Debbie Wasserman Schultz
(born September 27, 1966) is a Florida
Democrat elected to the
United States
House of Representatives in 2004, representing .
The
district includes portions of Broward
and Miami-Dade
counties. She was born in Forest Hills,
Queens
in New York
City
and grew up on Long Island
. She currently lives in Weston
outside Fort Lauderdale
. She is a mother of three and is married to
Steve Schultz. She endorsed
Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton for
her
party's 2008 presidential nomination. Once Senator
Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic
nominee, she endorsed him and
seconded his nomination at
the
2008 Democratic
National Convention.
Wasserman Schultz is
pro-choice,
pro-
gun control and pro-
gay rights, and an active member of the
National Jewish Democratic
Council,
Planned Parenthood
and
Hadassah.
Early life and education
Wasserman
Schultz grew up on Long Island in New York
.
She
attended the University of Florida
in Gainesville
, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1988 and her Master of Arts degree in 1990
(with the Certificate in Political
Campaigning), both in political
science.
At UF, Wasserman Schultz was active in
student government; she served as
President of the Student Senate and the founder and president of
the Rawlings Area Council Government. Wasserman Schultz also was a
member of the
Omicron Delta
Kappa honor society and the
National Residence Hall
Honorary. As a
graduate
student she was a member of the
union Graduate Assistants
United and the President of the Graduate Student Council. She had
credited her experience in student politics with developing her
"love for politics and the political process."
Wasserman Schultz later became a program administrator and an
instructor at a Florida college.
Florida politics
In 1988, while commuting to Gainesville to get her master's degree,
she became an aide to
Peter Deutsch at
the beginning of his state legislative career.
In 1992 Deutsch gave up his state house seat to make a successful
run for United States House of Representatives from Florida's 20th
District. Wasserman Schultz recalled getting a call from Deutsch at
the time, "It was really amazing. He called me at home one day in
the middle of the legislative session and he said, You could run in
my race, your house is in my district." Though having lived in the
district for only three years, Wasserman Schultz won 53 percent of
the vote in a six-way Democratic primary that year, and avoided a
runoff. She went on to win the general election and succeeded
Deutsch in Florida's House of Representatives. At the age of 26 she
became the youngest female legislator in the state's history. She
served in the Florida State House of Representatives for eight
years, and had to leave office due to state term limits. With her
experience in the Florida House, she ran for the Florida State
Senate in 2000 and was again victorious. During her tenure in
Florida's state legislature, she was considered one of the most
liberal representatives in the state. She fought for legislation
protecting women, seniors, and children, including legislation
requiring gender price parity for dry cleaning and ensuring an
equal number of men and women were appointed to state boards. She
pushed through several bills including the
Florida Residential
Swimming Pool Safety Act and one creating a Children's Services
Council for
Broward County. She
received an award from the
Save The Manatee Club for her commitment to
manatee protection as state senator.
U.S. Congress
In 2004, Wasserman Schultz's mentor, Deutsch, gave up his
Congressional seat to make an unsuccessful run for the Senate seat
of fellow Democrat
Bob Graham. Wasserman
Schultz was unopposed in the Democratic primary election held to
fill Deutsch's seat.
Her Republican opponent was
Margaret
Hostetter, a
realtor who had never held
public office. The 20th is so heavily Democratic that Hostetter
faced nearly impossible odds in November. However, she gained
notoriety for her attacks on Wasserman Schultz. For example,
Hostetter's campaign site criticized Wasserman Schultz for
protesting an
American flag photograph
with a
Christian cross on it that
was on display in the workstation of a secretary in a government
building. Hostetter wrote, "Elect Margaret Hostetter to Congress
November 2 and send the clear message that Americans respect and
support... the foundational role
Christianity has had in the formation of our
great nation. Our rights come from
God, not the
state."
As expected, Wasserman Schultz won handily, taking 70.2% to
Hostetter's 29.8%. However, Hostetter had only spent about $30,000
to get 30% of the vote (compared to Wasserman Schultz's $1.2
million). When Wasserman Schultz was sworn in on January 4, 2005,
she chose to use the
Tanakh. Because Speaker
of the House
Dennis Hastert only had
a Christian Bible, a copy of the Tanakh was borrowed by Hastert's
staff from Congressman
Gary Ackerman
for this purpose. (This fact was brought up two years later during
the
Qur'an
oath controversy of the 110th United States Congress.)
