Betsy McCaughey | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) | |
| Lieutenant Governor of New York | |
| In office January 1, 1995 – December 31, 1998 | |
| Governor | George Pataki |
| Preceded by | Stan Lundine |
| Succeeded by | Mary Donohue |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Elizabeth Helen Peterken (1948-10-20)October 20, 1948 (age 77) Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Party | Republican (before 1997, 2010–present) Democratic (1997–2010) |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | Vassar College (BA) Columbia University (MA,PhD) |
Elizabeth Helen McCaughey (/məˈkɔɪ/; born October 20, 1948),[1] formerly known asBetsy McCaughey Ross, is an American politician who was thelieutenant governor of New York from 1995 to 1998. She unsuccessfully sought theDemocratic Party nomination for governor after Pataki dropped her from his 1998 ticket, and she ended up on the ballot under theLiberal Party line. In August 2016 theDonald Trumppresidential campaign announced that she had joined the campaign as an economic adviser.[2]
McCaughey has been a fellow at the conservativeManhattan Institute andHudson Institute thinktanks and has written numerous articles andop-eds. She was a member of the boards of directors of medical equipment companiesGenta (from 2001 to 2007) andCantel Medical Corporation, but she resigned in 2009 to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest with her public advocacy against theAffordable Care Act.
McCaughey and her twin brother, William, were born inPittsburgh to Ramona Peterken, and her husband Albert, a factory janitor.[3][4] The family moved around theNortheastern United States for six years before it settled down inWestport, Connecticut,[1] where McCaughey's father did maintenance and later engineering work at a nail clipper factory.[5][6] McCaughey recalled her parents' difficulty in affording medical treatment: "my brother was a serious asthmatic as a child. I remember my parents sitting at the kitchen table wondering if they could afford to take [him] to the hospital."[1]
McCaughey attended public schools in Westport through the 10th grade.[5] After receiving a scholarship, she transferred to a private Massachusetts boarding school, theMary A. Burnham School, for her last two years of high school, rarely visiting home, then or during her college years.[5]
She received a scholarship to attendVassar College, where she majored in history.[5] She wrote her seniorthesis onKarl Marx andAlexis de Tocqueville,[5] and received herAB in 1970.[citation needed] McCaughey went on to graduate school at Columbia University inNew York City, earning herMA in 1972 and her PhD inconstitutional history in 1976.[citation needed]
She won Columbia's Bancroft Dissertation Award in American History in 1976[7] and her dissertation was published byColumbia University Press in 1980,From Loyalist to Founding Father: The Political Odyssey ofWilliam Samuel Johnson.[8]
She also contributed a chapter about Johnson to the 1979 bookThe American Revolution: Changing Perspectives byWilliam M. Fowler and Wallace Coyle.[9]
McCaughey's father died in 1970 at the age of 60. Her mother, an alcoholic, died the next year of liver disease at the age of 42.[5][10] In 1972, she married Thomas K. McCaughey, aYale College graduate she had met in college. He was then moving up as aninvestment banker.[11] The McCaugheys separated in 1992 and divorced in 1994, with McCaughey and her ex-spouse sharing joint custody of their three daughters.[12] In January 1993, she filed an affidavit in her divorce proceeding in which she said she had no annual earnings from employment during most of the 18 years of her marriage to Thomas, and she had never earned more than $20,000 per year except in 1990, when she "sold an idea to Fox television for a windfall once-in-a-lifetime sum of $75,000".[11][13]
She married wealthy investment bankerWilbur Ross Jr. in December 1995.[14] He filed for divorce in November 1998.[15]
McCaughey taught history as a visiting assistant professor atVassar College in 1977–1978 and was a lecturer in 1979–1980. She was an assistant professor between 1981 and 1983, teaching two classes per year, both atColumbia University Between 1983 and 1984, she had aNational Endowment for the Humanitiespostdoctoral fellowship.[11][13] From 1986 to 1988, she served as a guestcurator at theNew-York Historical Society and was responsible for the museum's exhibit commemorating the bicentennial of theUS Constitution.[16] She also authored a book,Government by Choice: Inventing the United States Constitution, which cataloged the exhibit.[16]
In the late 1980s, McCaughey briefly considered a career in TV news,[5] but she opted instead for a position as a senior scholar at theCenter for the Study of the Presidency, serving from 1989 to 1992. There, she wrote an article, book reviews, and a guest editorial for its journal,Presidential Studies Quarterly (PSQ),[17] and anop-ed inUSA Today advocating reform of theElectoral College method of electing the president.[18] She testified at a July 22, 1992, hearing before theUnited States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution[19] and helped produce a report suggestingconstitutional amendments to fix perceived flaws in the Electoral College.[19][20]
McCaughey also wrote op-ed columns that appeared inThe Wall Street Journal,The New York Times, andUSA Today in which she opposed plans involving local and stateredistricting to comply with theVoting Rights Act,[21] and she criticized federal court-ordereddesegregation of schools inConnecticut andNew Jersey.[22] She also supported the nomination of a federal judge,Clarence Thomas to theUnited States Supreme Court by arguing that he would judge cases there on their merits and not tend to interpret cases in a manner consistent with his conservative beliefs;[5][23] She also supported atobacco company in litigation before the Supreme Court[24] and praised the 1992Planned Parenthood v. Casey Supreme Court decision, restrictingabortion rights.[25]
In February 1993, theJohn M. Olin Foundation funded a fellowship at theManhattan Institute, a conservativethink tank, for McCaughey to write a book on race and the legal system to be titledBeyond Pluralism: Overcoming the Narcissism of Minor Differences. McCaughey wrote op-eds over the next six months inThe Wall Street Journal andUSA Today in which she supported the 1993selection of a jury from predominately-white, Republican, rural counties for the urban (Memphis)-located retrial of African American and Democratic US RepresentativeHarold Ford, Sr.,[26] and praised the 1993Shaw v. Reno Supreme Court decision, favoring five white voters who said their rights had been infringed upon byredistricting that had been done to comply with theVoting Rights Act.[27]
