Irvington’s David Imamura to Run for Shimsky’s Seat on County Legislature

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November 15, 2022

By Barrett Seaman–

On the wall of his office in White Plains, David Imamura has a framed pen used by County Executive George Latimer in 2018 to sign into law the county’s Immigrant Protection Act, which prevents the county from using any of its resources to assist federal agencies in investigating or prosecuting anyone based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity or national origin.

The law was based largely on a similar resolution passed a year earlier by the Village of Irvington in response to the Trump Administration’s crackdown on immigrants — Muslims in particular. The author of the village’s resolution was a young lawyer and village resident, David Imamura.

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Now Imamura is running for a seat on the County Legislature — the 12^th District seat being vacated by MaryJane Shimsky, who won the race for State Assembly on November 8^th. When Shimsky’s current county term ends on January 1, the county will set a date for a special election to fill her seat—most likely in February or March. No Republican has come forward in the district, which includes the Villages of Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, Hastings-on-Hudson, Irvington & parts of unincorporated Greenburgh including Edgemont and Hartsdale. In the general election, the district voted three-to-one for Joe Biden.

Imamura, 34, is a graduate of Irvington High School, Dartmouth College and Columbia Law School. Last January, he left Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Manhattan and joined Abrams Fensterman LLP, working out of White Plains. The move was largely motivated by the recent arrival of a son, Leo, but it coincidentally put him within walking distance of the county office building on Martine Avenue.

Concurrent with his announcement, Imamura is resigning his position as Chair of the New York State Independent Redistricting Commission, which was created to craft a new non-partisan map of the state. However, that effort succumbed to partisan bickering, ending in the creation of a very different map made by a Special Master.

Imamura has been active politically since he was in high school. He chaired the Irvington Democratic Party and served as a longtime district leader. He has also served as co-chair, with Sleepy Hollow’s Marjorie Hsu, of the Westchester Asian American Advisory Board, and is a member of the Westchester Human Rights Commission.

The grandson of Asian American war heroes who served through extraordinary circumstances – one receiving a congressional resolution to come to America despite the Chinese Exclusion Act and the other fighting in the all Japanese-American 442nd regiment against Nazis while fellow Japanese-Americans were in internment camps.

“I genuinely believe in county government,” he says. A progressive from the Irvington Activists movement, he hopes to focus attention on affordable housing, infrastructure, energy and the environment. Asked if he intends to be as active in the community as Shimsky, who is known to attend any and all meetings of local organizations in the district, he says, “Like MaryJane, I go to these things already —even separate from running… I fully intend to follow in MaryJane’s footsteps.”

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