She was unopposed for reelection in 2006. Hostetter ran against her
again in 2008, this time as an independent. Wasserman Schultz again
beat Hostetter, defeating her this time by 77%.
Wasserman Schultz was appointed to the
Democratic Steering and
Policy Committee in her first term. During the 2006 elections,
she raised over seventeen million dollars in campaign contributions
for her Democratic colleagues (third most after
Nancy Pelosi and
Rahm
Emanuel), she was chosen as Chief Deputy Whip and appointed to
the powerful
Appropriations
Committee, a plum assignment for a sophomore congresswoman. She
currently chairs the Committee's
Legislative Branch subcommittee, which Pelosi returned to the
Committee after it was dissolved by Republican leadership in 2005.
Shortly after acquiring her spot on the Appropriations Committee,
Wasserman Schultz received the waiver necessary to sit on an
additional committee (Appropriations is typically an exclusive
committee), and she is currently a member of the
Judiciary
Committee. In addition to her committee and leadership roles,
she is a member of Speaker
Nancy
Pelosi's
"30 Something" Working
Group, which consists of congressional Democrats under age 40.
The group concentrates on issues affecting young people, including
Social Security. She
also has joined the
bipartisan Congressional Cuba Democracy
Caucus.
Although only in her third term, Wasserman Schultz was ranked,
according to the
Congress.org 2008 Power Rankings, as 24th
most powerful member of the House and 22nd most powerful Democratic
representative (also most powerful Florida representative). Debbie
Wasserman Schultz is also a member of the
New Democrat Coalition.
She initiated the
Virginia Graeme
Baker Pool And Spa Safety Act.
Wasserman Schultz was strongly critical of the
Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which places
limits on taxpayer-funded abortions in the context of the November
2009
Affordable
Health Care for America Act.
Committee assignments
Party leadership
2008 campaign
Wasserman Schultz announced her support of
Hillary Clinton for
President in the 2008
election, and in June 2007 was named one of Clinton's national
campaign co-chairs.
At the 2008 Democratic National
Convention, she joined Senator Ken
Salazar of Colorado
and Representative Artur
Davis of Alabama
to second
Obama's nomination
On
CBS's
Face the
Nation, she declared
Sarah Palin to
be unready for the
Vice Presidency.“She
knows nothing.... Quite honestly, the interview I saw and that
Americans saw on Thursday and Friday was similar to when I didn’t
read a book in high school and had to read the
Cliff’s Notes and phone in my report,” Wasserman
Schultz said of Palin’s interview with
ABC’s
Charlie Gibson last week. “She’s Cliff-noted
her performance so far.”[Politico.com 9/14/08]Wasserman Schultz was
also named a co-chair of the Democratic Party's Red to Blue
congressional campaign group. Controversy arose in March 2008 when
she announced that she would be unable to campaign against South
Florida Republican representatives
Lincoln Diaz-Balart,
Mario Diaz-Balart and
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen because of her good
friendship with them.
Breast cancer
In March 2009, she revealed that she underwent seven surgeries
related to breast cancer in 2008, while maintaining her
responsibilities as a member of the House.
The congresswoman in 2009 increased efforts to promote early
screening for
breast cancer, after she
revealed her own battle with the disease in 2008. She maintained an
aggressive schedule campaigning during recovery from seven
operations.
Terri Schiavo Case
During the
Terri Schiavo case,
she was one of the strongest opponents of congressional
intervention. She publicly accused President
George W. Bush of
hypocrisy for signing a 1999 bill as governor of Texas
that allows
health care workers to remove life support for terminally ill patients if the
patient or family is unable to pay the medical bills. During
the debate Wasserman Schultz pointed out that a Texas law signed
into law by then Gov. George W. Bush allowed caregivers to withhold
treatment "at the point that futility has been reached and there is
no longer any hope of survival or of additional health care
measures being used to sustain life. …[this] seems to conflict with
his position today."
