Elizabeth Holtzman
Elizabeth Holtzman is an American attorney and politician who served in the United States House of Representatives from New York's 16th congressional district as a member of the Democratic Party from 1973 to 1981. She then served as district attorney of Kings County from 1982 to 1989, and as the 40th comptroller of New York City from 1990 to 1993.
Holtzman ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in New York's 10th congressional district in the 2022 election.
Early life and education
Elizabeth Holtzman was born alongside her twin brother in Brooklyn, New York, on August 11, 1941, to Russian immigrants Sidney Holtzman, a lawyer, and Filia Ravitz, who had a doctorate from Columbia University and later headed the Russia department at Hunter College. Her family is Jewish, and she attended Hebrew school.Holtzman attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Abraham Lincoln High School. She was elected vice president of the student government in 1958, while her brother was its president. Holtzman graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1961, where she majored in American history and literature, and from Harvard Law School in 1965. At Harvard Law School she was one of 15 women in the 500 students in her class and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Legal and education
While at Harvard Holtzman joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She worked on civil rights cases in Alabama and Georgia and for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. During her time in Georgia she worked as a law clerk for Chevene Bowers King. After being admitted to the New York State Bar Association she worked for Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison starting in 1970, before leaving to run for office in 1972. She was elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers in 1976, and worked at New York University School of Law from 1981 to 1982. New York University had her as a visiting scholar in 1981.In 1984, a delegation, including Holtzman, went to Paraguay to search for Josef Mengele. President Bill Clinton appointed her to the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group. In 2013, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel appointed her to a panel to review the handling of sexual assault cases in the military. She was appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council in 2014, but resigned in protest of the family separation policy for the Mexico–United States border.
Clinton's impeachment was opposed by Holtzman, who stated that the crimes he was accused of were not comparable to the crimes that Richard Nixon was accused of. She also said that Ken Starr "overstepped his jurisdiction" by not conducting his report in a similar manner to Leon Jaworski, the special counsel for Nixon's impeachment. In 2006, she wrote in favor of impeaching President George W. Bush in The Nation.
Early politics
Holtzman worked on Adlai Stevenson II's and Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaigns. She was a liaison officer in the Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs Administration from 1967 to 1970, during John Lindsay's mayoralty. She left her position as a liaison officer to run for the New York State Democratic Committee from Flatbush, Brooklyn. She conducted her campaign from her parents' basement. In 1970, Holtzman filed suit against a law that placed incumbents at the top of the ballot line; the New York Court of Appeals ruled in her favor, five to two. Holtzman founded the Brooklyn Women's Political Caucus.United States House of Representatives
Elections
On March 28, 1972, Holtzman announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the United States House of Representatives from New York's 16th congressional district. Michael Churchill was her campaign manager. In the primary, she faced incumbent Representative Emanuel Celler, the dean of the House of Representatives and chair of the Judiciary Committee, who was first elected in 1922. It was the first time Holtzman had run for public office. She believed that Celler was vulnerable as he had no district office, his residency was under question, and he largely went unmentioned in his district's political circles. After she filed to run against him, Celler said, "As far as I'm concerned, she doesn't exist." Holtzman criticized Celler's low voting attendance, which she said negated his seniority.Celler had the support of the Liberal Party of New York and the Democratic political machine in Brooklyn. This was the second time that he had faced opposition in a primary. Holtzman raised around $32,000 and borrowed $4,000 during the primary, though she was told she needed $100,000 to run her campaign. She defeated Celler and Robert O'Donnell in the primary. Donald Zimmerman, who aided in the redistricting after the 1970 United States census, stated that Celler's demand that his district remain Jewish, rather than a proposed 60-40 split between whites and blacks, caused him to lose as Zimmerman did not "think Liz could have won as a reformer in a district that wasn't all Jewish."
Celler attempted to have the primary voided and another one held, but Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Dominic Rinaldi ruled against him and the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court ruled unanimously against him. The New York Court of Appeals ruled five to two against Celler. Although Celler was still on the general election ballot as the Liberal Party nominee, he announced on September 28 that he would end his campaign. Holtzman defeated Republican nominee Nicholas R. Macchio Jr. and Conservative nominee William Sampol in the election.
