Representative Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky

Marjorie Margolies (pronounced mar-GOH-leez; formerly Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky; born June 21, 1942) is an American journalist, author, educator, and Democratic politician who represented Pennsylvania’s 13th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from January 3, 1993, to January 3, 1995. A member of the Democratic Party, she served one term in Congress during a significant period in American political history and is widely known for casting the deciding vote in favor of President Bill Clinton’s 1993 budget proposal. She later became a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, while also remaining active in public policy and women’s leadership initiatives.

Margolies was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 21, 1942. She was raised in the Philadelphia area and went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania, from which she graduated in 1963. Her early life and education in Philadelphia laid the foundation for a career that would bridge journalism, public service, and advocacy. She is of Jewish heritage and would later be listed among Jewish members of the United States Congress, reflecting both her background and her role in national public life.

Following her graduation, Margolies embarked on a career in broadcast journalism that spanned more than two decades. She worked as a television journalist at WCAU‑TV in Philadelphia from 1967 to 1969, establishing herself in local news before being named a CBS News Foundation Fellow at Columbia University from 1969 to 1970. She subsequently joined WRC‑TV in Washington, D.C., where she served as a reporter from 1975 until 1990. Over the course of her journalism career she also worked as a correspondent for NBC’s Today Show. Her reporting earned her significant professional recognition, including five Emmy Awards, and provided her with extensive experience in national and international affairs that would inform her later political and policy work. In addition to journalism, she began writing books, including “They Came to Stay” (1976), “Finding Someone to Love” (1980), and “The Girls in the Newsroom” (1983), which drew on her experiences and interests in family life and the media.

Margolies transitioned from journalism to electoral politics in the early 1990s. In 1992 she ran for an open seat in Pennsylvania’s 13th congressional district, a largely suburban district outside Philadelphia that had been held by Republicans since 1916. She won the Democratic primary decisively, defeating Bernard Tomkin by a margin of 79 percent to 21 percent. In the general election she faced Republican State Representative Jon D. Fox and prevailed in a closely contested race, winning by approximately 0.5 percent of the vote, a difference of 1,373 votes. Her victory marked a significant partisan shift in the district and brought her to Washington as part of the large freshman class of 1992, which included a notable number of women.

During her term in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 1995, Margolies represented the interests of her constituents in Pennsylvania’s 13th district and participated actively in the legislative process. She served on the bipartisan Deficit Reduction Task Force, reflecting her engagement with fiscal policy and efforts to address the federal budget deficit. Her tenure coincided with major debates over economic and social policy in the early years of the Clinton administration. She became nationally known for her role in the passage of President Bill Clinton’s 1993 budget proposal, a controversial measure that passed the House by a narrow margin. Initially opposed to the bill, she changed her position after a direct appeal from President Clinton and ultimately cast the deciding vote in favor of the budget. As House Democrats cheered and House Republicans jeered “Goodbye Marjorie!” from the floor, her vote became emblematic of the political risks associated with difficult fiscal decisions. In later interviews, she recalled the intense backlash from some constituents, noting that at town-hall meetings she sometimes had to be escorted by police and expressing surprise at what she described as the level of divisiveness and immaturity surrounding the issue. In 1994 she co‑authored “A Woman’s Place: The Freshman Women Who Changed the Face of Congress,” a book written with other women from the class of 1992 that chronicled their experiences as new female members of the House.

Margolies’s voting record, including her support for the 1993 budget, contributed to a challenging political environment in her swing district. In the 1994 midterm elections, a year marked by the Republican Revolution in which 54 Democratic incumbents lost their seats, she faced a rematch against Jon D. Fox. She was defeated by a margin of 49 percent to 45 percent, a difference of 8,181 votes, ending her congressional service after one term. In subsequent years, her 1993 budget vote continued to be cited as a case study in the political consequences of casting a decisive and controversial vote. During the debate over health care reform in 2009–2010, the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform invoked her 1994 defeat as a warning to Democrats in competitive districts. Margolies responded in a Washington Post commentary, stating that she remained glad she had supported the 1993 budget and urging vulnerable Democrats to vote for the 2010 health care reform legislation on principle.

