NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, a protracted serving New York Democrat who was the primary lady to chair the highly effective Home Appropriations Committee, has died. She was 87.
Lowey’s household, in a statement shared by the Westchester County Democratic Committee, mentioned she died Saturday after battling metastatic breast most cancers with the “similar tenacity and energy that she fought all through her 32-year profession in Congress for ladies, kids and households.”
The household mentioned she handed away peacefully in her residence in Harrison, New York, surrounded by her husband, kids and grandchildren. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who served with Lowey in Congress, ordered flags flown at half-staff Sunday by way of Monday in honor of her former colleague.
“A public servant within the truest sense, she was guided by the Jewish core worth of ‘Tikkun Olam,’ repairing the world,” the household’s assertion learn. “She was an indefatigable fighter and labored throughout the aisle to ship outcomes for her constituents and all People.”
Lowey represented suburban communities north of New York Metropolis, together with components of Westchester County and the Hudson River Valley.
She was elected to Congress in 1988 and served till she opted to retire moderately than search reelection in 2020.
In her many years within the Home, Lowey pushed for federal funding to fight AIDS and for financial assist to growing nations.
She supported girls’s well being care and training initiatives and notably led a profitable combat to supply contraception protection to federal employees by way of their federal medical insurance plans within the late Nineties below the Republican-controlled Home.
“Frankly to have a job that I like so very a lot made this a really tough alternative,” Lowey, who turned chair of the Home Appropriations Committee in 2018, told The Associated Press of her choice to retire. “However I simply felt it was time.”
Connecticut U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, now the rating Democrat on the appropriations committee, remembered Lowey Sunday as a “fierce negotiator and constant public servant” who was “brave, humorous, and tenacious with a smile that lit up even the darkest rooms.”
She mentioned Lowey was a tireless advocate on a spread of vital points, from well being care and the setting to after-school applications and public broadcasting.
U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican who now represents Lowey’s congressional district, praised her “bipartisan spirit, dedication to our neighborhood, and dedication to the nation.”
Westchester County Government Ken Jenkins mentioned Lowey “championed integrity, honesty and the values of fine authorities” and mentioned she had been a “mentor, a pal and at all times a beacon of hope.”
Lowey’s household mentioned a non-public funeral and burial will probably be adopted by a memorial service at a later date.
“We’ll miss her greater than phrases can say and take nice consolation in realizing that she lived a full and purposeful life,” the assertion mentioned. “Her reminiscence will endlessly be a blessing to all who had the consideration of realizing and loving her, and to the thousands and thousands of individuals whose lives she touched.”
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