Celler was the longest-serving House member to lose reelection, and blamed his defeat on his own overconfidence. Time called Holtzman "Liz the Lion Killer". At the time, she was the youngest woman ever elected to the United States Congress, at age 31. This was later outdone by Elise Stefanik, who was elected to Congress in 2014 at age 30, and who was in turn surpassed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was elected to Congress in 2018 at age 29.
In the 1974 election, Holtzman, who also had the Liberal nomination, defeated Republican and Conservative nominee Joseph L. Gentili. On June 15, 1976, she announced that she would run for reelection and defeated Republican and Conservative nominee Gladys Pemberton in the 1976 election. She defeated Republican and United Taxpayers nominee Larry Penner and Conservative nominee John H. Fox in the 1978 election. Holtzman left the House after four terms in order to run for the Senate.
Edolphus Towns, who was later elected to Congress, campaigned with Holtzman during the 1972 primary. Bob Beckel, who later managed Walter Mondale's presidential campaign, volunteered on one of Holtzman's campaigns.
Tenure
During Holtzman's tenure in the House of Representatives, she served on the Judiciary Committee and chaired the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and International Law. She was the first female member of the Democratic Party to serve on the Budget Committee. She was one of the 15 founding members of the Congresswomen's Caucus and co-chaired it with Margaret Heckler. In 1977, Speaker Tip O'Neill selected her to be one of the two members of the House of Representatives on the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year.On April 19, 1973, Holtzman filed suit against Nixon in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, saying that he had violated the law by conducting Operation Menu without Congress's approval. Three members of the United States Air Force joined her lawsuit and Burt Neuborne worked as her lawyer. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented her, it was the second time that a member of Congress had challenged the legality of a president's conduct in war since Abraham Lincoln questioned the Mexican–American War. Judge Orrin Grimmell Judd ruled in Holtzman's favor on July 25, 1973, and issued an order to end the bombings, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the decision. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall upheld the court's stay of proceedings, but Justice William O. Douglas vacated the stay order on August 4, causing the bombing suspension to be returned. Three hours later, Marshall and the other justices halted the original ruling, ordering the suspension of bombings to circumvent Douglas's decision. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger declined to call a special term for the court to hear the case.
In 1979, U.S. Representative Jimmy Wilson, who had narrowly lost reelection the previous year to Buddy Leach, accused Leach of purchasing enough votes to win both the primary and general elections. The House voted 241 to 153 not to advance Wilson's objections on a mostly party-line vote. Holtzman was one of only four Democrats to vote in support of Wilson's challenge.
Holtzman supported George McGovern in the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries and was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She endorsed Herman Badillo for the Democratic nomination during the 1973 New York City mayoral election. She endorsed Ramsey Clark's New York senatorial campaign during the 1974 election. She supported Governor Hugh Carey in the 1978 gubernatorial election. She received two delegate votes for the vice-presidential nomination at the 1980 Democratic National Convention.
Watergate
Holtzman was one of the first members of the Judiciary Committee to support starting impeachment proceedings against Nixon, in 1973. The committee voted, with Holtzman voting no, to extend the deadline for Nixon to hand over his tape recordings. She voted in favor of an attempt by Representative John Conyers to have Nixon cited for contempt of Congress that failed, 32 to 5.Holtzman wrote Article IV of the impeachment charges, which charged Nixon with the violation of the War Powers Clause, and it was introduced by Conyers. It failed, 26 to 12, and Holtzman later said, "I regret it, because I think the right to take people's lives unilaterally and secretly and with enormous power, and the perversion of that power, is certainly as serious as anything else the President did."
Holtzman voted against advancing Gerald Ford's vice presidential confirmation in the Judiciary Committee and at the final vote. She asked Ford whether he had made a deal with Nixon to pardon him. She also asked if the pardon and an agreement that the tapes belonged to Nixon was in order to prevent the release of conversations between him and Nixon. She, Conyers, and Henry S. Reuss asked Charles Ruff to investigate Ford for perjury at his vice-presidential confirmation hearing. She also asked Attorney General Edward H. Levi to investigate claims of perjury and alleged a cover-up after he declined to investigate. She made a motion in the Judiciary Committee to launch a probe into the pardon, but it failed, four to three.