Representative Peter A. Peyser

Peter A. Peyser (September 7, 1921 – October 9, 2014) was a United States Representative from New York who served five terms in Congress, from 1971 to 1977 as a Republican and from 1979 to 1983 as a Democrat. Over the course of his twelve years in the House of Representatives, he participated actively in the legislative process, gaining particular notice for his work on consumer issues and employee benefit protections, and representing suburban and urban constituencies in the lower Hudson Valley and parts of the Bronx during a significant period in American political history.

Peyser was born in Cedarhurst, New York, the son of Rubye Bentley (Hoeflich) and Percy Asher Peyser. He grew up in the New York area and came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War, experiences that shaped the generation of political leaders with whom he later served in Congress. On December 23, 1949, he married Marguerite Richards, a native of Monroe, Louisiana, and Baltimore, Maryland, who had moved to New York City to attend the Parsons School of Design. In 1951 the couple settled in Irvington, New York, a small Hudson River village in Westchester County that would become the base of his political career. They had five children: Penelope (born 1951), Safi (née Carolyn, born 1952), a poet, Peter (born 1954), James (born 1956), and Thomas (born 1962). His daughter Penelope, known as Penny, became an actress, and her uncle, John Peyser, was a Hollywood television and movie director.

Peyser’s formal education and early professional activities preceded his entry into elective office, and by the early 1960s he was established in Irvington civic life. His political career began in 1962 when he ran for mayor of Irvington, then a community of about 5,000 residents governed by a part-time Board of Trustees and mayor. The mayor’s position, which paid $100 a month, demanded close engagement with local concerns and provided Peyser with his first experience in public administration and electoral politics. His service in Irvington helped him build a reputation as a responsive local leader and introduced him to the regional political networks that would later support his congressional ambitions.

In 1969 Peyser announced a dark-horse candidacy for Congress as a Republican from a district then represented by Democrat Richard L. Ottinger. At the time of Peyser’s announcement, Ottinger was a popular incumbent, but later that year Ottinger declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, seeking to unseat Republican Senator Charles Goodell, who had been appointed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller to fill the seat of Robert F. Kennedy after Kennedy’s assassination in 1968. Ottinger’s Senate bid opened the House seat, and three other Republicans with higher public profiles than Peyser entered the race for the GOP nomination. Despite being initially regarded as an underdog, Peyser won the June Republican primary and then the general election, defeating Democrat William Dretzin. His 1970 campaign used the slogan “Nixon Picks Him,” underscoring his alignment with President Richard Nixon and national Republican leadership.

Peyser took office in January 1971 and served three consecutive terms in the House as a Republican. Following the 1970 census, his district was redrawn and labeled the 23rd District, composed of roughly one-third northern Bronx, one-third the City of Yonkers, and one-third suburban communities along the Hudson River. In the 1972 election, while President Nixon carried the district comfortably, Peyser narrowly retained his seat by a margin of about 1,200 votes against former Representative Richard L. Ottinger, who was attempting to return to Congress after his 1970 Senate defeat. During these Republican terms, Peyser made a name for himself as a consumer activist on the House Committee on Agriculture, an assignment not typically sought by New York members. He played an important role on the “ERISA Task Force” established by House leaders to develop what became the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the landmark federal law governing employee benefit and retirement plans. A staunch Nixon supporter, he backed the administration’s Vietnam War policies and was one of the last members of the New York congressional delegation to call for the president’s impeachment, doing so only days before Nixon announced his resignation in August 1974.

In 1976 Peyser sought to advance to the U.S. Senate, launching an unsuccessful effort to wrest the Republican nomination from incumbent Senator James Buckley. Buckley, who had originally won his seat in a three-way 1970 race on the Conservative Party line but caucused with Republicans in the Senate, was strongly backed by the state party organization. The New York Republican state committee sued to keep Peyser’s campaign off the September primary ballot, but the petition signatures gathered by the congressman withstood legal challenge, allowing him to run. Buckley nevertheless won the primary in a landslide and went on to lose the general election to Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The failed Senate bid strained Peyser’s relationship with Republican leaders, and, feeling jilted by his party, he announced in early 1977 that he was becoming a Democrat.

Peyser’s party switch quickly intersected with state-level politics. Shortly after he became a Democrat, his former congressional colleague, Governor Hugh Carey, nominated him to be chairman of the New York Public Service Commission, one of the most powerful regulatory posts in New York State, with broad oversight of utilities and related industries. The Republican-controlled State Senate, whose confirmation was required, objected to the nomination as an instance of political cronyism and cited Peyser’s lack of direct experience in utility regulation. Peyser mounted a campaign to secure confirmation, but after The New York Times editorialized against his appointment, he withdrew his name from consideration. The episode underscored the partisan tensions surrounding his defection from the Republican Party.

In 1978 the congressional seat Peyser had once held again became open when the popular young Republican who had succeeded him, Bruce Caputo, left the House to run for lieutenant governor of New York. Now a Democrat, Peyser entered the Democratic primary and easily defeated a young Westchester County legislator and future state assemblyman, Richard Brodsky. He went on to win the general election comfortably, returning to Congress in January 1979. During his four years in the House as a Democrat, he aligned himself closely with the leadership of Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr., supporting the Democratic agenda on domestic policy and continuing his interest in consumer and retirement security issues. He was reelected in 1980, extending his congressional service through the end of the 97th Congress in January 1983.

The 1980 census triggered another round of redistricting in New York and a reduction of the state’s House delegation from 43 to 38 seats. In the ensuing reapportionment, the Republican-controlled State Senate in Albany exacted what was widely viewed as political revenge on the “turncoat” congressman by dismantling his district. Peyser’s old constituency was carved into three parts, leaving him with only one realistic option short of retirement: to run against his friend, Republican Representative Benjamin Gilman, in the newly drawn 20th District. The new district was markedly different from the compact urban–suburban seat he had represented; it stretched nearly 200 miles, from suburban Westchester and Rockland counties north and west into more rural areas, including Orange and Sullivan counties in the Catskills. Only about 20 percent of the voters in the new district had previously been in Peyser’s constituency. In the 1982 election Gilman defeated Peyser comfortably. Two years later, in 1984, Peyser attempted a political comeback by running in a Democratic primary in an adjacent district in which he did not reside, but he finished third, effectively ending his congressional career.

In his later years, Peyser remained a figure of interest in New York political circles and in the history of party realignment in the late twentieth century, having served in Congress under both major party labels and during the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He lived in Westchester County and maintained close ties to his family. On October 9, 2014, Peter A. Peyser died of Parkinson’s disease at the age of 93. He was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. His widow, Marguerite Peyser, survived him for nearly six years and died on May 11, 2020, at age 89 from COVID-19.