List of Jewish political milestones in the United States

The following is a list of Jewish political milestones in the United States.

• First Jewish member of a colonial legislature (South Carolina): Francis Salvador (1775)[1]
• First Jewish soldier killed in the American Revolutionary War: Francis Salvador (1776)[2]
• First Jewish member of the U.S. Congress (U.S. House of Representatives): Lewis Charles Levin (1845)[3]
• First Jewish member of the United States Senate: David Levy Yulee (1845)[4]
• First Jewish mayor of a major American city (Portland, Oregon): Bernard Goldsmith (1869)
  • Two years later, Philip Wasserman became a mayor of Portland (1871)
• First elected Jewish governor of a U.S. state: Washington Bartlett (California) (1887)[5]
• First Jewish Cabinet member/Secretary of Commerce and Labor: Oscar Straus (1906)[6]
  • Not including Judah P. Benjamin, who served in the Confederate cabinet as Secretary of State and War[7]
• First Jewish Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: Louis Brandeis (1916)[8]
  • President Millard Fillmore offered to appoint Judah P. Benjamin to the Supreme Court in 1853, but Benjamin declined.[7]
• First Jewish female member of the U.S. Congress/U.S. House of Representatives: Florence Prag Kahn (1925)[9]
• First Jewish Secretary of the Treasury: Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1934)[10]
• First person of Jewish ancestry to run for President of the United States on a major party ticket: Barry Goldwater (1964) (Goldwater's father was Jewish; Goldwater was raised Episcopalian)[11][12]
• First person of Sephardic Jewish ancestry to run for President of the United States: Louis Abolafia (1968)[13]
• First Jewish candidate to receive an electoral vote for Vice President: Tonie Nathan of the Libertarian Party, from a faithless elector (1972)[14]
• First Jewish Secretary of Defense: James R. Schlesinger (1973)[15]
• First Jewish Secretary of State: Henry Kissinger (1973)[16]
• First Jewish Attorney General: Edward H. Levi (1975)[17]
• First Jewish female mayor of a major American city (Dallas): Adlene Harrison (1976)[18]
• First Jewish female governor: Madeleine M. Kunin (1985)[19]
• First Jewish openly gay member of the U.S. Congress/U.S. House of Representatives: Barney Frank (took office 1981, disclosed homosexuality 1989)[20]
  • Jared Polis was the first Jewish Congressman to be openly gay upon first election: (2009)[21]
• First senate election in which both major party candidates were Jewish. (1990 Minnesota U.S. Senate Election) (1990)[22]
• First independent Jewish member of the U.S. Congress/U.S. House of Representatives: Bernie Sanders (1991)[23]
• First Jewish female members of the United States Senate: Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein (1993)[24]
• First Jewish female Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993)[25]
• First Jewish female Cabinet member/United States Secretary of State: Madeleine Albright (1997)[26][27][28][29]
• First Jewish nominee for Vice President of the United States on a major party ticket, and first Jewish candidate to receive an electoral vote excluding faithless electors: Joe Lieberman (2000)[30]
• First Jewish whip in the U.S. House of Representatives: Eric Cantor (2009) (also first Jewish party whip in either house)[31]
• First Jewish floor leader in the U.S. House of Representatives: Eric Cantor (2011) (also first Jewish floor leader and Majority Leader in either house)[31]

• First Jewish American to win a presidential primary: Bernie Sanders, New Hampshire primary, (2016)[32][33][34][35] (Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, was the first winner of Jewish heritage, but was a Christian).[36]
• First Jewish American to receive an electoral vote for President: Bernie Sanders (2016, from a faithless elector)[37] (Barry Goldwater was the first of Jewish heritage, in 1964, but was not Jewish)
• First Jewish floor leader in the U.S. Senate: Chuck Schumer (2017)[38]
• First Jewish member of the first family: Ivanka Trump (2017)[39]
• First Jewish woman (and the first woman) appointed Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen (2020)
• First Jewish Second Spouse: Douglas Emhoff (2021)
• First Jewish Senate Majority Leader: Chuck Schumer (2021)

