44 The New York Review
The Fighter
Maggie Doherty
Battling Bella:
The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug
by Leandra Ruth Zarnow.
Harvard University Press,
441 pp., $35.00
Bella Bella
a play by Harvey Fierstein,
directed by Kimberly Senior,
at City Center, New York City,
October 22–December 1, 2019
Sometime after Hillary Clinton lost the
2016 presidential election to Donald
Trump, Liz Abzug, daughter of the pol-
itician Bella Abzug, got in touch with
Harvey Fierstein. Fierstein, a legend of
downtown theater with a joyful, grav-
elly voice, made his name with Torc h
Song Trilogy, a 1982 sequence of plays
he wrote and starred in, about a gay
Jewish drag queen living in New York
City in the 1970s and early 1980s. The
trilogy earned him two Tony awards,
one for best play and one for best actor.
In the years that followed, Fierstein
continued writing for the stage (Kinky
Boots, La Cage aux Folles) and acting
in theater and film (Hairspray, Mrs.
Doubtfire). By the time Liz Abzug
reached him, he was one of the most
recognizable presences on Broadway.
Liz wanted Fierstein to write a play
about her late mother. Bella Abzug
was a labor lawyer and peace activist,
the representative for New York’s nine-
teenth and twentieth congressional dis-
tricts, which then covered Manhattan’s
West Side, and one of the most beloved
and derided politicians of the late twen-
tieth century. She was as famous for her
anger (nicknames included “Battling
Bella” and “Hurricane Bella”) as she
was for her unwavering commitment
to a set of political principles, among
them pacifism, racial equality, and
grassroots organizing.
When Abzug was elected to the House
of Representatives as a Democrat in
1970, she was one of only fifteen women
among the 535 members of Congress.
In 1975 she became the first woman to
hold a position as party whip. In 1976
she ran for a seat in the (then all- male)
Senate, but she lost the primary narrowly
to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Devastated
but characteristically undaunted, Abzug
ran for mayor of New York City in 1977,
losing to Ed Koch in the primary, and
then went on to chair a women’s commit-
tee under Jimmy Carter, travel the globe
promoting gender equality, and advocate
for gay rights at a time when few politi-
cal figures would do so. (During a 1995
international women’s conference in Bei-
jing, UN security guards arrested two
lesbians during a protest; Abzug success-
fully negotiated their release.) She died
in 1998, battle- scarred and still at work.
Fierstein was game. After writing
the one- woman show, he considered
giving the Abzug part to a well- known
woman actor—candidates included
Patti LuPone, Bette Midler, and Kathy
Bates—but he ultimately decided to
play the politician himself.* This choice
might seem surprising: a man playing a
woman who became famous for combat-
ting congressional sexism and advancing
American feminism? But it was also apt:
“They share the sense of humor, the in-
telligence, that ability to charm people,”
Liz told The New York Times. Fierstein
chose not to perform in drag. He could
conjure her without a costume.
Bella Bella, directed by Kimberly
Senior, opened last October and ran
for six weeks. Fierstein appeared on
stage barefoot, in a black shirt and
black pants, wearing one of Abzug’s
trademark enormous hats. Behind him
were a dressing table and a pile of cam-
paign signs; next to him was a toilet. It
was election night in the 1976 Senate
race, he explained, and he, as Abzug,
was hiding out in a hotel bathroom as
her campaign team monitored results.
The occasion led to a long, associative
reminiscence about Abzug’s life, from
her childhood in the Bronx to her first
campaign for Congress. On the night
I attended, in late November, I was
younger than the average audience
member by roughly thirty years.Celebrating Bella Abzug isn’t just a
boomer phenomenon, though. Last fall
also brought the publication of Battling
Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug
by Leandra Ruth Zarnow, an assistant
professor at the University of Houston.
