| I must admit, this is the first name that has been floated that really hit me as an excellent idea. I could see rationales for others-- but, to me, Holtzman is genuinely compelling, exciting.
Here are some details of the meeting with Paterson, from Cap Con:
Former congresswoman, Brooklyn District Attorney, and New York City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman has put her name in the list of contenders to replace Sen. Hillary Clinton...."We had a warm and very friendly conversation about the Senate seat. I presented the unique credentials that I thought would be useful to the state at this very difficult time."
"I think the governor will make a very thoughtful decision. I've been tested during a national crisis. I was there during Watergate, people saw me there, people saw me question Ford on his pardon. I've been tested."
She talked about her work to promote the rights of women (successfully pushing for an extension of the deadline for states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, passing legislation that would protect the privacy of rape victims), passing legislation to expel Nazi war criminal.
She also told the governor about her experience addressing previous fiscal crises - she was on the House budget committee during the city's first fiscal crisis in the 1970's and was city comptroller during the fiscal crisis in the 90's.
She also noted to Paterson that she has campaigned statewide, in both her state bids.
"He said I could do the job, and he acknowledged that I had very unique qualifications."
"He was listening, and he talked about some points and asked questions. He's a very good listener."
The Cap Con piece points out what a pioneer Holtzman has been for women, having been the youngest woman elected to the US House of Representatives, where she served from 1973-1981, and having also been the first woman to be elected Kings County District Attorney, and the first woman to be elected NYC Comptroller. Tough stuff.
Holtzman also has a unique qualification that was coming up repeatedly in our discussions here at TAP: she has actually run for, raised money for, and campaigned for the job-- twice, yet. She ran, but did not win, in the US Senate race in 1980 and 1992.
And, here's the amazing thing, which makes me really think that she might be just the woman for the time right now: she was on the Watergate Committee and cast one of the votes to impeach Richard M. Nixon. That, my friends, is worth rewarding.
Update: Checked a bit of her history on Wikipedia, just so that you wouldn't have to:
She was born in 1941, which makes her 67 years old now. Three years younger than the guy who just ran for President. But, on the flip of that, she would definitely not be being appointed to years and years and years of incumbancy.
In fact, those of you who are no fans of incumbancy might find her record interesting. In her first campaign for the House of Representatives, she won an upset victory over Judiciary Committee chairman Emanuel Celler, a fifty-year incumbent and the longest serving member of the House at the time. In her 1980 Senate run, it was, in fact, an incumbent who lost her the election (by 1% of the vote). She had won the primary against Jacob Javits-- even though big-name candidates former NYC-Mayor John V. Lindsay and Former Beauty Queen Bess Myers had more important endorsements and were favored to win. But, when she faced off against challenger Al D'Amato, Javits chose not to support her, but ran on the Liberal Party ticket, retaining his union endorsements.
In her 1992 bid for the Senate seat, she finished last in an ugly primary with only 13% of the vote. The primary field was crowded (Geraldine Ferraro, New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams, Representative Robert J. Mrazek and Rev. Al Sharpton), and she had a difficult time gaining enough campaign contributions to compete effectively statewide.
But, I gotta say, what I liked best in the Wikipedia bio was what she has been up to since leaving elected office. Here it is:
Her last term in elective office ended in 1994. Since then she has been an attorney in private practice. She is now an attorney and author on politics. For nearly ten years, ending in 2007, she served on a Congressionally mandated commission, the IWG, charged with producing a report recommending for declassification U.S. records relating to Nazi and Japanese Imperial Government war crimes. Since 2006, as a book author and blogger, she has advocated the impeachment of President George W. Bush.[2]
Holtzman entered the private practice of law in New York City.
She published a memoir in 1996, Who said it would be easy: one woman's life in the political arena (Cynthia L. Cooper, coauthor).
Miss 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.[16] 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.[17]
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."[18] 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.[18] 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[19].
She is employed at Herrick Feinstein, LLP, in New York. |
