Evelyn Dubrow, ‘Dean of Female Lobbyists,’ Dies

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The New York Sun

Evelyn Dubrow, a diminutive lobbyist for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union who spent 40 years lobbying Congress on fair trade, minimum wage, health care, and other issues high on the liberal agenda, died Tuesday in Washington, D.C., according to an announcement by UNITE, successor organization to the ILGWU.

Called “the dean of female lobbyists” as early as the late 1960s, Dubrow treaded the halls of Congress until 1997. By then, she had become dispirited with the loss of inter-party collegiality and was disappointed by President Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement, which removed barriers to textile imports. In 1999, she never the less accepted from Mr. Clinton the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for a lifetime devoted to the cause of labor

After she came to Washington in 1956, at a time when she claimed there were only three other female lobbyists, Dubrow worked with presidents from both parties, and was known to leaders in both congressional delegations as “Evy.” In her spare time, she regularly played stud poker with senators, although she never revealed which ones.

Senator Goldwater became a close friend, although the Republican usually told her, “Sorry, I can’t vote with you on that one,” when he heard about whatever the issue of the day was, she told the Washingtonian in 1997.

Senator Hollings told the Baltimore Sun in 1995, “Evelyn Dubrow is the union label. She embodies everything good about the union movement in her passion for the American worker and worker rights.”

Speaker Tip O’Neil was such a fan that he accorded Dubrow an honor she considered her highest: He designated a doorkeeper’s chair for her on the floor of the House of Representatives. (Later, lobbyists were barred from the House floor during votes.)

Dubrow was known both for her boundless energy – she claimed to go through 24 pairs of size four shoes annually – and for her comprehensive knowledge of policy. “She is almost impossible to ignore, and even those who disagree with her take time to listen to her,” Newsday wrote in 1997. Despite her best efforts, the status of organized labor declined inexorably during her years in Washington, along with the spirit of bipartisanship. “After the 1994 election, I even broke my own cardinal rule of going to visit each new member,” she told the Washingtonian. “That’s what bothers me most – the atmosphere of hate that’s grown here.”

Dubrow, who apparently never married and who could be coy about her personal life, was believed to be about 90. However, one source called her “four years older than [President] Kennedy,” which would make her closer to 95, as would several Web sites, which list her year of birth as 1912. A 1930 newspaper clipping shows that she was in journalism school at New York University in 1930, which might make her even older.

Dubrow grew up in Passaic, N.J., where her father was a carpenter and a union man. Her sister, Mary, was a suffragette who once was arrested for picketing the White House and spent 10 days on a hunger strike.

Dubrow studied journalism at NYU, where in 1930 she was elected to the university’s honorary and professional women’s journalism society, Stick O’ Type. She edited the Italian-American Weekly “The Citizen,” and worked as a reporter for the Paterson Morning Call, then became a union organizer for the C.I.O.

“I organized stores, peanut makers, pencil makers, umbrella makers, and spaghetti benders,” Dubrow told the Chicago Tribune in 1980. She was tear gassed at a Little Falls, N.J., laundry strike in 1937.

“Organizing was just a matter of persuasion,” she added, noting that, at 4-feet 11-inches she was too small to coerce. “I was able to persuade them because my cause was just.” Her nickname at the time was “Dynamite.”

In 1947, Dubrow went to Washington to help form Americans for Democratic Action, and met her hero, President Truman. In 1956, she joined the ILGWU and moved back to Washington permanently to work as a lobbyist. Of immediate interest were the minimum wage – at that time $1 per hour – and civil rights legislation, much of which would not be passed for several years. She also helped lead the fight to reduce the age of voting to 18.

As a respected and emulated presence on Capitol Hill, Dubrow was frequently asked for her secrets to effective lobbying. She always came back to something she called “my B.A.T.” As she told the Washingtonian, “One, don’t Beg for votes. Second, don’t Assume you know everything. And third, don’t Threaten anyone by saying you’ll work to defeat the guy or gal or anything like that.”

Dubrow leaves no immediate survivors.


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