<p>Bella Abzug, feminist and civil rights advocate, embodied many Americans’ discontent with the political establishment in the tumultuous Vietnam War era. She gained notoriety as one of the most colorful and controversial House Members during the 1970s. Once quoted as saying “women have been trained to talk softly and carry a lipstick”—a play on Theodore Roosevelt’s famous declaration that on foreign policy, America “should speak softly and carry a big stick”—the determined New York Congresswoman spent much of her life refuting the notion that women should remain on the political sidelines.1 Despite serving in Congress for only three terms, Abzug’s political flair and unwavering determination helped inspire an entire generation of women and created a new model for future Congresswomen. “She was such a trailblazer,” a former aide noted after Abzug’s death in 1998. “It wasn’t that she was the first woman in Congress. It was that she was the first woman to get in Congress and lead the way toward creating a feminist presence.”</p>
<p>The daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants Emmanuel and Esther Tanklefsky Savitzky, Bella Abzug was born Bella Savitzky in the Bronx, New York, on July 24, 1920. She received an AB from Hunter College in Manhattan in 1942 and immediately entered Columbia University Law School. In 1944 Bella Savitzky married Martin Abzug. As a stockbroker and novelist, her husband had little inclination toward politics. Nevertheless, Bella Abzug counted him as her closest confidant and supporter: “one of the few unneurotic people left in society.”3 The Abzugs raised two children: Eve and Liz. After interrupting her studies to work in a shipyard during World War II, Bella Abzug served as editor of the Columbia Law Review, and graduated with an LLB in 1947. For the next two decades Abzug practiced law on behalf of people whom the existing legal and social structures bypassed, citizens she once described as being “on the outside of power.”4 She defended Willie McGee, an African-American man convicted and sentenced to death in Mississippi for raping a white woman. She also represented individuals whom Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy’s investigatory committee tarred as communist agents. In 1961 Abzug cofounded Women Strike for Peace, a group that protested the nuclear arms race and, later, the American military commitment in Vietnam. She served as a leader in the “Dump Johnson” movement to remove embattled President Lyndon B. Johnson from the 1968 Democratic ticket. Reflecting on this long record, Abzug later conceded that she was at heart an activist rather than a politician.</p>
<p>In 1970, at the age of 50, Abzug made her first attempt at elected office, when she decided to enter the race for a U.S. House of Representatives seat in Manhattan’s wealthy, liberal Upper West Side. Employing the campaign slogan “This woman’s place is in the House … the House of Representatives!” Abzug ran on an antiwar and pro-feminist platform. Her insistence that she would have a stronger voice and more active presence on Capitol Hill than her opponent helped Abzug earn 55 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary and unseat the seven-term incumbent, Leonard Farbstein.6 In the general election, Abzug defeated Republican-Liberal Barry Farber, a radio talk show host, in a three-way election, with 52 percent to Farber’s 43 percent.7 Throughout the campaign, Abzug benefited from the support of celebrity entertainers and New York City Mayor John Vliet Lindsay. The national media focused on her effort, foreshadowing the publicity she would attract as a sitting Representative.</p>
<p>After taking the official oath of office for the 92nd Congress (1971–1973) on January 3, 1971, Abzug took a “people’s oath” on the House steps administered by her New York colleague Shirley Chisholm. Onlookers cheered, “Give ’em hella, Bella!” By seeking a seat on the coveted Armed Services Committee, Abzug also flaunted House decorum, which expected freshman to accept lower-level committee assignments. The request was denied (she eventually accepted positions on the Government Operations and Public Works committees). Undeterred, she worked on devising methods to dismantle the entrenched House seniority system that prevented most newly elected Representatives from receiving influential assignments. Despite her freshman status, Abzug made waves in Congress by supporting a variety of controversial causes. On the first day of the session, she introduced legislation demanding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. She authored a bill to end the draft, an institution she likened to “slavery” motivated by “insane priorities,” and she asked for an investigation into the competence of widely feared Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover.9 “I spend all day figuring out how to beat the machine and knock the crap out of the political power structure,” Abzug wrote in her journal, published in 1972.10 “Battling Bella,” a nickname she earned because of her tenacity and confrontational demeanor, also had the distinction of being one of the first politicians to publicly call for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon, even before the 1973 congressional outcry about his Vietnam policy in early 1972.</p>
