Daniel Sachs Goldman

Daniel Sachs Goldman was born February 26, 1976, in Washington, DC. His father, a federal prosecutor, died when Goldman was a child. His brother, Bill, died in a plane crash at the age of 38. Raised in a Conservative Jewish family, Goldman is one of the wealthiest members of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to his financial disclosure forms. He is an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. blue jeans fortune. Goldman holds an undergraduate degree in History from Yale University and a law degree from Stanford Law School.

After law school, Goldman was a law clerk for two U.S. federal judges and, from 2007 to 2017, served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York under Preet Bharara, focusing mostly on organized crime and white-collar prosecutions. In 2019, Goldman was hired as Senior Advisor and Director of Investigations for the U.S. House Intelligence Committee and later became lead counsel for the first impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Donald Trump. He questioned witnesses and provided testimony at public hearings of the House Intelligence Committee and House Judiciary Committee.

In his 2022 House primary race, Goldman narrowly won the Democratic nomination in a crowded field with 25.8% of the vote. In the general election, he beat the Republican nominee with 83.9% of the vote. Goldman represents Lower Manhattan and northwest Brooklyn in a congressional district with the largest percentage of Jews (37.6%) of any congressional district nationwide. To help win his race, Goldman successfully courted Orthodox Jews, identifying operatives to help him make inroads into and hold meetings with Jewish community leaders sooner than his opponents.

Goldman has supported restrictions on abortion, increases in the minimum wage, universal childcare, and paid family leave. He has called climate change an “existential threat” and supports transitioning to clean energy. He supports “sentencing enhancements” for crimes against Jews, Asian Americans, and other minorities. Goldman has said he hopes to draw on his extensive legal experience to mount congressional investigations of the National Rifle Association as well as gun manufacturers amid a rise in mass shootings – specifically, how gun manufacturer profits fund marketing and advertising campaigns Goldman says “increase the likelihood of mass shootings.”

On foreign policy, Goldman supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has called the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign targeting Israel “thinly-veiled anti-Semitism.” Recalling an event in New York hosted by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee that included a presentation on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, Goldman said that he ”was really blown away by both the technology and the added security that it provided to Israel.” He has said he is “very concerned” about a “growing call” for conditions on U.S. military and security assistance to Israel. At the same time, he has “real concerns” about Israeli “settlement expansion” and possible “annexation” of areas of the West Bank. He views the normalization of relations with Arab countries as “very good and very helpful to Israel’s security.” He said he was surprised that so much of the reaction to his candidacy for Congress, “was about my Jewishness and Israel.”

Goldman supports U.S. aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. While he reportedly supports democracy in Taiwan, he opposed then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to Taiwan. In an interview with New York Magazine, he expressed support for implementing term limits for U.S. Supreme Court Justices.

Sources: “Daniel Sachs Goldman,” Wikipedia.
“About Congressman Dan Goldman,” U.S. House of Representatives personal office.
Matthew Kassel, “In NY-10, Dan Goldman receives both NYTimes and Hasidic backing,” Jewish Insider, (August 17, 2022).
Dan Freedman, “Meet the Five New Jewish House Members,” Moment Magazine, (January 30, 2023).

Photo: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.