Reply #22: Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky is this person, and she's far from "disappeared"! [View All]

Blogs & Stories - Benjamin Sarlin
Freshman Terror

by Benjamin Sarlin




As Blue Dogs fret about health care, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky can relate. The woman who cast the deciding vote on Clinton’s 1993 budget talks about holding all of Washington in your hands.

It has become clear that the fate of a health-care overhaul, the first major piece of legislation in the Obama administration, rests on the votes of a handful of nervous freshmen Democrats. And there’s perhaps no person in the world that understands their plight better than Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who achieved 15 seconds of fame in 1993 when she cast a brave vote for Bill Clinton’s first budget—and then watched her political career go up in flames.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Margolies-Mezvinsky recalled the climactic showdown over Clinton’s budget, which raised taxes and drew the ire of the constituents in her Pennsylvania district. “When I went to town-hall meetings, I had to be escorted by the police,” she said. “There were kids holding signs saying 'LIAR.' ... I just painted a target on my chest.”

Like many of today’s Blue Dogs, Margolies-Mezvinsky was a freshman who had won a surprise victory in a conservative district during a strong Democratic year. But Clinton's budget put her party loyalty to the test.

As Margolies-Mezvinsky cast the decisive vote, a Republican legislator jumped up and down and chanted, “Goodbye, Marjorie!”

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