The Toothpick Congresswoman

Brian Balogh: She toppled a powerful, long-time, New York City incumbent, and her grassroots campaign sent shock waves through the Democratic political establishment. Nope, I’m not talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’m talking about Elizabeth Holtzman, whose surprise 1972 victory when she was only 31-years-old, made her the youngest congresswomen in history at the time. I caught up with Holtzman and asked her what led her to get involved in politics and decide to run for office in the first place.

Elizabeth H.: One real motivating factor was my experience in the South as an intern in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. I was interning for a black civil rights attorney in Southwest Georgia. I had no idea in 1963 of what life was like in the South for blacks. It wasn’t until I got down there that I realized the horror of Jim Crow. It was so bad that in rural areas, black people had to get off the sidewalk when a white person was walking down the street. The indignities and the misuse of the criminal justice system to stifle protests against these horrific, discriminatory conditions under which people lived was horrifying to me, but I saw what determined efforts could do to bring down a system like Jim Crow. That gave me an optimism about the ability to make changes in our society for the welfare of people, the benefit of people.

Elizabeth H.: My second experience was being asked by a fellow student at Harvard Law School to come down and work in the Lindsay administration. I had no experience with government.

Brian Balogh: This is Mayor John Lindsay, mayor of New York.

Elizabeth H.: Correct. When I got there, I got a close up look at elected officials. I said, “If these people can get elected, I can get elected.”

Brian Balogh: Good for you.

Elizabeth H.: Armed with the sense that I could do good in government and that it was possible to get elected if these people could get elected, I tried … I noticed that my congressperson, a man called Emanuel Celler, who was 84-years-old, who was a strong supporter of the war in Vietnam … I was a major opponent of the war, and he wasn’t around in the district.

Brian Balogh: Well, you pulled it out against one of the true institutions of the Democratic party in Congress at the time. How long had Manny Celler been in Congress?

Elizabeth H.: He’d been in Congress for half a century, and the political machine in Brooklyn was supporting him. So, it was not only against the congressional institution, so to speak, but against the whole Democratic apparatus in Brooklyn. I just want to put this in context. Brooklyn had what was called a political machine, which meant that the Democratic party was controlled by political bosses who acquired their power by winning elections and then dolling our patronage and other goodies to people who supported them. It turned out to be a very corrupt system, and it’s a system that I ran against. I defeated the Brooklyn machine in every single election that I won. They never gave up running against me, and I never gave up fighting them.

Elizabeth H.: They threw everything they could at me. Of course, they didn’t take me seriously. Of course, we had no money. We didn’t even have a poll, but we were able, nonetheless, to win.

Brian Balogh: But, you were the youngest woman elected to Congress at the time, and, more importantly, you were a woman. What was it like to run as a woman?

Elizabeth H.: I was 31, just 31. Since we had no money for TV or newspaper ads or radio ads or anything, we did a lot of shoe leather, and I campaigned constantly at subway stops and the bus stops and wherever more than one person was congregating. You stood out from the crowd. There were no other women running for office. I think also, the image was … Because I was running not just against Celler and not just against the War, but against the machine politics of Brooklyn, people felt that a woman would be more attentive, more honest, more caring, harder working. Those stereotypes worked in my favor in that race.

Brian Balogh: Surely, there must have been some comments direct or indirect about your presence as a woman.

Elizabeth H.: Well, my opponent denigrated me. He said, “My race was like a toothpick trying to topple the Washington Monument.” Implicit in toothpick trying to topple the Washington Monument was the idea was, what is this young woman? Just what business does she have running for Congress? Of course, a toothpick is not the Washington Monument, so toothpick isn’t going to win. A toothpick doesn’t deserve to win. Well, he was wrong.

Brian Balogh: Tell me about some of the cultural folkways about Congress. How did things go when you showed up at the gym?

Elizabeth H.: Well, I never showed up at the gym because the gym was closed to women and congresswomen actually decided not to make an issue of that because we thought we’d be laughed at by the press and that we needed to focus more on issues that would improve the lives of our constituents. I do remember when I first went down to lobby to be on a House committee, one Southern … I was going to say gentleman, but I don’t think that’s the right word … said to me, “Well, Ms. Holtzman, just because you’re a Jew and a woman, don’t worry about being in Congress.” I said to myself, “Now, I’m in real trouble.”

Elizabeth H.: At one point, I think it might have been my last term in Congress when every once in a while the Speaker would give a member the gavel. A Speaker couldn’t be on the floor all the time. So, I was presiding over the House, and someone addressed me as Mr. Speaker. I looked at the person, and I said, “Now, that’s not the correct form of address.” I said, “You have to call me Madam Speaker,” and so that I think set a precedent in the House at that time. Let’s put it this way, there were a small number of women, and the system didn’t necessarily include women, although it wasn’t really hostile. My colleagues were not hostile to me. I never felt that. I didn’t know how Congress operated when I got there, but I felt that I was able to make an important contribution on behalf of my constituents, and fight for many important values.

