Person of the Year: Fred Thiele Leaves East End Better Than He Found It After 30 Years in Assembly

He was born and raised on the East End. He went to college on the East End. He has served the East End in government for over 30 years, representing both the North and South Forks in Albany since 1995, and is passing the torch to the next generation when the next State Assembly takes office. For these reasons, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. is Dan’s Papers’ 2024 Person of the Year.

Thiele was born in Southampton in 1953. A graduate of Pierson High School in Sag Harbor, Thiele spent his freshman year of college at Cornell University before family circumstances brought him back downstate to Southampton College, now known as Stony Brook Southampton.

“My father worked in the Bohack’s grocery store in East Hampton, which was like the King Kullen of its day,” Thiele said, noting the changes on the East End since his childhood. “My mother worked in the Bulova Watch Case factory, which is now multimillion-dollar condominiums in Sag Harbor.”

Thiele said he had always been a “political nerd,” and still has stickers of when Robert F. Kennedy ran for senator of New York in 1964, as well as stickers of former Rep. Otis Pike’s campaigns. Pike represented the East End in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1961 to 1979.

But it’s the work Thiele did as a student and the community surrounding him that inspired him to go into politics.

“I had a teacher at Pearson High School. His name was Stephen Petrus,” Thiele said. “He lives in North Sea. That really fostered my interest in politics from a young age. Then I got an internship in college with the help of Professor Donald Baker, who is still alive, too, and lives in Hampton Bays, for the New York State Assembly, and the bug really bit. That was when I decided what this – politics – was what I wanted to do with my career.”

After graduating from Southampton College in 1976, Thiele went to Albany Law School. While getting his law degree, he worked as a legislative assistant in the New York State Assembly, and after graduating, came back home to work for his predecessor, former Assemblyman John Behan.

“That really was the beginning of my career here at home,” Thiele said. “I worked for him for a couple of years, and got married, had kids, and at that point, didn’t really want to travel to Albany all the time.”

Thiele worked as the Southampton Town attorney and the East Hampton Town Planning Board attorney at first, tacking on the same role for the East Hampton Zoning Board of Appeals in this span as well. After five years as a municipal lawyer, Thiele ran for office to the Suffolk County Legislature, a role he served in for four years. He then ran as an independent for Southampton Town Supervisor, serving there for four years before Behan stepped down from his role as an assemblyman to become the New York State Director of Veteran Affairs in 1995. Thiele ran in the special election to replace Behan in New York’s 2nd Assembly District, and won in a landslide. He would go on to win re-election to this seat eight times before it was redrawn and became New York’s 1st Assembly District. Thiele won re-election to the 1st District six times.

Through his long and illustrious political career, Thiele feels that his time in the Assembly has been the most rewarding, and cites several policies as things he hopes will be remembered as his legacy.

“I chair the local governments committee in the New York State Assembly. And I love local government. I love working in local government,” Thiele said. “One of the big things I worked on was the Community Preservation Fund. When my obituary gets written, which hopefully isn’t in the near future, I know that that’s going to be in the first or second paragraph.

“I’ve also been proud of what I’ve done in the area of environmental preservation. Sponsoring the legislation that got the Peconic Estuary to be included in the National Estuary Program. We had to pass legislation to nominate it. I think the Peconic Estuary has been an example of good regional planning where we’ve made a difference in protecting the Peconic. This last year, another environmental initiative was with the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act, which was on the ballot and got 71% of the vote, and it’s going to provide somewhere in the neighborhood of, over the next 50 years, of somewhere around $60 billion for water quality improvement projects.

“Two years ago we were able to get the Community Housing Fund, which I think is really the sister proposal to the Community Preservation Fund. We’re preserving the character and the resources of the community, but people have to still be able to afford to stay here and live here and work here. And you know, I was just talking with the town supervisor in Southampton, and the Community Housing Fund has already generated $19 million for housing.

“I’m proud to say that I offered some leadership towards these policies. But the thing that I learned most about government, and about all the things I talk about that got done, is you never accomplish anything by yourself. A lot of good ideas die on the vine because people fail to put together the kinds of consensus and coalitions that are necessary to get things done. There were dozens of people that were involved in making the CPF a success, and I got to provide some leadership with that.”

Thiele did not seek re-election in 2024, and will be replaced by Southampton Town Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni, whom Thiele calls a “great successor.” While Thiele says he plans to be involved in the community still, his career as a politician has come to a close, and he looks forward to spending more time with his wife NancyLynn, children Michael, Jeffrey, and Josephine, and his grandchildren.

Having once been a young person looking to make a change for their home, Thiele had some parting words of advice to anyone looking to get involved in politics.

“People should know what a great honor it is,  what an opportunity is, it is to, first of all, have the trust of the people in your community and have the opportunity to do things to help them,” Thiele said. “You must do it for the right reasons, and recognize that there are sacrifices that come with it. There’s ups and downs to this kind of job. But seeing results – seeing a historic site get preserved, seeing people be able to stay in their homes – it’s a great feeling to know that you were able to be a part of that.”