How Nita Lowey got her start in politics

The passing of Rep. Nita Lowey on Saturday brought condolences to the Lowey family and accolades for the Westchester County political giant, who was remembered as a national proponent for women’s health initiatives and equity in medical research, and was a fierce political campaigner in her early years.

I covered her early campaigns in 1988, 1990 and 1992, and I was back on the political beat in 1999 when she launched a statewide campaign for U.S Senate. She withdrew her bid after Hillary Clinton decided to enter the race, which she later won.

I happened to meet Lowey on my first day on the job with Gannett in 1986. I’d arrived in Westchester from New Haven, where I’d covered City Hall for the New Haven Advocate. At the time, Chuck Lesnick, who later served as Yonkers City Council president, and is running for that post again in 2025, was working as an aide to Lowey in the office of the New York State Secretary of State in White Plains. A Yale classmate of Lesnick’s who I had known in New Haven recommended I reach out to Lesnick to connect with the Westchester political world.

I called him on my first day in the Harrison office. Lesnick invited me to a fundraiser that warm July evening around the swimming pool in the Loweys’ backyard, sipping cocktails while hobnobbing with Lowey, Lesnick and assorted guests. That was a good first day on the job, 39 years ago.

It was a great start to lasting relationship with Lowey, which extended through the 2010s, until she announced her retirement in October 2019 after a young, left-leaning attorney named Mondaire Jones announced he would primary the high-ranking Democrat. At the time, she chaired the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

Lowey was ‘everyone’s first mate’ at Bronx HS of science

I dug out a profile I wrote on Lowey in June 1999, a week after she bowed out of the Senate race in deference to Clinton.

I recounted Lowey’s journey from her upbringing on Walton Avenue in the Bronx, two blocks from Yankee Stadium, in an art deco apartment building. At the time, Walton Avenue was in a middle-class neighborhood populated by second-generation Irish, Italian and Jewish families who had moved north from the Lower East Side.

She took the subway to Bronx High School of Science, where she found a liking for politics in the class of 1955, which included Martin Peretz, who later became editor of The New Republic. She was elected class president in her senior year. The quote in her yearbook reflected the gender politics of the day: “Every ship has its captain, but she was everyone’s first mate.”

Lowey later emerged as a very powerful captain in Westchester and Washington, DC.

She was inspired to enter public service by her mother, Beatrice, through her involvement in charities and neighborhood groups. Lowey’s first taste of Capitol Hill came in the summer of 1958 when, as a political science major at Mount Holyoke College, she landed an internship, working for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, co-chaired by Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota.

“That day, I looked at the Capitol dome and said ‘Some day,’ “ Lowey told me.

Upon her graduation from Mount Holyoke, she returned to New York where she found a job at an advertising agency. In search of companionship, she joined with nine other Mount Holyoke graduates to hold a mixer. One friend invited dozens of single men. That night, Stephen Lowey was among 120 guys at a party with 10 women. He admired his future wife, introduced himself, but didn’t get her number.

That summer, Steve surprisingly spotted Nita on a beach on Nantucket, the island paradise off Cape Cod. They said hello, but still no phone number. Later than night, however, they ran into each other again at a hangout called the Rope Walk. He invited her to dinner. In nine months they were married. And five years later they had three children at their new home in Holliswood, Queens.

She delayed political career to raise her kids

Lowey stayed at home for 13 years to raise her children while serving as PTA president and becoming involved in the 10^th Assembly District Democratic Club. Among its members was an up-and-coming political star named Mario Cuomo. They became friends and after his appointment as state Secretary of State in 1975, he tapped her to serve as his deputy in the downstate region.

By 1982, as her husband’s law practice thrived, and two of her children were in college, they moved to Westchester, finding a well-appointed home on Beverly Road in Harrison. At the time, Lowey thought that moving to Westchester would kill her dreams of elective office. At the time, Westchester was a Republican bastion, controlled by a powerful Republican machine. But she quickly learned that Westchester Democrats were a growing force, and she became deeply involved, hosting fundraisers and assisting in campaigns.

Democrats urged her to run for state Assembly against incumbent Assemblyman Peter Sullivan, R-White Plains. She declined. Then she helped Bella Abzug in her failed bid to oust U.S. Rep. Joe DioGuardi. Two years later she quit her state job to take on DioGuardi herself.

She beat DioGuardi in a tough race in 1988, and faced him again in 1992, when she defeated him once more. Those races against DioGuardi were her toughest political battles.

Lowey served 16 terms in Congress, including 5 terms when her gerrymandered district stretched from Westchester down through the Bronx to Queens. She could relate to the geography and its people. She lived in each of the counties. Then she had the chance to represent them in Washington.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: How late NY Rep. Nita Lowey got start in politics, in Bronx, Harrison