Cox News
Service reported that “The Texas law was intended to control in
cases in which medical teams and patients' representatives disagree
on treatment. In the Schiavo case, the medical team and Schiavo's
husband agreed that there was no hope of improvement in her
condition, determined by lower courts to be a ‘persistent
vegetative state.’” Wasserman Schultz also cited the case of
a six-month old Texas baby whose life support had
been removed in accord with this law and over the objections of
his family while the Schiavo controversy was ongoing. In an
editorial, the
Miami Herald
wrote: "During three hours of debate ... the freshman Democrat
distinguished herself by repeatedly challenging those who tried to
misstate the facts surrounding Schiavo's health."
After the controversy Wasserman Schultz issued a statement that
said, “The Congress is not an objective body. It is a partisan,
political body. Our Members are not doctors or bioethicists. We are
elected officials. The Congress is not the appropriate venue to
decide end-of-life or any private, personal family dispute. That is
why there are court reviews which allow for an objective evaluation
of both sides of a dispute. The Congress was never designed for,
and our Founding Fathers never intended, the body to make these
kinds of decisions. What was lost in the midst of this debate was
that this was not about pro-life interest groups, or about the
parents or the husband. It wasn’t about the President, or the
Governor, or the Republican or Democratic party. It was about a
personal family tragedy. I am worried about the direction our
country is moving in. I am worried when members of Congress and the
President try to overstep over twenty court rulings on a case that
had gone on for years. I am worried when special interest groups
exploit a family tragedy for political and financial gain. I am
worried when the federal government attempts to step between a
husband and a wife because members of Congress believe they know
better.”
Position on the Middle East Crisis
While her predecessor and mentor Peter Deutsch was “among the most
hawkish congressional Democrats on Middle East issues”. Wasserman
Schultz, who took over his seat for Florida’s 20th district, “a
heavily Jewish swath of Broward County”, has taken a more centrist
approach. During 2005 she spoke in approval of President
George W. Bush’s proposals to give financial aid to the
Palestinian Authority in both
the proposed supplemental and in the 2006 budgets. She said “We
want to continue to focus on making sure that… the policy coming
from Washington continues to encourage and support and nurture the
peace process. In [Bush’s] first four years, there was a lack of
leadership coming from the administration. I know many people in
the Jewish community were happy with the president’s position on
Israel, but the way I thought, there was an absence of leadership.…
So I’m glad to see there’s a little more engagement and involvement
from the administration.”
She defended her party against suggestions that the Democrats are
anti-Israel, saying “I would stack up the Democratic caucus’s
position on the support for Israel against the Republican caucus’s
any day of the week and be much more confident — and the Jewish
community should be much more confident — in the Democrats’
stewardship of Israel than the Republicans, especially if you
compare the underlying reasons for both groups’ support for Israel.
The very far right group of Republicans’ interest in Israel is not
because they are so supportive of there being a Jewish state and
making sure that Jews have a place that we can call home. It has
references to
Armageddon and biblical
references that are more their interest. So I would encourage
members of the Jewish community to put their faith in Democrats,
because our support for Israel is generally for the right
reasons.”
Position on Presidential signing statements
Wasserman Schultz supports the use of appropriations for future
control of Presidential signing statements as developed as part of
questions during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the
constitutional limits of executive power 26 July 2008.
Jewish American Heritage Month
Wasserman Schultz and Senator
Arlen
Specter were the driving forces behind the resolution that
declared every May “Jewish American Heritage Month.” The annual
observance was created to recognize “the accomplishments of
American Jews and the important role that members of the Jewish
community have played in the development of American culture.” The
observance is modeled after Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage
Month and Women's History Month. Wasserman Schultz envisioned
"classroom instruction, public ceremonies and broadcast
announcements." Wasserman Schultz stated "There's a generation of
children growing up with a fading memory of what happened during
World War II or even an understanding
of anyone who is Jewish or their
culture and traditions. Through education
comes tolerance." The bill introducing the observance passed
unanimously in both the House and the Senate and signed by
President George W. Bush. Wasserman Schultz said of the
proclamation “This is an historic occasion. Generations to come
will have the chance to live without anti-Semitism through greater
understanding and awareness of the significant role that American
Jews have played in U.S. history. Jewish American Heritage Month is
a reality because of the people gathered today in this room.”
