Dan McNamara

Since his arrival at Cassidy & Associates in 1989, Dan McNamara has deployed an array of creative and strategic approaches to secure positive outcomes for Cassidy & Associates' most challenging client engagements. Using the experience earned through fourteen years of service to three United States Senators from Minnesota, Mr. McNamara has assisted state and local units of government, providers of transportation and telecommunication services, educational and health care organizations and manufacturers of a broad range of aerospace, high speed rail, transit, recreational and small off road engines.

Mr. McNamara's initiation into public service began in 1975, when he was hired to serve as a staff aide to Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. Upon Senator Humphrey's death in 1978, Mr. McNamara was retained to work for Senator Muriel Humphrey, who had been appointed to serve in the Senate until a special election was held to fill the remaining term of office. In December 1978, Mr. McNamara began over a decade of service to the winner of that special election, United States Senator David Durenberger. During his fourteen years of service in the Senate, Mr. McNamara developed a strong base of policy expertise in a broad range of areas, including the budget and appropriations process, all facets of transportation and commerce, agriculture and trade policy and a solid grounding in Senate Rules and Procedure. Mr. McNamara had legislative responsibility for every Reconciliation bill enacted between 1978 and 1989, every Surface Transportation and Farm Bill enacted between 1978 and 1989, functioned as Committee staff on the landmark Water Resource Development Act of 1983, and staffed Senator Durenberger during Congressional debate on the deregulation of the Rail, Trucking, Bus, Maritime and Communication Industries between 1978 and 1989.

Among some of the more interesting client assignments Mr. McNamara has been tasked with at Cassidy & Associates were: the reallocation of broadcast spectrum from the Department of Defense for pioneering civilian uses of the spectrum; securing $160 million in funding for a critical River crossing, transforming a county into one of the fastest growing in the United States; providing research funding to validate the public benefit of the incorporation of various industrial products in public infrastructure; securing $80 million in funding to ensure that Amtrak's NECIP project did not deprive a Northeastern state of modern freight rail access to a port complex that contained 80% of the states undeveloped industrial property; preventing a state environmental standard from rendering six modern manufacturing facilities obsolete, saving thousands of manufacturing jobs in the process; overturning a ban on public access to public lands by establishing reasonable environmental conditions for such access; securing federal support for academic infrastructure and job training at the nation's most entrepreneurial community college; securing federal funding to enable a health care organization to acquire equipment essential to the training of emergency medical professionals; and, assisting a major manufacture recover from the challenges associated with a high profile product failure.

The key to Mr. McNamara's thirty-five years of successful work on behalf of Minnesota constituents and a diverse base of clients is his insistence on thorough preparation and unselfish team work. Regardless of the challenge, the tremendous resources available at Cassidy & Associates provide every client with an excellent opportunity to advance their objectives in Washington.

Mr. McNamara resides in Maryland with his wife Marie and their three sons, Seamus, Corbett and Sean. When Mr. McNamara is not assisting his son Corbett in Special Olympics' three B's- Basketball, Baseball, and Bicycling, he enjoys all manner of sports, as well as gardening, woodwork, wine, cooking and politics. Mr. McNamara graduated in 1980 from the University of Maryland with a Bachelor of Science degree in Government and politics.