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Jewish Political Milestones in the United States

  • First Jewish member of a colonial legislature (South Carolina): Francis Salvador (1775).
  • First Jewish soldier killed in the American Revolutionary War: Francis Salvador (1776).
  • First Jewish member of the U.S. Congress (U.S. House of Representatives): Lewis Charles Levin (1845).
  • First Jewish member of the United States Senate: David Levy Yulee (1845).
  • First Jewish mayor of a major American city (Portland, Oregon): Bernard Goldsmith (1869) .
  • First elected Jewish governor of a U.S. state: Washington Bartlett (California) (1887).
  • First Jewish Cabinet member/Secretary of Commerce and Labor: Oscar Straus (1906) (excluding Judah Benjamin, who served in the Confederate cabinet as Secretary of State and War).
  • First Jewish Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: Louis Brandeis (1916) (President Millard Fillmore offered to appoint Judah Benjamin to the Supreme Court in 1853, but Benjamin declined.).
  • First Jewish female member of the U.S. Congress/U.S. House of Representatives: Florence Prag Kahn (1925).
  • First Jewish Secretary of the Treasury: Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1934).
  • First person of Jewish ancestry to run for President of the United States on a major party ticket: Barry Goldwater (1964) (Goldwater’s father was Jewish; Goldwater was raised Episcopalian).
  • First person of Sephardic Jewish ancestry to run for President of the United States: Louis Abolafia (1968).
  • First Jewish candidate to receive an electoral vote for Vice President: Tonie Nathan of the Libertarian Party, from a faithless elector (1972).
  • First Jewish Secretary of Defense: James R. Schlesinger (1973).
  • First Jewish Secretary of State: Henry Kissinger (1973).
  • First Jewish Attorney General: Edward H. Levi (1975).
  • First Jewish female mayor of a major American city (San Francisco): Dianne Feinstein (1977).
  • First Jewish female governor: Madeleine M. Kunin (1985).
  • First Jewish openly gay member of the U.S. Congress/U.S. House of Representatives: Barney Frank (took office 1981, disclosed homosexuality 1989) Jared Polis was the first Jewish Congressman to be openly gay upon first election: (2009).
  • First senate election in which both major party candidates were Jewish (1990 Minnesota U.S. Senate Election).
  • First independent Jewish member of the U.S. Congress/U.S. House of Representatives: Bernie Sanders (1991).
  • First Jewish female members of the United States Senate: Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein (1993).
  • First Jewish female Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993).
  • First Jewish female Cabinet member/United States Secretary of State: Madeleine Albright (1997).
  • First Jewish nominee for Vice President of the United States on a major party ticket, and first Jewish candidate to receive an electoral vote excluding faithless electors: Joe Lieberman (2000).
  • First Jewish whip in the U.S. House of Representatives: Eric Cantor (2009) (also first Jewish party whip in either house).
  • First Jewish floor leader in the U.S. House of Representatives: Eric Cantor (2011) (also first Jewish floor leader and Majority Leader in either house).
  • First Jewish American to win a Democratic Party presidential primary: Bernie Sanders, New Hampshire primary, (2016) .
  • First Jewish floor leader in the U.S. Senate: Chuck Schumer (2017).

Source: “List of Jewish political milestones in the United States,” Wikipedia.