Louis J. Lefkowitz
 Louis J. Lefkowitz    (lawyer, politician) | |
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| Born | Louis J. Lefkowitz July 3, 1904 Manhattan, New York |
| Died | June 20, 1996 (Age 91) Manhattan, New York |
| Nationality | US |
| Alma mater | Fordham Law School |
| Religion | Jewish |
| Children | 2 |
| Spouse | Helen Schwimmer |
| Party | Republican |
The longest serving New York Attorney General. Plenty of licensing corruption on his watch.
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Louis J. Lefkowitz was an American lawyer and politician. He was the Attorney General of New York State for 22 years. He was a Republican.
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Background
Lefkowitz was born to a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, the son of Samuel Lefkowitz and Mollie (Isaacs) Lefkowitz, and brother of Leo Lefkowitz and Helen (Lefkowitz) Schlesinger.[1]
He attended P.S. 188 and then The High School of Commerce in New York City and graduated at the age of 16 in 1921.[2] He didn't attend college after high school but worked full-time as a law clerk and served summonses. While still working full-time, he went on to study law in the evening division of Fordham Law School In New York City beginning in 1922.[3]
Lefkowitz graduated from Fordham Law School in 1925.
Political career
Lefkowitz was a member of the New York State Assembly (New York Co., 6th D.) in 1928, 1929 and 1930. In 1935, he became a municipal judge.
In 1961, he was the Republican candidate for Mayor of New York City. He lost to the then sitting mayor, Democrat Robert F. Wagner Jr.
In 1957, Lefkowitz was elected by the New York State Legislature as New York Attorney General, to succeed Jacob K. Javits, who resigned after being elected to the U.S. Senate the previous year. Lefkowitz was re-elected in 1958, 1962, 1966, 1970 and 1974, holding the office for 22 years, the longest tenure since the office was established in 1777.
Corruption in Attorney General's office
Lefkowitz was "New York's best liquor lawyer" before became Attorney General in 1957. At that time his partner Hyman Siegel apparently inherited his liquor practice. Lefkowitz said it was a "pitiful, completely unjust" lie to link this success of Siegel in any way to Lefkowitz,[4] and the handling of liqour licenses.
A top aide to Lefkowitz was arraigned in State Supreme Court in Manhattan in 1977 on charges of accepting a bribe — a trip to Las Vegas — in exchange for letting himself be influenced in a State Department of Mental Hygiene investigation of school for the mentally retarded. According to a spokesman for the Department of Mental Hygiene, the school — a private, state‐licensed facility — was inspected four times between in 1976 and was found to have deficiencies in cleanliness, maintenance and programs. The indictment returned against Lee R. Miller, executive assistant to Lefkowitz, charges that he accepted a gambling junket from Richard Schulman. Schulman was also indicted on charges of bribery.[5]
Miller said that he had registered at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas under the name Lee Goldfarb, and had allowed his brother‐in‐law to use his line of credit. The brother‐in‐law ran up a gambling debt of 125,000 under the name Lee Goldfarb, but that money was repaid, Miller said, through Carlo DiPietro, a reputed mobster identified by Federal officials as a soldier in the crime family of Vito Genovese.[5]
The indictment of Miller followed the indictments in 1976 of three members of Mr. Lefkowitz's staff, including his personal secretary, and a former assistant attorney general, on charges of bribery and perjury. The bribes were allegedly paid in connection with state construction contracts dating to 1969, and allegedly included some from companies working on the Albany South Mall. Lefkowitz, who testified before the grand Jury in that investigation, confirmed that he had learned in 1974 of staff members accepting money and had instructed them to return the money, but never turned the matter over to any official body for investigation.[5]
Other
Lefkowitz was a delegate to the 1944, 1948, 1960, and 1964 Republican National Conventions, and an alternate delegate to the 1956 Republican National Convention. He was a moderate or even liberal Republican and part of the Thomas E. Dewey and Nelson A. Rockefeller faction of the New York Republican Party.
On June 14, 1931, he married Helen Schwimmer (1908–1986). They had a son, Stephen Lefkowitz, a lawyer and professor of Law, and a daughter, Joan Lefkowitz Feinbloom.[1]
Lefkowitz died from Parkinson's disease at his home in Manhattan.
References
- ↑ a b Ferretti, Fred, "The Last of the Street Politicians", The New York Times, January 21, 1979.
- ↑ Goodman, George, Jr., "High School Notes", The New York Times, December 15, 1973
- ↑ Cooper, Robert H., Jr. "ORAL HISTORY: Louis Lefkowitz", Fordham University School of Law, March 3, 1989.
- ↑ Life Magazine 5 April, 1963, page 28
- ↑ a b c https://www.nytimes.com/1977/03/03/archives/lefkowitz-aide-indicted-by-us-in-bribery-case-indictment-says-aide.html
Mr. Miller's immediate superior in the Attorney General's office, Joseph Fristachi, said yesterday that there “was nothing he [Mr. Miller] could have done in this office to warrant a bribe.”
In November, Mr. Miller said that after he returned from Las Vegas, he had made an inquiry on behalf of the Pine Grove School, asking the chief of the mental hygiene bureau, Thomas P. Dorsey, what to do about the kind of critical report that the Department of Hygiene had made on the school. He said he did not mention the name of the school.
In the normal course of his duties, Mr. Miller would have had nothing to do with any mental hygiene investigation.
