Upbringing made health care priority for Feigenholtz
5TH DISTRICT RACE | Feigenholtz's caring mother remains an influence
What's a health care/social services-focused legislator such as Sara Feigenholtz to do when a Democratic president takes office promising to reform the health care system?
Run for Congress to help.
(Al Podgorski/Sun-Times)
Issue on which she disagrees with Rahm Emanuel: "There are so many. Off-shore drilling'' -- she's anti.
Favorite restaurant: Hashalom.
First car: A powder blue Plymouth Fury 3.
Last good book read: Beach Music.
Last good movie seen: "The Green Mile."
Favorite TV show: "ER."
Favorite comic: Lewis Black.
Listens to: Bruce Springsteen.
Biggest political miscalculation: "Thinking that Rahm Emanuel would hold the seat for 30 years."
What dish she cooks best: Moroccan chicken.
Best vacation: Backpacked through the Middle East and Europe in college.
Best childhood memory: "Going to work with my mom, watching her deliver a baby, going to my first Cubs game with my dad."
Perhaps it was the night the man came to her family's house saying his daughter was sick and Feigenholtz's mother said, "bring her in," cleared off her kitchen table and examined the girl right there in the kitchen. Feigenholtz has been fixated on health care "as a right -- not a privilege," she says.
Feigenholtz, who represents the state's 12th House district, had an unusual childhood as the adopted daughter of a woman who came to the United States from Eastern Europe, put herself through medical school and adopted two children in her 50s. Feigenholtz used to go on rounds with her mother. Pausing to explain why she focuses so much on her mother's practice, Feigenholtz says, "In my next life I will be a doctor."
One of only two women on a ballot with nine men in the March 3 Democratic primary election to succeed Rahm Emanuel in the 5th Congressional District, with more money raised than any of them, Sara Feigenholtz finds herself well-positioned to bring her know-how about health care and social services to Washington.
Feigenholtz has sparred with fellow state legislator and rival candidate John Fritchey over which of them broke with former Gov. Rod Blagojevich earlier and more convincingly. Feigenholtz gave Blagojevich $5,000 for his 2006 re-election bid while he was under investigation but before he had been criminally charged.
"I spoke out against the governor in many ways," Feigenholtz said. "I confronted him in caucus in front of each and every Democrat. . . . I made a lot of public statements about him and private statements to him . . . perhaps not in front of cameras all the time."
Rather than focus on the health care and children's insurance bills she passed with Blagojevich's help in the Legislature, she would like to talk about the family health insurance bill she passed with help from then-State Sen. Barack Obama.
"I passed this bill unanimously and walked it across the rotunda and gave it to my former colleague Barack Obama, who shepherded it through the [state] Senate," Feigenholtz said.
A 14-year veteran of the Legislature, Feigenholtz has the support of the National Organization for Women and other feminist groups as well as the Service Employees International Union.
"I believe I have the skills to go to Washington and undo some very regressive policy decisions that George Bush made to human services that I like to refer to as death by a thousand paper cuts," Feigenholtz said. "I want to go to Washington and bring more resources back to the state. The federal government really needs to start making a huge investment in human services so Illinois can get up from under water."