See also

• List of Jewish American politicians

References

1. "Today in History: The first American-Jewish patriot". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
2. Green, David B. (2013-08-01). "1776: The First Jew to Die for the Cause of the American Revolution". Haaretz. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
3. "Lewis Charles Levin". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
4. "David Levy Yulee". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
5. "Moses Alexander: Jewish Governor of Idaho, First Jewish Governor in the United States". Jewish Museum of the American West.
6. "First Jew in Cabinet". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 1934-07-11. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
7. "Judah Benjamin". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
8. "Louis D. Brandeis, Pioneer of the Senate Confirmation Battles". My Jewish Learning. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
9. "KAHN, Florence Prag | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives". history.house.gov. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
10. "Henry Morgenthau". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
11. "The Goldwaters | Southwest Jewish Archives". swja.library.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
12. Journal, Harry Stein is a contributing editor of City; Racist, the author of No Matter What They’ll Call This Book; Tripp, the comic novel Will; Attorney-at-Law, Pissed-Off (2016-10-14). "The Goldwater Takedown". City Journal. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
13. Stevenson, James (1967-05-13). "Abolafia for President". New Yorker.
14. "Theodora "Tonie" Nathan -". Archives of Women's Political Communication. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
15. McFadden, Robert D. (2014-03-27). "James R. Schlesinger, Willful Aide to Three Presidents, Is Dead at 85". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
16. Ribak, Gil (2010-01-01). "A Jew for All Seasons: Henry Kissinger, Jewish Expectations, and the Yom Kippur War". Israel Studies Review. 25 (2): 1–25. doi:10.3167/isf.2010.250201. ISSN 2159-0370.
17. "Edward H. Levi | Office of the Provost". provost.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
18. "Adlene Harrison | Washington Post". washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2021-01-06.
19. "Madeleine May Kunin | Jewish Women's Archive". jwa.org. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
20. Burr, Kenneth (2012-07-26). "Coming Out, Coming Home". doi:10.4324/9780203843673.
21. "ABC News/Washington Post Monthly Poll, September 2010". 2011-12-01. doi:10.3886/icpsr32545.v1.
22. "Talk:Paul Wellstone", Wikipedia, 2019-02-12, retrieved 2020-02-24
23. "A List of Jewish Firsts in American Political History". Alma. 2020-01-23. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
24. Stone, Kurt F. (2011). The Jews of Capitol Hill : a Compendium of Jewish Congressional Members. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Group. ISBN 978-0-8108-7738-2. OCLC 700706822.
25. "Ruth Bader Ginsburg". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
26. "Washington Post/Harvard University/Kaiser Family Foundation Entitlement Poll, March 1997". 1998-07-28. doi:10.3886/icpsr02178.v2.
27. Lauterpacht, Elihu (2010), "The war years, Part III: April 1942–December 1944", The Life of Hersch Lauterpacht, Cambridge University Press, pp. 191–250, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511723278.008, ISBN 978-0-511-72327-8
28. Foer, Sara; Franklin, K. Reeder (August 1997). "Assisted Suicide". American Journal of Nursing. 97 (8): 16. doi:10.1097/00000446-199708000-00010. ISSN 0002-936X.
29. "Socrates Fellow Johnnie Discusses Her Project". 2009-11-24. doi:10.4016/14614.01.
30. "Lieberman, Joseph I., (born 24 Feb. 1942), Member for Connecticut, US Senate, 1989–2012 (Democrat 1989–2006, Ind Democrat, 2006–12)", Who's Who, Oxford University Press, 2007-12-01, doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.24536
31. "Eric Cantor". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
32. "New Hampshire Primary Election Results 2016 - The New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2016-06-18.
33. Healy, Patrick; Martin, Jonathan (February 10, 2016). "Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Win the New Hampshire Primaries". The New York Times. Retrieved February 10, 2016. ...Mr. Sanders was the choice, nearly unanimously, among voters who said it was most important to have a candidate who is "honest and trustworthy."
34. "Bernie Sanders becomes first Jewish, non-Christian candidate to win U.S. primary". The Week. February 9, 2016. Retrieved February 9, 2016.
35. Krieg, Gregory. "Bernie Sanders could be the first Jewish president. Does he care?", CNN (February 5, 2016): "Sanders, a self-identified democratic socialist, has repeatedly described himself as a secular Jew...."
36. Krieg, Gregory (February 5, 2016). "Sanders 1st Jewish candidate to win presidential primary". CNN.
37. Seven Presidential Electors Are Allowed to Cast Votes for Candidates Other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton Ballot Access News
38. O'Keefe, Ed; DeBonis, Mike. "Schumer is next top Senate Democrat, adds Sanders to leadership ranks". Washington Post. Retrieved 6 January 2017.
39. "Ivanka Trump: America's most powerful Jewish woman". cnn.com. Retrieved 2021-01-19.