Kathy Boockvar, David Kessler in prominent national roles

Posted

Hewlett Neck native Kathy Boockvar was in the thick of the presidential race and Woodmere Academy graduate Dr. David Kessler is returning to the national stage as part of President-elect Joe Biden's coronavirus task force.

Boockvar, 52, is Secretary of State for Pennsylvania, and it is her office that oversaw the counting of ballots through the contentious days after Election Day that ended on Saturday with Biden gaining the state’s 20 electoral votes which gave him over the requisite 270 electoral votes to win the presidential race against President Donald Trump.

Appointed Secretary of State last year, Boockvar conducted two news conferences that explained the balloting process and updated the country on the state’s counting of upwards of 3 million mail-in ballots a more than tenfold increase of the Keystone State’s 260,000 in 2016.

Her experience is public interest law and policy, election administration and nonprofit health care administration. She ran unsuccessfully for a Pennsylvania Congressional seat in 2012 and for the Keystone State’s Commonwealth Court in 2011. A Democrat, Boockvar previously served as chief counsel in the auditor general’s office and worked as an attorney in private practice and a nonprofit executive.

A cabinet level position, Secretary of State is responsible for campaign finance reporting, charities, corporations, professional licenses, commissions, elections, legislation, Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, notaries and the state’s athletic commission.

When she ran for Congress eight years ago she told the Herald. “I feel like I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have worked in public service in both the private and non-profit sector protecting jobs, families and social security,” she said. “I’ve spent a lot of my career working to bridge differences.”

As the country shifts from election to a new administration, Kessler, the former head of the Food Drug Administration under Presidents George H. Bush and Bill Clinton from 1990 to 1997, will join former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Yale University’s Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith as co-chairs of the 12-person task force.

Kessler, 69, graduated from the Woodmere Academy in 1969, which merged with Lawrence Country Dy School to form Lawrence Woodmere Academy in 1990. He continued his education at Amherst College, class of 1973, University of Chicago Law School which he graduated five years later and Harvard Medical School in 1979.  

Appointed by a Republican president Kessler received bipartisan approval from the Senate and became more popular with Democrats with many of his actions as FDA commissioner viewed as controversial. He spurred the federal agency to become more efficient and cut the time necessary to approve or reject new drugs, which at that time included AIDS drugs. He increased attention to consumer protections concerning unsafe products and enacted the regulations that required standardized nutrition facts labels on food.

Kessler also stirred controversy as dean and vice-chancellor at the University of California, San Francisco, where he uncovered financial irregularities in the dean’s office in 2003. The chancellor said audits found no such evidence in June 2007 and demanded Kessler resign. Kessler was dismissed six months later. Later an audit showed that Kessler was spot-on.  

Also an author, the trained pediatrician has written five books, including The New York Times bestseller “The End of Overeating” that advocates the theory that lifelong obesity is not genetic but is from eating processed foods and by reducing that intake its avoidable.

In a 2009 interview with Amherst College, Kessler showed a sense of humor when asked about advice for aspiring writers. “Your family members will never understand why it takes years to write a book,” he said.