Elizabeth H.: One of the things I was able to do, I worked with a Republican congresswoman, Margaret Heckler from Massachusetts, and the two of us created the very first caucus in the history of the United States on women’s issues. We brought all the congresswomen together, all Democrats, all Republicans, and we created a congresswoman’s caucus. That is still in existence today, and still bipartisan, still has a Democratic chair and a Republican chair. It’s one of the areas-

Brian Balogh: Do you think that they talk to each other?

Elizabeth H.: Absolutely.

Brian Balogh: I’m just teasing.

Elizabeth H.: It’s one of the areas … No, I think it’s really important that, from the get-go, we understood that there were a lot of things that could divide us, but on many, many issues of the quality of life for women and children and families, there were many things where there was a common ground. We realized that if we worked together, we had much more clout. I was very proud of having formed that with Congresswoman Heckler, and very proud to see that it’s still flourishing today, and still bipartisan.

Brian Balogh: Yes, that’s really impressive. Did it matter that you and Congresswoman Jordan were on the judiciary committee as they held the Nixon administration to account?

Elizabeth H.: Barbara Jordan and I were the first women, Democratic women at least, ever to serve on that committee in the history of the United States. The only two women to serve during the impeachment process, so I think it was really important that we were there. Barbara Jordan played an extraordinary role. She made a speech that probably will be recorded as one of the great, all-time speeches in American history, and was a towering presence, and showed that women could participate in the most critical issues of constitutional integrity in our history.

Elizabeth H.: That was really important, and I still, to this day, because those hearings were televised and because it was so unusual to see women playing a role in making such important decisions as to whether or not a president should be impeached, that I still have women coming up to me today and saying, “You know, because I saw you during those impeachment hearings, I decided to become a lawyer. Because I saw you and Barbara Jordan, I decided that I could do something different and more important with my life than I’d ever thought before.” You don’t realize that just doing your job in the right way can have such an impact, but over my life, I’ve heard, oh, I would say, hundreds of women tell me that. In a way, it’s great that I was able to do it, but it’s sad that there were so few role models for women at that time.

Brian Balogh: What stereotypes worked against you, Congresswoman Holtzman?

Elizabeth H.: Well, I would say that the stereotypes that worked against me, which became more prominent in other races I was involved in, had to do with the stereotype that a woman can’t handle a tough job, that a woman isn’t as smart as a man, that a woman should stay in the home, that kind of thing. I felt running for the legislative position was easier because the public knows, or the stereotype is that women can talk, and they don’t really understand what the job of a legislator is, most of the public. Being an executive, giving orders, being the boss, they’re very unaccustomed to seeing women in those roles, so you had to overcome a lot of stereotypes and hurdles.

Elizabeth H.: When I ran for district attorney after running for the U.S. Senate, in Brooklyn, people came up to me, and they said, “Liz, we love you. We voted for you for Congress, for the Senate, but DA, that’s not a job for a woman.” It’s too much pressure, too hard, too this, too that. There I wasn’t running against an opponent, a live opponent. Although, in fact, I was. Nobody knew who he was. He was a complete unknown, but I was running against the image of Perry Mason. That was really hard. That was one of the toughest races I ever had. I just squeaked out a victory there because I had huge name recognition and huge favorabilities, but people said, “This wasn’t the right job.” Executive positions are tough for women to win. That’s for sure.

Brian Balogh: From your perspective stepping back, what is the best example of an issue that male legislators just, either didn’t get that women got instantaneously?

Elizabeth H.: For example, the exclusion of women from military academies, we understood that was a terrible problem. Men had persisted for a long time. There were more men than women to deal with it in the Congress, the House, and the Senate. They hadn’t seen it as a problem. I would say one of the important bills that happened early on when I was in Congress that changed things was dealing with banking issues. A married woman couldn’t get a bank loan in her own name. She needed her husband’s position.

Brian Balogh: Couldn’t get a credit card.

Elizabeth H.: Yeah, credit card, whatever. It was humiliating. No, and then you had all the issues of sexual violence. A woman who had been raped couldn’t have the rapist prosecuted without witnesses. In New York state, there were other obstacles such as you had to put up earnest resistance. A woman had to fight back even if she was going to risk her life in order to have the action count as a rape. It was horrific.

Elizabeth H.: When I was there, it was very plain that the legislation improving the status of women generally originated with women. So, women in Congress, women in positions of power can make a huge difference for other women, but it’s not just for women only. It’s something that improves our whole society when you can eliminate these acts of discrimination and include everybody in a fair and just way.

Brian Balogh: Elizabeth Holtzman represented New York’s 16th Congressional District from 1973 to 1981. She’s the author of the book, Who Said It Would Be Easy?: One Woman’s Life in the Political Arena.