After leaving Congress, Margolies remained active in public policy and women’s advocacy. She served as chair of the National Women’s Business Council, advising on issues affecting women entrepreneurs and business owners. In 1995 she was appointed director and deputy chair of the United States delegation to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, reflecting her growing international profile on women’s issues. She founded Women’s Campaign International (WCI), an organization that provides advocacy and leadership training for women around the world, and has served as its founder and chair. In academia, she became a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught courses related to public policy, leadership, and governance. She also joined the board of directors of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, further underscoring her continued engagement with fiscal policy and budgetary reform.

Margolies sought to return to elected office on several occasions. In 1998 she ran for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania and won the Democratic primary with 53 percent of the vote, defeating two other candidates to become the running mate of State Representative Ivan Itkin in the general election. The Itkin–Margolies ticket lost to the Republican incumbents, Governor Tom Ridge and Lieutenant Governor Mark Schweiker, by a margin of 57 percent to 31 percent. In 2000 she explored a campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Senator Rick Santorum, but withdrew after disappointing fundraising results and personal and family difficulties, including her mother’s illness and legal troubles facing her then‑husband, Edward Mezvinsky, which resulted in several fraud convictions. Around this time she filed for personal bankruptcy, but the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied her a discharge of debts under 11 U.S.C. § 727(a)(5). In Sonders v. Mezvinsky (In re Mezvinsky), 265 B.R. 681 (Bankr. E.D. Pa. 2001), the court found that she had failed to satisfactorily explain the loss of approximately $775,000 in assets over a four‑year period, noting the discrepancy between $810,000 in assets represented in May 1996 and the $35,000 listed in her amended schedules.

In May 2013, Margolies filed paperwork to run in the Democratic primary for her former congressional seat in Pennsylvania’s 13th district, seeking to succeed Representative Allyson Schwartz, who was running for governor in 2014. The primary field included State Representative Brendan Boyle of Northeast Philadelphia, State Senator Daylin Leach of Montgomery County, and Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, a physician and professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. State Representative Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia and former City Controller Jonathan Saidel initially filed to run but later withdrew. Her campaign drew national attention in part because of her longstanding ties to the Clinton family; on May 17, 2014, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held her first fundraiser of the year on Margolies’s behalf. On May 20, 2014, Margolies lost the Democratic primary to Brendan Boyle, ending that bid to return to Congress.

Margolies’s personal life has been closely intertwined with her public profile. In 1970 she adopted a daughter from Korea, an event widely reported at the time as the first instance of an unmarried American woman adopting a foreign child. In 1975 she married Edward Mezvinsky, a Democratic politician from Iowa who later served in Congress; during their marriage she was known publicly as Marjorie Margolies‑Mezvinsky. Together, they built a large blended family of 11 children: four from his first marriage, two daughters she had adopted on her own, two sons they had together, and three additional children they adopted jointly. As of 2014, they had 18 grandchildren. The couple divorced in 2007. One of their sons, Marc Mezvinsky, married Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on July 31, 2010, in Rhinebeck, New York, further linking Margolies to a prominent American political family.

In addition to her earlier works, Margolies has continued to write about family, politics, and public life. Her 1994 book “A Woman’s Place: The Freshman Women Who Changed the Face of Congress,” co‑authored with Barbara Feinman, chronicled the experiences of the women elected to Congress in 1992, including her own. In 2021 she published a memoir, “And How Are the Children? Timeless Lessons from the Frontlines of Motherhood,” reflecting on her experiences raising a large and diverse family and balancing motherhood with careers in journalism and politics. Through her teaching, writing, and leadership in organizations such as Women’s Campaign International, she has remained an influential voice on issues of women’s political participation, fiscal responsibility, and the intersection of family life and public service.