<p>Writer Norman Mailer once described Abzug’s voice as an instrument that “could boil the fat off a taxicab driver’s neck.”12 Cognizant that her personality often prompted discussion and, at times, dismay from onlookers, Abzug retorted, “There are those who say I’m impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash and overbearing. Whether I’m any of these things or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am—and this ought to be made clear from the outset—I am a very serious woman.”13 Easy to spot in her trademark wide-brimmed hat (which she began wearing as a young female professional because she believed it was the only way men “would take you seriously”), Abzug waged a highly publicized battle to protect her right to wear it on the House Floor. Her colorful style attracted as many dedicated opponents as it did admirers and allies. A 1972 report by Ralph Nader estimated that Abzug’s sponsorship of a bill often cost it as many as 30 votes.14 Nevertheless, she inspired young women, many of whom became prominent politicians. “Let’s be honest about it: She did not knock politely on the door,” New York Representative Geraldine Ferraro said. “She took the hinges off of it.” The 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate conceded, “If there never had been a Bella Abzug, there never would have been a Gerry Ferraro.”</p>
<p>In 1972, when Abzug’s district was merged with a neighboring one, she decided to run against popular reform Democrat William Fitts Ryan in a newly created district which extended her former west Manhattan district’s boundaries farther south and east. The primary was a bitter contest, even by New York City’s standards. Ryan defeated Abzug but died two months before the general election. The Democratic committee appointed Abzug as its replacement candidate. She defeated Ryan’s widow, Priscilla, who ran on the Liberal Party ticket in another divisive campaign. Abzug took 56 percent of the vote to Ryan’s 28 percent in a five-way race. In 1974 Abzug easily defeated her GOP opponent, Stephen Posner, with 79 percent of the vote.</p>
<p>Abzug’s sustained clash with the conventions of Congress and her party’s political machine mitigated her ability to fulfill her ambitious political agenda, but she did achieve some solid results. Her most noteworthy contributions, particularly the “sunshine” laws under the Freedom of Information Act, came as a member of the Government Operations Committee. She worked to make government, particularly national security policies, more transparent. The “sunshine law,” which required government hearings to be held in public, came out of the Subcommittee on Government Information and Individual Rights, which she chaired.17 During her first term, she coauthored the Child Development Act with Brooklyn Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. When promoting the legislation on the floor of the House, she emphasized that the bill concerned women as much as children, commenting, “Without adequate, low-cost day care facilities, women are doomed to occupy low-paying, low-prestige jobs; without day care, women must remain economic serfs.”18 Abzug also introduced groundbreaking legislation aimed at increasing the rights of gay Americans. The bill called for amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual or affectional preference.”</p>
<p>In 1976 Abzug chose not to run for a fourth House term, instead waging a close but unsuccessful campaign against Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Democratic primary for an open Senate seat. In 1977 she also failed in her bid for the New York City Democratic mayoral nomination. When the winner of the mayor’s race, Edward Irving Koch, resigned from Congress, Abzug tried but failed to win his vacant seat on New York’s Upper East Side. President Jimmy Carter named her the co-chair of the National Advisory Committee on Women in 1978, though Abzug later was replaced when she criticized the administration’s economic policies. In 1986 Abzug made another bid for the House of Representatives, this time in Westchester County, New York. After winning the Democratic primary, however, she lost in the general election to the Republican incumbent, Joseph J. DioGuardi.20 Her last attempt to regain a place in Congress came six years later when Abzug announced her intention to run for the open seat in her old district on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, following the death of Congressman Ted Weiss. Abzug’s desire to return to politics was cut short when party leaders failed to back her candidacy.</p>
<p>In her two-decade, post-political career, Abzug remained a respected and visible figure in the feminist movement. She addressed international women’s conferences in Beijing, Nairobi, and Copenhagen. She also established the Women USA Fund and the Women’s Environment and Development Organization, both nonprofit advocacy groups that worked to give women’s issues more prominence on the United Nations’ agenda. New York Mayor David Dinkins appointed her to chair his commission on the status of women and she served from 1993 to 1995. Her health declined as she battled breast cancer and heart disease. Abzug died in New York City on March 31, 1998.</p>