About Albert Blumenthal

Albert Blumenthal was born on October 28, 1929. He graduated from James Madison High School ,William and Mary College, and New York Law School, where he received an LLM as well as an LLB.

Al began his political career as a member of the New Democratic Assembly Club. He managed Congressional campaigns for Ted Weiss and William F. Ryan, and advised Robert F. Kennedy in his campaign for the presidential nomination.

In 1962 Al was elected to the New York State Assembly from the 69th District on Manhattan’s West Side.

Al was among the brightest and most creative of the reform legislators of the Sixties and Seventies. At the same time, he commended himself to the leadership of the Assembly by his legal scholarship and command of the parliamentary process. He served on the Rules Committee and was Chairman of the Health Commtitee,  he pioneered legislative reform in the areas of ethics, divorce, and abortion as well as writing the New York State Medicaid legislation. He was also selected to chair the Democratic group at the 1967 New York State Constitutional Convention. In 1969, while still only in his fourth term, he was appointed Deputy Minority Leader; he became Majority Leader in 1974. In this position, he forged critical compromises among diverse interests to rescue New York City from fiscal disaster.

Al was an active member of the Committee for Democratic Voters and its successor, the New Democratic Coalition. He served on the Board of the New York Civil Liberties Union, as well as  The Metropolitan Council of the American Jewish Congress, Americans for Democratic Action, the League of Industrial Democracy, the Metropolitan Center for Mental Health, the Community Playground Association, and the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.

Al was  concerned with higher education. He taught “Political Parties and Practical Politics” and “Politics 1974” at Hunter College and in 1978-79 played a key role in devising new arrangements under which the City University retained its independence while beginning to receive the bulk of its funding from the State Legislature.

In 1973 Al ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City. He was a member of the New York City Charter Revision Commission.

He retired from politics in 1976, became a partner in the firm of Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon. He died suddenly in 1984.

The heritage that survives Al – his brilliant legislative leadership, his devotion to freedom, justice, and equality, his commitment to higher education, his remarkable ability to encourage a diverse group of New Yorkers to work cooperatively and to deal with the city’s most challenging problems – has inspired his friends to establish this lecture series in his name.