became, “Listen, learn, lead and serve, because service is leadership,” he said.
Cashman served just under 10 years at the helm of the largest town in Clinton County.
“I’m very proud of the accomplishments achieved with an incredible team,” he said. As difficult a decision it was to leave the university he loves for the supervisor job, throwing his hat into the ring for the assembly seat was even more so.
“Billy Jones had made his decision, and once it was out there, he approached me and
encouraged me to run for his unexpired term,” Cashman said. And as always, he said,
Olivia was squarely in his corner. “She told me ‘You should do this.’” He was sworn
in Nov. 13.
Sitting in his 115th Assembly District office on the Old Base Oval in Plattsburgh are two low-back Windsor chairs — one from SUNY Plattsburgh, and the other from Harvard, given to his great-grandmother upon her retirement as a cleaner at the Ivy League institution.
“It reminds me to never stop aspiring to learn,” Cashman said. He thought about his experience at SUNY Plattsburgh.
“I received a phenomenal education, as scholarly and invigorating as anywhere else. The heart of the faculty and staff is what grounds its students. For me, it helped me grow, develop and continue to set high expectations for myself,” he said.
As for his future service, he said he’s humbled by the trust placed in him by his constituents of Clinton, Franklin and Essex counties.
“Over these past months, I’ve put more than 10,000 miles on my car. I’ve met hundreds of neighbors and look forward to many more conversations in the days ahead,” he said. “Billy Jones and my good friend, (Jones’ Assembly predecessor) Janet Duprey set a high bar for accessible leadership. That’s what it’s about. I have to be out listening, learning, leading. I’ve been very fortunate that life has blessed me with numerous opportunities to serve.”
— By Associate Director of Communications Gerianne Downs
— Photo of Michael Cashman in District Office by Gerianne Downs; All Others Provided