Zarnow first became aware of Abzug
as an undergraduate, while working in
the Smith College archives and catalog-
ing papers donated by Gloria Steinem,
which included a note with “a swirly sig-
nature, ‘Bella.’” In her introduction, she
explains that Abzug didn’t leave much
of a paper trail, hence the lack of cita-
tions from her personal or professional
papers. Instead, Zarnow interviewed
thirty- six of her friends and colleagues;
mined oral histories, both published
and unpublished; and searched through
newspapers and magazines.
Abzug’s career, Zarnow argues, helps
us understand the course charted by fe-
male politicians today: it “measure[s]
where we stand as a nation in cracking
the durable political class ceiling.” Like
Fierstein, Zarnow seems to have Hil-
lary Clinton in mind; references to her
appear several times early in the book.
Zarnow argues that both women’s ca-
reers are examples of a “persistent and
arduous campaign to make women
more visible in American politics.”Why would Abzug’s career offer par-
ticular insight into this problem, rather
than that of any other female politician
or activist? Unlike some famous women
of her era—Steinem, Betty Friedan—
she’s no longer a household name. Even
compared to other female politicians
from the 1970s, she’s less well known
than, say, Shirley Chisholm, the first
Black woman elected to Congress and
the first Black candidate for a major
party’s presidential nomination, whom
Kamala Harris has cited as inspiration.
(Abzug refused to support Chisholm’s
run for president, citing concerns about
the viability of her candidacy.) Abzug’s
congressional record isn’t especially
impressive, though Zarnow argues she
deserves more credit than she’s usually
given. Her time in Congress didn’t last
long, and though she aimed high, she
couldn’t accomplish many of the goals
she had set during her campaign. Nixon
vetoed her childcare bill; too few states
ratified the Equal Rights Amendment
(ERA). On her very first day in Con-
gress, she introduced a bill to end the
Vietnam War, but the war continued
for four more years.
It may be her struggles, then, rather
than her successes, that make her an
appealing case study today. When it
came to media coverage, Abzug cer-
tainly had a harder time than her male
competitors. She was punished for the
volume of her voice and her directness,
in contrast to softer- spoken female pol-
iticians like vice- presidential candidate
Geraldine Ferraro. “With Bella, you ei-
ther loved her or you hated her,” Ferraro
once recalled. “She was up- front and
honest: ‘Here’s who I am.’” While male
politicians who heatedly defended their
political positions were unremarkable,
Abzug was cast as an angry woman—
her voice “could have boiled the fat off
a taxicab driver’s neck,” according to
(the famously unmild) Norman Mailer.
Her campaign manager, Doug Ireland,
used to tell her, “Just shut up so peo-
ple will think you’re just another pretty
face.” This was hard for her to do. “I
say things straight out,” she said, “but
so do a lot of men.” How many women
running for office have struggled to
present themselves as tough and pas-
sionate without scaring off voters?
As anyone who’s watched the last
couple of presidential election cycles
knows well, women who run for polit-
ical office face challenges that men do
not. But the limits of gender as a way
to evaluate political success become
particularly clear when we consider
Abzug. She had a complicated relation-
ship with the women’s liberation move-
ment, which sometimes appeared to her
as self- involved, parochial, and even
apolitical. She may have used gendered
rhetoric while campaigning—“This
woman’s place is in the house—the
House of Representatives!” read one
button—but she didn’t define herself
by feminism alone. Instead, she was
“the Reform candidate, the Antiwar
Candidate, the Left- wing Candidate,
period,” recalled Jerrold Nadler, who
has served in Congress since 1972 (and
represents parts of Abzug’s constitu-
ency). “She was not elected because
she was the feminist candidate, nor was
she opposed because of that.”Bella Abzug campaigning for mayor, New York City, 1977Richard^Kalvar/MagnumPhotos*As it turned out, some of these women
were already committed to playing
Abzug elsewhere. Midler played her in
The Glorias (2020), a film adaptation
of Gloria Steinem’s 2015 memoir My
Life on the Road. And Margo Martin-
dale played Abzug in the 2020 televi-
sion series Mrs. America.