The congresswoman from the 14th District is Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat elected in 1992. Born and educated in North Carolina, she visited New York in 1970 at the age of 22, loved it and “just stayed.” She taught adult-education classes in East Harlem and, from 1977 to 1982, was an influential legislative staffer in Albany. She was elected to the New York City Council in 1982. Redistricting in 1992 made the Silk Stocking district more Democratic, and Maloney ran against incumbent Bill Green, an independent Republican who shared Manhattan’s cultural liberalism. But he was poorly positioned to appeal to voters in the outer-borough neighborhoods that had been added to the district, who preferred Republicans to be conservative on cultural issues but liberal on economics. Maloney lost the Manhattan part of the district 50%-44% but carried Queens heavily, winning 50%-48% overall. Read More

The congresswoman from the 14th District is Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat elected in 1992. Born and educated in North Carolina, she visited New York in 1970 at the age of 22, loved it and “just stayed.” She taught adult-education classes in East Harlem and, from 1977 to 1982, was an influential legislative staffer in Albany. She was elected to the New York City Council in 1982. Redistricting in 1992 made the Silk Stocking district more Democratic, and Maloney ran against incumbent Bill Green, an independent Republican who shared Manhattan’s cultural liberalism. But he was poorly positioned to appeal to voters in the outer-borough neighborhoods that had been added to the district, who preferred Republicans to be conservative on cultural issues but liberal on economics. Maloney lost the Manhattan part of the district 50%-44% but carried Queens heavily, winning 50%-48% overall.

Maloney has a mostly liberal voting record. She is one the most prolific legislators in Congress, and has the ancillary distinction of being the first woman in Congress to get a black belt in martial arts. She won new prominence in early 2009 when she became chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, a House and Senate panel that tackles pressing economic issues. She is also a senior member of the Financial Services Committee, where she has been a leading voice on banking issues, but has been overshadowed at times by her well-respected and colorful colleague, Barney Frank of Massachusetts. She worked to win House passage of her bill to promote more transparent practices by credit card companies and to restrict abusive lending practices. She called the bill “a much-needed correction to a market that is out of balance.” With a boost from President Barack Obama, the bill was enacted in May 2009. She also had a hand in the Wall Street overhaul bill that became law in 2010, working with Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., to achieve a compromise on interchange fees charged on consumers’ debit cards. The fees had been an area of contention between merchants worried about their high rates and the financial industry’s worries that lower fees would not cover their costs.

Even though she has many constituents in banking, Maloney had tough rhetoric for bankers who took millions of dollars in bonuses after their firms received federal bailout money in 2008. She did join fellow New York Democrat Michael McMahon in early 2010 in leading the fight against a proposal by Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., to impose a 0.25% tax on stock transactions above $100,000. In earlier years, she worked to keep banks from controlling other businesses, sought more oversight of the Federal Reserve, and added privacy provisions to financial modernization bills. She helped to craft reforms tightening rules for foreign investment. With an eye to her corporate constituents, she voted for normal trade relations with China.

A leader of the Women’s Caucus, she demanded that the Food and Drug Administration permit over-the-counter sales of morning-after birth-control pills, and she opposed separating men and women in basic training in the military. She sponsored a bill to create an office within the Internal Revenue Service to prosecute sex traffickers who violate tax laws. In 2007, with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., she introduced the Women’s Equality Amendment, a latter-day version of the Equal Rights Amendment, which had fallen three states short of constitutional ratification in the 1970s. She reintroduced the measure in 2011. The House passed her 2008 bill to give eight weeks of paid leave to federal employees for the birth or adoption of a child. Also that year, she authored a book, Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: Why Women’s Lives Aren’t Getting Any Easier—And How We Can Make Real Progress for Ourselves and Our Daughters.

With part of her district in Lower Manhattan and close to Ground Zero, Maloney was heavily involved in the government response to the September 11 attacks. She was among the most outspoken House Democrats urging President George W. Bush to quickly send New York the $20 billion that Congress approved for cleanup and recovery. But her proposal to give a $1,000 tax credit to visitors to the city went nowhere. In the lame-duck session of 2010, she and several other New York lawmakers steered into law a long-delayed measure to compensate Sept. 11 first responders with health problems. “It is so fair, it is so right, it should have passed nine years ago,” she said.

Maloney had less success in her bid to become the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s ranking Democrat after her party lost its House majority in 2010. Many Democrats contended that the departing chairman, New York’s Edolphus Towns, lacked the aggressiveness to stand up to California’s Darrell Issa, the incoming GOP chairman. Towns bowed out of the race and threw his support to Maloney, who campaigned vigorously for the slot. But she lost to the less senior Elijah Cummings of Maryland in a vote of 33-18 in the Democratic Steering Committee and 119-61 in the Democratic caucus. Cummings reportedly had the pivotal backing of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Maloney has a firm lock on the district. In the Republican year of 1994, City Councilman Charles Millard of Manhattan spent almost $1 million running against her, but Maloney won 64%-35%. Aside from the perils of redistricting, she has not had a hard time getting re-elected. Maloney did draw a primary challenge in 2010 from Reshma Saujani, a lawyer who worked with hedge funds. Saujani built a coalition of supporters in the financial industry and criticized Maloney for lacking ethics and failing to lead. But Maloney defended her record and raised more than $2.7 million—twice as much as Saujani—and coasted, 84%-15%.

She was bitterly disappointed when Democratic Gov. David Paterson appointed the less-seasoned Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2009. Maloney publicly questioned Gillibrand’s conservative stance on issues such as gun control and curbing illegal immigration, and she began raising money for a primary challenge in 2010. But after months of groundwork, in August 2009 she heeded the calls of Obama and senior New York Democrats to give Gillibrand a clear path to the nomination. She endured a wrenching personal setback the next month, when her husband, Clifton, died on a mountain-climbing expedition in the Himalayas.