Mark Cohen

From dKosopedia

Mark Cohen is a respected Pennsylvania State Representative, the second most senior member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for the 2007-2008 legislative session, and the most prolific Daily Kos diarist and commenter among elective officials writing in their own names.

Political Career

Now in his 33rd year in the Pennsylvania House, Democrat Cohen was elected before his 25th birthday in a May, 1974 special election, serves as Democratic Majority Caucus Chairman and has served as an elected Democratic leader in the state house continuously since January, 1990, winning eleven consecutive caucus elections through 2006.

His state house district covers Northeast Philadelphia west of Bustleton Avenue and south of Krewstown Road down to the border of LaSalle University and Central High School.

Legislative Achievements

The Chairman of the House Labor Relations Committee from January, 1983 through January, 1990, Cohen today serves as a member of the executive board of the National Labor Caucus of State Legislatures. He was the House leader and initiator of Pennsylvania's 2005-2006 successful effort to raise its minimum wage to $7.15 by July 1, 2007, and he has subsequently announced plans to seek to raise Pennsylvania's minimum wage further to $9.35 an hour by 2010 in order to remove full-time minimum wage workers with two dependents from poverty. In 1987 and 1988, he initiated and led Pennsylvania's first successful attempt to raise its minimum wage above the federal level. "You have to give Rep. Mark Cohen points for persistence," Times-Shamrock Newspapers Harrisburg Bureau Chief Michael Race wrote about his work on the minimum wage on October 9, 2006.

He has also been a leader of successful efforts to preserve Pennsylvania's unemployment compensation system--$2.8 billion in debt when he became Chairman of the Labor Relations Committee and now long in the black--and establish whistleblower protections in state government.

Background

An attorney and an MBA, Cohen initiated the successful effort to bring a campus of Widener University School of Law to the Harrisburg area, making Delaware-based Widener one of the leading law schools in America in terms of number of J.D. students. He also sought successfully to expand public access to the legal profession by maintaining and expanding funding for legal services for low-income Pennsylvanians and opposing proposals seeking to limit judicial redress for wrongs committed.

The older son of the late Philadelphia Councilman at Large David Cohen (1914-2005) and neighborhood civic and political leader Florence Cohen (1917- ), Cohen was dragooned into distributing political literature by his Democratic committeeman father at age 5 because his height was closer than his father's to household mail slots.

An officer of the College Young Democrats at the University of Pennsylvania, he served as Co-Chairman of Philadelphia Students for Robert Kennedy in 1968, was a U.S. House intern in 1967, a U.S. Senate intern in 1968, an aide to successful Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Milton Shapp in 1970, and an active worker in many local political campaigns before his 1974 election to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

Cohen has served as an elected member of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee since 1984. He is now one of a group of representatives of the 5th Senatorial District of Northeast Philadelphia in that body. He is also a Democratic committeeperson for the 53rd Ward, 16th Division in Philadelphia. In 2004, he was the only Pennsylvanian to win election as a delegate pledged to Howard Dean. After Dean released his delegates, Cohen voted for John Kerry and actively participated in his campaign. He now participates in Philly for Change, an outgrowth of the 2004 Dean and Kerry campaigns affiliated with Democracy for America.

A Daily Kos subscriber, he has trusted user status in that community. His diaries have received many favorable comments. Writing in response to his diary of October 8, 2006 about Dennis Hastert, Daily Kos diary rescuer Susan G. wrote that his diaries have "been really the most consistently thought-provoking and well-thought-out" among the diaries of elected officials. Many of his diaries have been listed by jotter as "high-impact diaries." His 73rd diary was posted on January 6, 2007. His various internet writings led him to be called the "Mayor of the Internet" by Philadelphia Weekly's blog on December 4, 2006.

Married to the former Mona Getzes, a Philadelphia special education teacher, he lives with his wife and daughter Amanda, an eighth grader at the Masterman Middle School, in the Castor Gardens section of Northeast Philadelphia.