Elizabeth Holtzman

Early life

She was born in Brooklyn, New York City, at Ocean Parkway, the daughter of attorney Sidney Holtzman and Filia Holtzman (a college professor). She is of Jewish descent. She is a graduate of Brooklyn's Abraham Lincoln High School (1958), Radcliffe College (magna cum laude 1962), and Harvard Law School (1965). She was admitted to the bar in New York State (1966).

House of Representatives 1973–1981

In the 1972 primary election, she upset Judiciary Committee chairman Emanuel Celler, the fifty-year incumbent and the House's longest serving member at that time. At 31 years old, she was the youngest woman elected to Congress. Holtzman held the record for 42 years before being surpassed in 2014 by fellow New Yorker Elise Stefanik.

She served on the House Judiciary Committee. In the summer of 1974, it held impeachment hearings on President Richard Nixon's activities.

She was a member of the House Budget Committee and Chairwoman of the House Immigration Subcommittee.

Before the end of the bombings during the Cambodian Campaign on August 15, 1973, Holtzman filed a legal challenge in United States Federal Court in the case of Schlesinger v. Holtzman. Holtzman voted against the Case-Church amendment, as she wanted an immediate end to the bombings, and subsequently filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York seeking an order to require such. On July 25, 1973, U.S. District Judge Orrin Grimmell Judd granted summary judgment to Holtzman and issued an injunction ordering the military to refrain from participating in military activities in Cambodia. His order would have become effective on July 27, however, on that day, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously stayed his order. Holtzman then attempted to get the Circuit Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court overseeing the Second Circuit, Justice Thurgood Marshall, to vacate the stay. Justice Marshall refused to vacate the stay, issuing an in-chambers opinion. Holtzman then turned to Justice William O. Douglas who granted Holtzman's motion to vacate the stay on August 4, 1973, and he ordered the U.S. Military to cease all bombing in Cambodia. The military ignored his order, and six hours later, the other eight Justices of the Supreme Court voted unanimously to reverse Douglas's order.

In 1978, she secured an extension of the deadline for state legislatures to ratify the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution. (House Joint Resolution No. 638 was approved by the 95th Congress.)

Rep. Holtzman helped pass legislation in 1978 to expel more Nazi war criminals who had immigrated to the United States. It established the U.S. DOJ Office of Special Investigations within the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division to investigate and bring legal action to denaturalize or deport them. The Immigration and Naturalization Service had kept a list of suspects but had not pursued them.

1980 Senate candidacy

Holtzman was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1980. In her party's primary she defeated former Miss America Bess Myerson, former New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay, and Queens D.A. John J. Santucci. Myerson had been the initial favorite, with endorsements from Mayor of New York Ed Koch, Governor Hugh Carey and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

In the general election, Holtzman faced Republican challenger Al D'Amato and incumbent Senator Jacob Javits. Despite his loss to D'Amato in the Republican primary, Javits ran in the general election on the Liberal Party ticket. He retained his union endorsements and drew liberal and Jewish voters away from Holtzman. A theme of D'Amato's campaign was that Holtzman had never voted for a Department of Defense appropriation bill in Congress.

She lost to D'Amato by a margin of 1%, or 81,000 votes.

New York University

She taught at New York University Law School and its Graduate School of Public Administration, 1981–1982.

1981–1994 Municipal offices

In 1981, Holtzman made a comeback, winning election as District Attorney in Kings County (Brooklyn), a post to which she was reelected in 1985. She held this post for six years, until she became the New York City Comptroller in 1989. She was the first woman to be elected district attorney as well as comptroller in New York City.

She has said that she first considered a race for Mayor of New York in 1989 before deciding to seek the comptroller's post instead. Holtzman viewed the comptroller's post as an extension of her work in Congress and as district attorney.

1992 Senate candidacy

In 1992, after the Clarence Thomas Anita Hill controversy, Holtzman sought the Democratic nomination for Senator to challenge Republican D'Amato again.

