Sam Coppersmith Photographs

Lawyer and politician Samuel George Coppersmith was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania on May 22, 1955. He earned his A.B. from Harvard in 1976 and his J.D. from Yale in 1982. Between college and law school, he worked as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. Department of State at the U.S. Embassy in Port of Spain, Trinidad (1977-1979). After being admitted to the bar in 1982, Coppersmith clerked for Judge William C. Canby Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit (1982-1983) and served as Assistant to Phoenix's Mayor Terry Goddard (1984) before becoming the Director of the Arizona Community Service Legal Assistance Foundation (1986-1990) and a member of the Phoenix Board of Adjustment (1989-1992).

Coppersmith was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona's 1st District in 1992 and served in the 103rd Congress (1993-1995). During this time, he worked to eliminate the Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor Program, collaborated with the Department of Education and the Department of Labor to end short-sighted interpretation of labor laws that kept parents in some Arizona schools from participating in their children's classrooms, and opposed pay raises for Congresspeople, going so far as to write a monthly check to the U.S. Treasury to return his. In 1994, Coppersmith ran against Jon Kyl to fill the Senate seat vacated by Dennis DeConcini's retirement. Coppersmith lost the election and returned to Arizona.

After leaving Congress, Coppersmith served as the Chair of the Arizona Democratic Party and member of the Democratic National Committee (1995-1997), as a Public Member of the Governor's Regulatory Review Council (2005-2009), and as Co-Chair of Representative Harry Mitchell's transition team (2006-2007). He also founded Coppersmith Brockelman with Andy Gordon in 1995 and worked as a managing partner until 2011. Coppersmith's legal practice focused on business law, including business planning, organization, contract negotiation, land use, and governance and compliance issues.