Robert M. Morgenthau
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Robert Morris Morgenthau (born July 31, 1919) is currently the District Attorney for New York County, which is coterminous with Manhattan.
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[edit] Prominent family
Robert Morris Morgenthau was born in 1919 in New York City, into a prominent Jewish family that emigrated from Germany in 1866. He is the son of long-time Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.. His grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. was United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, an eminent New York businessman who made a fortune in real estate and a strong financial backer of President Woodrow Wilson. From his earliest days, Robert Morgenthau was well connected politically. The family home was near Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Springwood Estate at Hyde Park, New York and he grew up knowing Roosevelt.
[edit] Education, war and early career
After graduating from the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Deerfield Academy, and Amherst College, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving for four and a half years, during World War II. He attained the final rank of Lieutenant Commander. He saw action in both the Mediterranean and Pacific theatres, mostly aboard destroyers.
Morgenthau graduated from Yale Law School in 1948 and joined the New York law firm of Patterson, Belknap & Webb, becoming a partner in 1954. In 1961, after twelve years of practicing corporate law, Morgenthau accepted an appointment from President John F. Kennedy as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He was the Democratic nominee for governor of New York in 1962, but was defeated by the incumbent, Nelson Rockefeller. He then was reappointed U.S. Attorney and served for the remainder of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.
While U.S. attorney, he established a special unit to investigate securities fraud and prosecuted highly publicized bribery cases against city officials and IRS attorneys and accountants.
In January of 1969, following the election of President Richard M. Nixon, Morgenthau remained in office and for months resisted increasingly public pressures from the Nixon Administration to resign. He retained support from New York's liberal Republican U.S. Senators Jacob Javits and Charles Goodell. Morgenthau and his supporters claimed that replacing him would disrupt his work on vital cases and that Nixon might be seeking to prevent Morgenthau from pursuing investigations that would prove embarrassing to the President or his friends. Nonetheless, Morgenthau's position became increasingly untenable. While well-regarded, he was after all a Democrat thought to harbor political aspirations, thus Morgenthau's insistence on remaining in office seemed increasingly unreasonable to even some who initially had thought the Nixon Admininstration should not show him the door so quickly. He was eventually forced out of office at the end of 1969.
Afterwards Morgenthau served very briefly in the administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay as a Deputy Mayor before resigning to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor. Morgenthau was less successful in raising funds and developing support than two other candidates, Arthur Goldberg and Howard Samuels and within weeks he withdrew from the race. Goldberg won the nomination and was subsequently defeated by Rockefeller. Morgenthau returned to private life until 1974, when he was elected to the office of District Attorney of New York County. New York County is the Borough of Manhattan, in New York City. This was a special election caused by the death of Frank S. Hogan who had served as D.A. for over thirty years. Morgenthau defeated Hogan's interim successor Richard Kuh.
[edit] District Attorney of New York County
Morgenthau has maintained a national profile while serving in what is technically a local office, due in part to New York's prominence as a financial and media center and to his decision to devote much of his office's resources to prosecution of spectacular white-collar crimes, including the BCCI Affair and the case of former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski. Morgenthau has benefited politically from the drop in crime in New York in recent years as well as an increase in conviction rates for serious offenses.
Morgenthau's principal other civic activities are the Police Athletic League (PAL), which he has served since 1962, first as president and then chairman, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, of which he is chairman.
[edit] 2005 election campaign
Morgenthau announced in 2005, at the age of 85, that he would be once again a candidate for the office of District Attorney of New York County. He had not been opposed since 1985, but this time he encountered a vigorous opponent in Leslie Crocker Snyder. Surprisingly, Snyder won the endorsement of the New York Times which, like virtually all of the city's establishment, has long been supportive of Morgenthau.
He was widowed and remarried, having five children by his first wife and two by his second, journalist Lucinda Franks.
Campaign coverage stressed the fact that despite his advanced age Morgenthau was still mentally very sharp, being hampered only by hearing loss and decreasing mobility. Nonetheless, his age and long tenure were inevitably issues in the race. Morgenthau's refusal to debate his opponent, while far from unheard-of among entrenched incumbents, did not quiet these concerns.
Nevertheless, on September 14, 2005 he easily defeated Snyder in the Democratic Primary, winning nearly 60% of the vote. As he was once again the candidate for all political parties in the election, having been nominated by the Democrats, Republicans and the Working Families Party, Morgenthau won re-election with more than 99% of the vote.
| Preceded by Richard Kuh |
District Attorney - New York County, New York 1975 – present |
Incumbent |
[edit] Television character
It is believed that the character of Adam Schiff (played by Steven Hill), the New York district attorney in the long running TV series Law & Order, was loosely based on Morgenthau. It is reported that Morgenthau was a fan of the character. [citation needed]
