DeForest Soaries
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Reverend DeForest Blake "Buster" Soaries, Jr. (born August 20, 1951 in Brooklyn, New York) is an African-American Baptist minister, politician, author and public advocate, from Franklin Park, New Jersey. He is formerly the chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, as well as the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey, a position he has held since November 1990. He is married with two sons.
Soaries received a Bachelor of Arts from Fordham University; a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary; and a Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary. He has also received five honorary Doctorate degrees from other institutions.
He is married to the former Margaret Donna Pleasant. The couple has twin sons, Malcolm and Martin.
Soaries served as New Jersey's Secretary of State from 12 January 1999 to 15 January 2002 under then-Governor Christine Todd Whitman. In that position he endorsed further funding for the arts, and served as an unofficial general advisor to the governor. He also created V-FREE, a statewide youth violence prevention program.
In 2002, Soaries was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from the 12th C.D. of New Jersey, losing to incumbent Democrat Rush D. Holt, Jr..
A proponent of faith-based community development, and of President Bush's faith-based initiative, Soaries, through church donations, formed several non-profit community development agencies, including the Renaissance Community Development Credit Union, Renaissance Education & Technology Academy and the Harvest of Hope Family Services Network.
Soaries was chosen by Coretta Scott King as the keynote speaker at the 2000 Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration in Atlanta. He has also worked for the Urban League and Operation PUSH.
In July of 2004, Soaries wrote a letter to United States Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge in which he indicated that he was concerned that there was no mechanism in place for the postponement of federal elections in the event of terrorism or other emergencies. One sentence of the letter, taken out of context, read, "... the federal government has no agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election." This raised an uproar among those who felt that this was an attempt by the Bush administration to postpone the 2004 U.S. Presidential election.
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| Preceded by Lonna Hooks |
Secretary of State of New Jersey 1998 – 2001 |
Succeeded by Regena Thomas |
