Holtzman, Elizabeth, 1941-

<p>A self-proclaimed political outsider, Elizabeth Holtzman defeated a 50-year House veteran and powerful chairman to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. During her four terms in the House, Holtzman earned national prominence as an active member of the Judiciary Committee during the President Richard M. Nixon impeachment inquiry and as a cofounder of the Congressional Caucus on Women’s Issues.</p>

<p>Elizabeth Holtzman and her twin brother, Robert, were born on August 11, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian immigrants Sidney Holtzman, a lawyer, and Filia Holtzman, a faculty member in the Hunter College Russian Department. Elizabeth Holtzman graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1962 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and received her JD from Harvard Law School in 1965, one of 15 women in her class of more than 500. After graduation, she returned to New York to practice law and became active in state Democratic politics. From 1967 to 1970, Holtzman managed parks and recreation as an assistant to New York City Mayor John Vliet Lindsay. From 1970 to 1972, she served as a New York state Democratic committee member and as a district leader from Flatbush. She also cofounded the Brooklyn Women’s Political Caucus.</p>

<p>In 1972 Holtzman mounted a long-shot campaign to unseat incumbent Congressman Emanuel Celler, who had represented central Brooklyn for half a century and was chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee. Though she lacked the funding that Celler mustered for the Democratic primary, Holtzman mounted an energetic grassroots campaign by canvassing the urban district. “If I had known how little money we could raise, I would never have gotten into it,” Holtzman recalled. “But in those days, I substituted shoe leather for dollars. We had no TV commercials, we had no radio commercials, we had no polling. No one took us seriously, but we still won.” She often introduced herself to patrons in lines outside movie theaters, emphasizing her commitment to constituent needs. “There was no hostility to the fact that I was a woman. I remember truck drivers leaning out of their trucks and saying, ‘I think it’s great … it’s fantastic that a woman is running,’” she recalled. “I found mothers taking their daughters up to me. They wanted their daughters to have a different conception of the possibilities for them.”</p>

<p>Elizabeth Holtzman (born August 11, 1941) is an American attorney and politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives. A Democrat, she represented New York's 16th congressional district for four terms. She was the first woman to hold the office of New York City Comptroller, and the first woman to serve as District Attorney of Kings County.</p>

<p>Holtzman was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of attorney Sidney Holtzman and college professor Filia (Ravitz) Holtzman. She is of Jewish descent. She graduated from Brooklyn's Abraham Lincoln High School in 1958. In high school, Holtzman and her twin brother, Robert, launched a joint campaign for student government. Robert was elected president and Elizabeth vice president.</p>

<p>Holtzman graduated from Radcliffe College of Harvard University (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1962), and Harvard Law School (1965), where she was one of 15 women in a class of nearly 500 men. At Harvard Law, she was a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), assisted in creating the Law Students' Civil Rights Research Council, taught English at Harvard College, and was a law clerk for civil rights attorney C. B. King.</p>