The Democrats seeking the nomination (Holtzman, former Representative and 1984 vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams, Representative Robert J. Mrazek and Rev. Al Sharpton) split the feminists. Emily's List endorsed Ferraro, and raised money for her. Much of the leadership of National Organization for Women was in Holtzman's camp. Former Democratic Party National Organizer Anne F. Lewis had suggested women split their campaign donations between the two women. Betty Friedan endorsed Holtzman. She lost a bitter primary, with rancorous debates. Both Abrams and Holtzman exploited Ferraro's tax problems, and the legal problems of John Zaccaro, her husband, and those of her son, even suggesting a Mafia connection to the family. Holtzman was vulnerable for an August loan to her campaign from Fleet Bank. In August 1992 she borrowed $450,000 to pay for television ads against Ferraro. These charges came back to haunt her in her unsuccessful 1993 bid for a second term as Comptroller, although she was later cleared of all charges. Democrats blamed her for the expensive and brutal Senate primary that left nominee Abrams too weakened to defeat vulnerable incumbent D'Amato.

She finished with 13%, last behind Abrams, Ferraro, and Sharpton. Holtzman did not endorse Abrams. Senator D'Amato, the Republican incumbent, won re-election in November 49% to 48%.

1993 re-election campaign

During Holtzman's 1993 reelection race for city comptroller, she faced Assemblyman Alan Hevesi and former Congressman Herman Badillo in the Democratic primary. Badillo was also the Republican nominee for comptroller on a fusion ticket with mayoral nominee Rudolph Giuliani. Ferraro, upset over Holtzman's ethics accusation from the 1992 Senate primary, encouraged Hevesi to oppose Holtzman. (Hevesi and Ferraro would later become estranged.) Service Employees International Union Local 1199 (a politically powerful health care union led by Jennifer Cunningham), endorsed Hevesi. While initial polls showed Holtzman an easy winner for reelection, the Fleet Bank loan from the Senate race was made an issue by Hevesi and Badillo during the NY1 debate and led to Holtzman losing support.

Holtzman's office in March 1993 included a Fleet entity on a list of recommended underwriters for the city's municipal bond sales. Her campaign still owed Fleet $255,000 on loan from the 1992 campaign, and had missed two payment deadlines.

In the primary, Holtzman finished second and was forced into a runoff with Hevesi. Hevesi defeated Holtzman in the runoff primary election, 67% – 33% and went on to defeat Badillo in the general election.

After elective office

Her last term in elective office ended in 1994. Since then she has been an attorney in private practice in New York City. She is now an attorney and author on politics. She published a memoir in 1996, Who Said It Would Be Easy?: One Woman's Life in the Political Arena (with Cynthia L. Cooper).

She testified against the impeachment of President Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee in 1998, arguing that Clinton's alleged crimes did not come close to the things Nixon was accused of.

Holtzman was a public member of the long-running Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), a commission established by a 1998 act of Congress to locate, identify, inventory, and recommend for declassification, currently classified U.S. records relating to Nazi and Imperial Japanese war crimes. Along with other public members, she had some sharp and public disagreements with the Central Intelligence Agency's interpretation of the law. On 2007-09-28, the Archivist of the United States presented to Congress, the Administration, and the American people the final report of the IWG.

On January 11, 2006, The Nation published her essay calling for the impeachment of U.S. President George W. Bush for authorizing "the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act." She expanded on her arguments for impeaching President Bush in a 2006 book coauthored with Cynthia L. Cooper, The impeachment of George W. Bush: a practical guide for concerned citizens. In June 2008, Holtzman published a commentary on the action of U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) in introducing articles of impeachment against President Bush on June 9, 2008.

She was weighing a bid for New York State Attorney General in the 2010 election, but announced on May 25, 2010, that she had decided not to run.

Holtzman was mentioned as a frontrunner for the special election to fill the congressional seat left vacant by the resignation of Anthony Weiner, but in the end she was not the chosen nominee.

She is a member of the Board of the American Friends of Yahad-In Unum.