Lehman, Herbert H. (Herbert Henry), 1878-1963

Herbert Henry Lehman (March 28, 1878 – December 5, 1963) was an American investment banker and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he notably served from 1933 until 1942 as the 45th Governor of New York and as U.S. Senator from New York between 1949 and 1957.

Born in Manhattan, he attended The Sachs School and Sachs Collegiate Institute before earning a B.A. from Williams College. After graduating, Lehman worked in textile manufacturing, eventually becoming vice-president and treasurer of the J. Spencer Turner Company in Brooklyn. In 1908, he became a partner in the investment banking firm Lehman Brothers of New York City with his brother Arthur and cousin Philip. During World War I, he became a colonel on the U.S. Army general staff.

Lehman became active in politics in 1920 and became chairman of the finance committee of the Democratic Party in 1928 as a reward for having been a strong supporter of Alfred E. Smith. He was elected lieutenant governor of New York in 1928 and 1930 and resigned from Lehman Brothers upon taking office. He then served four terms as Governor of New York, elected in 1932 to replace Franklin D. Roosevelt (who had been running for president), and re-elected in 1934, 1936 and 1938 (when he was elected to New York's first four-year gubernatorial term). Unlike Smith, Lehman was a supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal and implemented a similar program in New York. On December 3, 1942, he resigned the governorship less than a month before the end of his term, to accept an appointment as director of foreign relief and rehabilitation operations for the U.S. Department of State. He served as director-general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration from 1943 to 1946.

Lehman was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator from New York in 1946 and also ran on the Liberal and American Labor tickets but was defeated by the Republican candidate, Irving Ives. In 1949, he ran again, this time in a special election to serve the remainder of Robert F. Wagner's term. Lehman defeated John Foster Dulles, who had been appointed to temporarily fill the vacancy after Wagner's resignation, and he took his seat on January 3, 1950. Lehman was one of the most liberal senators and was therefore not considered part of the Senate's "club" of insiders. He retired from the Senate after his full term and was not a candidate for renomination in 1956.

After his retirement from the Senate, Lehman remained politically active, working with Eleanor Roosevelt and Thomas K. Finletter in the late 1950s and early 1960s to support the reform Democratic movement in Manhattan that eventually defeated longtime Tammany Hall boss Carmine DeSapio. He also helped to found the Lehman Children's Zoo (now the Tisch Zoo) in Central Park. Lehman spent much of the last two years of his life at his New York City home. He celebrated his 85th birthday in March 1963 in increasingly poor health and died of heart failure on December 5, 1963, at age 85. Lehman is interred at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.