Nita M. Lowey, who represents a 32-year-old congressional district in Westchester County, is passionate about supporting liberal causes and playing a key role in shaping legislation to advance their legislation, died Saturday at her home in Harrison, New York, who is 87 years old.
Her family announced her death, who said she had metastatic breast cancer.
A Democrat attracted her voters and politicians with a warm, grandmother image – she was 51 when she was first elected to the House in 1988 – Ms. Lowe was also a shrewd negotiator on the House Appropriations Committee, a powerful institution that had an influence on enacting government spending laws.
She served on the committee almost all her time in Washington and became the first woman to lead it. Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, was the House Speaker when Ms. Lowey was in directing the committee, and Ms. Lowey remained closely related to him, calling Ms. Lowey a “primary legislator”, “both intimate and tenacious” and seeking “to find a common standpoint to find where she can and stand where she can’t.”
Henry J. Hyde, a Republican of the Illinois House of Representatives.
“She can make you smile when she bleeds,” Hyde said. “We call it perfume pick.”
Throughout her home tenure, Ms. Loy sponsored or helped shape legislation with the aim of promoting or at least protecting the primary reason for the freedom agenda. These include women’s rights to abortion and health services, homelessness programs and more federal funding for low-cost housing, and childcare and early education programs.
She voted against a bill in 1999 that would allow adults to take minors to another state for abortion to avoid parental notification laws in the girl’s hometown. “This bill could be jailed for helping granddaughters,” she said.
She opposes two Republican presidents, George W. Bush.
She condemned sexual harassment and was one of a group of female House members in 1991 who marched to the Senate side of the Capitol to demand that the Senate Judiciary Committee hear Anita Hill’s allegations against Clarence Thomas during a Supreme Court nomination hearing. The Senate later confirmed his seat.
Ms. Lowey is equally suffering on issues that are important to the New York area. In addition to Westchester’s blockbusters, her area includes adjacent Rockland County and part of the Bronx and Queens.
Ms. Lowey pushed firmly in negotiations with the Bush administration to prevent the president’s commitment to help New York City recover after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack.
She urged federal regulators to start closing the Point of India nuclear power plant in Westchester. Ms. Roy told the Times in 2008: “No energy capacity can exceed the risks posed to our region by a poorly managed nuclear facility.
In the first Trump administration, Ms. Lowe said she would boycott his “misplaced priorities”, including building a wall on the Mexican border, while reducing domestic spending “is crucial for hard-working American families.”
During her congressional career, Ms. Lowey occasionally disturbed her liberals. She voted early in her term to pass a crime bill that included the death penalty for certain crimes, even though she opposed it. Crime has reached its peak in the case of rampant cocaine use, and she said she has voted for the bill “because I think it’s so important that we are making a strong position on bringing crime off the streets.”
Ms. Lowy is a staunch supporter of Israel, and she voted against the 2015 deal on her Democratic compatriot President Barack Obama’s 2015 deal with Iran’s mastery of its nuclear weapons program. “In my judgment, there are not enough safeguards to address the risks associated with the agreement,” she said, adding several other countries have joined.
After New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement, Ms. Roy announced in 1999 that she could run for his seat only in the case of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and then said to be considering the candidate, so she chose not to run. Mrs. Clinton did run away and then won the seat.
Nita Sue Melnikoff was born on July 5, 1937 in Jack and Beatrice Melnikoff. Her father is an accountant and her mother is a housewife who is active in citizens and charities.
After graduating from the Bronx Academy of Sciences, Ms. Loy worked in advertising for two years in 1959, then married attorney Stephen Lowey, who raised two daughters and a son in Queens and then in Harrison.
In addition to her 64-year-old husband, she was survived by their child Dana Lowey Luttway Jackie Lowey and Douglas Lowey, and eight grandchildren.
From 1975 to 1988, Ms. Lowey worked in the Office of Economic Development and Neighborhood Preservation of the New York Secretary of State. She is also active in a politically oriented women’s group, and in 1988 she ran for a seat in Westchester Congress against two-term Republican incumbent Joseph J. Dioguardi.
She defeated two major Democratic opponents, business owners Dennis Mehiel and Hamilton Fish V, whose father at the time represented a neighboring congressional district.
Ms. Lowey then took on a theme that Mr. Dioguardi, a “cheerleader” in the administration of conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan, “has not yet fought for our priorities, such as providing adequate housing and homeless programs for Westchester. Mr. Dioguardi said she was twisting his record. She won 53% of the vote.
Ms. Lowy never had a major Democratic opponent in her re-election match, winning the election with a massive or overwhelming profit. She had no rivals in 2016.
She announced in October 2019 that she would not run anymore, and he said that thirty years later, she “decided the right time” to leave home. One suggestion, she said, was that the main challenge that year might be “ridiculous.” She was taken over by fellow Democratic Party Mondaire Jones.
Her proudest achievements have been “breaking the glass ceiling of women” and becoming the first to lead the appropriation committee, she said.
