ABSTRACT
The New York delegation was a journalistic feast. There was Bella Abzug, the great feminist, who, when told by William “Fishbait” Miller, the House Sergeant at Arms, to remove one of her outsized hats before she entered the House chamber, responded, “Fuck You,” and strode in, hat and all. There was a great deal of intramural rivalry in the delegation. Representatives John Rooney and Hugh Carey, both Brooklyn Democrats and both Irish Catholics, hated each other. Rooney was instrumental in depriving Carey of ascending to the position of Majority Whip, which was ultimately filled by Thomas P. O’Neill, another Irish Catholic, from Massachusetts. There also was little love lost between Senators Javits and Abraham Ribicoff, a Connecticut Democrat. They were similar, the Senate’s only Jews, both highly educated, both liberals. The senator overseeing New York’s fiscal crisis was William Proxmire, a Wisconsin Democrat, chairman of the Banking Committee. He was one of the Senate’s bona fide eccentrics.