The measure was criticized by Gary Cass, executive director of the
Center for Reclaiming America, a national Christian organization
based in Fort Lauderdale. Cass objected to "teaching Jewish history
without talk of religious practices and values", saying "We cannot
seem to have an honest discussion about the Christian roots of
America." He also wondered "How much tolerance would [Congresswoman
Wasserman Schultz] have for a Christian Heritage month?" Wasserman
Schultz believed the situation was different, saying "Judaism is
unique, because it is both a culture and a religion", and that "she
would not support teaching any religion in public schools."
Her father Larry Wasserman said that while Wasserman Schultz had
not been particularly active in the Jewish community before
entering politics, she has “forged ties with Jewish groups as a
lawmaker. She helped to form the National Jewish Democratic Council
and served on the regional board of the American Jewish
Congress.”
She has recently been active in supporting health care reform
legislation.
Position on 2008 bailout
On September 29, 2008, Wasserman Schultz voted for the
Emergency Economic
Stabilization Act of 2008
On October 3, 2008, Wasserman Schultz voted for the revised version
of the
Emergency Economic
Stabilization Act of 2008
Position on hate crimes
During an April, 2009
House Judiciary
Committee hearing on the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009,
fellow Floridian
Tom Rooney,
a retired
U.S.
Army
JAG Corps officer, introduced an amendment that would make
attacks against military veterans a hate crime. Wasserman Schultz
remarked on the amendment:
“I'm from a state, as Mr. Rooney is, that includes and represents the districts that include real victims. I represent a very large -- one of the largest gay populations in the United States of America. One of the largest Jewish populations in the United States of America. My region -- our region has a very large African-American population. It really is belittling of the respect that we should have for these groups to suggest that members of the armed services have somehow systematically been the victims of hate crimes."
Position on Haiti
After returning from a trip to Haiti, the congresswoman made this
declaration"If Haiti isn't able to get their political act
together, then it's sort of gotta get out of its own way before
others around the world will be able to help them."
Awards
- Giraffe award,
Women's Advocacy Majority Minority (WAMM
),
1993
- Outstanding Family Advocacy award, Dade County Psychol. Assn.,
1993
- Rosemary Barkett award, Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers,
1995
- Woman of the Year, AMIT, 1994
- Outstanding Legislator of the year, Florida Federation of
Business & Professional Women, 1994
- Quality Floridian, Florida League of Cities, 1994
- Woman
of Vision, Weizmann Institute of Science
- one of Six Most Unstoppable Women, South Florida Magazine, 1994.
References
- "Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz." Florida House of
Representatives
- Retrieved on Jan. 7, 2007
- "Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz," Florida House of
Representatives.
- Schultz, Debbie Wasserman. "Speech to Harvard Model Congress:
Youth Participation In Politics." 4 Mar. 2006.
- Retrieved on Jan. 9, 2007
- "Debbie Wasserman Schultz." Carroll's Federal Directory.
Carroll Publishing, 2009. Reproduced in
Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan:
Gale,
2009. Document Number: K2415004095.
(http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC). Fee via Fairfax County Public Library,
accessed 2009-04-25.
- Third story on page Retrieved on Jul. 24, 2009
- Retrieved on Feb. 28, 2007
- Lesley Clark, " Democrats torn between party, GOP friends",
Miami Herald, March 8, 2008.
- Retrieved on Jan. 9, 2007
- Retrieved on Jan. 8, 2007
- Retrieved on July. 29, 2008
- Retrieved on Jan. 8, 2007
- Retrieved on Jan. 7, 2007
- Hannity's America: Department of Labor Rolls Back
on Unions by Sean Hannity
- "Debbie Wasserman Schultz." Marquis Who's Who TM. Marquis Who's
Who, 2009. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center.
Farmington Hills, Michigan:
Gale,
2009. (http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC). Fee via Fairfax County Public Library,
accessed 2009-04-25. Document Number: K2014090239.
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