Marjorie Margolies

Marjorie Margolies (formerly Margolies-Mezvinsky; born June 21, 1942) is a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Fels Institute of Government, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, and a women's rights activist.

She is a former journalist and a Democratic politician.

She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963.

She was a broadcast journalist for over twenty-four years, winning five Emmy Awards for her work.

She worked as a television journalist at WCAU-TV from 1967 to 1969, was a CBS News Foundation Fellow, Columbia University from 1969 to 1970, and then worked for WRC-TV from 1975 until 1990.

She was also a correspondent for the Today Show.

In 1992 she ran for an open seat in Congress for Pennsylvania's 13th congressional district, a largely suburban district outside Philadelphia which Republicans had held since 1916.

She defeated Bernard Tomkin in the Democratic primary, 79%-21%.

In the general election, she defeated Republican State Representative Jon D. Fox by a margin of 0.5%, or a difference of 1,373 votes.

From 1993 to 1995, she was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Pennsylvania's 13th congressional district.

Margolies cast the deciding vote in favor of President Bill Clinton's 1993 budget proposal.

Margolies was born in Philadelphia.

One vote was for President Bill Clinton's controversial 1993 budget, for which she was the deciding vote.

She had opposed the bill, until the President called her.

House Democrats cheered as the House Republicans jeered, "Goodbye Marjorie!"

In 1994, she lost re-election to Fox in a rematch, 49%-45%, a difference of 8,181 votes.

She was one of 54 Democratic incumbents who were defeated in the Republican Revolution.

Margolies served on the bipartisan Deficit Reduction Task Force.

In 1994, she completed A Woman's Place, a book with the other women in the class of 1992.

Many of her votes cost her re-election bid in 1994.

After her term in Congress, Margolies was the chair of the National Women's Business Council, and the director and deputy chair of the United States delegation to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.

Margolies serves as the founder and chair of Women's Campaign International (WCI), a group that provides advocacy training for women throughout the world.

She is also an adjunct professor at the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.

In addition, she sits on the board of directors of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The bankruptcy judge stated, in her published opinion, "I find that the Debtor has failed to satisfactorily explain the loss of approximately $775,000 worth of assets (the difference between the $810,000 represented in May 1996 and the $35,000 now claimed in her Amended Schedule B)."

In 1998, Margolies ran for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania.

She won the Democratic primary election with 53% of the vote, defeating two other candidates.

She became the running mate for State Representative Ivan Itkin.

The ticket lost to Republicans Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker, 57%-31%.

In 2000, Margolies decided to run for U.S. Senate for the seat held by Republican Rick Santorum.

Ultimately, she withdrew from the race after experiencing disappointing fundraising results; in addition, her mother was ill and her husband had legal troubles that resulted in several convictions for fraud.

Shortly thereafter, she filed for bankruptcy, but failed to receive a discharge from her debts, based on 11 U.S.C. §727(a)(5).

The court found Mezvinsky had failed to satisfactorily explain a significant loss of assets in the four years prior to her bankruptcy filing.

Sonders v. Mezvinsky (in re Mezvinsky), 265 B.R. 681, 694 (Bankr. E.D. Pa. 2001).

In a 2009 interview with The Daily Beast, she recalled U.S. Congressman Robert Walker (R-Pennsylvania) in particular joining in the Republican jeers.

She also recalled the ire of her constituents resulting from her vote, saying "when I went to town-hall meetings, I had to be escorted by the police....I was just surprised at the level of divisiveness and immaturity."

After a health care reform bill passed the House in November 2009, the conservative Americans for Tax Reform featured her 1994 defeat as an example of what could occur in the 2010 midterm elections because of one particular vote to those Democrats in swing districts who voted in favor of that health care reform bill.

Margolies, however, wrote in The Washington Post that she was glad that she had cast her vote as she had, and urged vulnerable Democrats in Congress to vote for the healthcare bill in March 2010.

In May 2013, Margolies filed paperwork to run in the Democratic congressional primary in her former district in 2014.

She ran to replace Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Penn.), who ran for Governor of Pennsylvania in 2014.