Allard K. Lowenstein
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Image:AllardLowenstein.jpg Allard Kenneth Lowenstein, (January 16, 1929–March 14, 1980), was a liberal Democratic politician, a one-term congressman representing the 5th District in Nassau County, New York from 1969 until 1971. His work on civil rights and the antiwar movement has been cited as an inspiration by public figures including Congressmen John Kerry, Donald W. Riegle, Jr., Barney Frank, columnist William F. Buckley, Jr.. actor Warren Beatty and songwriter Harry Chapin.
Political activism
Lowenstein was a graduate of Horace Mann School in New York City and of the University of North Carolina. Lowenstein took a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1954.
In 1959, Lowenstein made a clandestine tour of South-West Africa, now Namibia. While he was there, he collected testimony against the South African controlled government (South-West Africa was a United Nations Trust Territory). After his return, he spent a year promoting his findings to various student organizations, then wrote a book, A Brutal Mandate, with an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt.
Along with Curtis Gans in 1967 and later that fall joined by Wisconsin's Midge Miller, he started the Dump Johnson movement. Lowenstein won 51%-49% in 1968, and although he lost his seat due to gerrymandering in 1970 Lowenstein still captured a respectable 46% of the vote. In 1971, he became head of the Americans for Democratic Action. That same year, he started the Dump Nixon movement, which earned him a place on Nixon's Enemies List. In 1972, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in a Brooklyn district in the Democratic primary against Congressman John J. Rooney, a conservative Democrat. Rooney won the primary but Lowenstein continued in the race on the Liberal Party line, finishing with 28% of the vote. After a brief and abortive 1974 campaign for the U.S. Senate, Lowenstein unsucessfully challenged incumbent Republican Congressman John Wydler in 1974 and 1976. President Carter appointed Lowenstein to head the United States delegation to the thirty-third regular annual session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1977. Lowenstein served as an ambassador from August 1977 to June 1978 in the capacity of alternate United States Representative for Special Political Affairs to the United Nations. He resigned from his post as ambassador to run for Congress again in 1978, although he failed to capture the Democratic nomination.
Death
Lowenstein's political career ended when he was tragically assassinated in his Manhattan office on March 14, 1980, at age 51 by a deranged gunman, Dennis Sweeney.
Lowenstein was well known for his ability to attract energetic young volunteers for his political causes. In the mid-1960s, he briefly served as dean of Stern Hall, then a men's dormitory at Stanford University, during which time he met and befriended undergraduate students David Harris and Dennis Sweeney. Over a decade later in 1980, Lowenstein was shot in New York City by this same Dennis Sweeney, now mentally ill and convinced that Lowenstein was plotting against him. Sweeney subsequently turned himself in to the police. Lowenstein, Sweeney, and the shooting are discussed in the autobiographical book Dreams Die Hard, written in 1982 by Harris, a onetime friend of both men.
A veteran of the United States Army, Lowenstein is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. [1]
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