On September 22, 1993, US PresidentBill Clinton delivered a nationally televised speech about his healthcare reform plan to a joint session of Congress. From September 28 to 30, 1993, First LadyHillary Clinton, the architect of theuniversal health care plan, testified about its details before fiveUS congressional committees. The cost of providing insurance for the estimated 37 million people then uninsured was to be covered in part bynew taxes on tobacco.[28] On the last day of Hillary Clinton's testimony,The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by McCaughey, who wrote that the 239-page draft legislation differed markedly from the White House's public statements and would have "devastating consequences".[29][30] Citing words and phrases from the draft, she argued that the 77 percent of Americans then covered by insurance would see a downgrade in their policies, and most would not be able to keep their own physicians but be forced into price-controlledhealth maintenance organizations (HMOs), which would provide only the most basic care.[30] According to McCaughey, the HMO plans would not pay for visits to specialists or for second opinions, and most physicians would be driven out of private practice.[30]
In late November 1993, the bill for theClinton health care plan of 1993 was introduced in the Congress and made publicly available.The Wall Street Journal then published an op-ed by McCaughey in which said she had pored over the entire bill and concluded that it hadprice controls that would causerationing, and the bill was dangerous.[31][32]
McCaughey expanded her op-eds into a five-page article titled "No Exit", which appeared as the cover story inThe New Republic and was published a few days before President Clinton's 1994State of the Union address.[33] An internal memo by tobacco companyPhilip Morris, dated March 1994, indicated that representatives of Philip Morris had collaborated with McCaughey when she was writing "No Exit":[34][35] "Worked off-the-record with Manhattan and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part exposé in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan."[35][36] (When the memo was discussed in a 2009 story inRolling Stone, McCaughey declined to comment.)[28][34]
McCaughey's "No Exit" article was quickly used by conservative officials and commentators seeking to discredit the Clinton plan.[37] SenatorBob Dole, in the Republican Party response to the President's State of the Union, used some of McCaughey's arguments of fewer choices, lower quality, and more government control.[38]Bill Kristol's Project for the Republican Future quickly launched television advertisements featuring quotes from McCaughey's twoWall Street Journal op-ed columns and herThe New Republic article.Newsweek columnistGeorge Will used McCaughey's writings as a basis for predicting that the Clinton health plan would kill patients and make it illegal for patients to pay doctors directly for care, with 15-year jail terms for patients who tried to do so.[39][40]
The Clinton White House press office issued a response to McCaughey's "No Exit" article by arguing that it contained "numerous factual inaccuracies and misleading statements".[41] McCaughey responded that her claims came "straight from the text of the bill".[42] Supporters of the Clinton plan questioned McCaughey's claims, including her statements that "the law will prevent you from going outside the system to buy basic health coverage you think is better" and that "doctor[s] can be paid only by the plan, not by you" by pointing to the text of the legislation such as Section 1003: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting ... An individual from purchasing any health care services."[43][37]
According toThe Washington Post, the "No Exit" article, the White House response, and the ensuing television and radio interviews with McCaughey made her a star: "Her toothy good looks, body-conscious suits, Vassar BA and Columbia PhD reduced right-wingers to mush."[11]
The bill stalled and died in Congress in 1994, and the next year, Clinton was reduced to asking Congress for a series of small, incremental reforms to healthcare.[44] The "No Exit" article won theNational Magazine Award for excellence in the public interest.Andrew Sullivan, the editor ofThe New Republic, later stated that he believed there were flaws in McCaughey's article, but he ran it "as a provocation to debate".[45] In 2006, a new editor recanted the story.[46]
In 2009,The Daily Beast called her "The Woman Who Killed Health Care".[47] In a 2010 article about misinformation surrounding healthcare reform efforts in the United States, political scientistBrendan Nyhan argued that McCaughey's articles about Clinton's healthcare reform were both highly influential in shaping debate on the subject and misleading, owing in part to "egregious errors" she made in reading and interpreting the proposals.[48]
After winning the election, Pataki toldThe New York Times, McCaughey would have "very real and significant responsibilities" as lieutenant governor.[49] McCaughey was initially tasked by Pataki to work on education policy and on reducing New York'sMedicaid budget.[50] By January 1995, McCaughey had produced a set of recommendations that required cost cutting by hospitals and nursing homes so that the poor did not have to bear the entire burden of balancing the state's Medicaid budget by a reduction of their benefits.[1] However, McCaughey's recommendations were largely ignored.[51]
After Pataki refused to give McCaughey permission to conduct a study into child abuse, she did one anyway and publicly announced its results.[50] In March 1996,The New York Times reported that McCaughey was locked out of the governor's inner circle because she had violated the "unwritten rules" of the conventional lieutenant governor's role.[50] Rather than following protocol as lieutenant governor by taking a seat with everyone else during Pataki's State of the State address to the legislature in 1996, McCaughey stood for the entire 56 min speech's length, further attracting attention to herself at her governor's expense.[52] In the spring of 1997, Governor Pataki announced that McCaughey would not be his running mate when he ran for re-election in 1998. He later selectedNew York State Supreme Court JusticeMary Donohue to replace her.
Though she had always voted Republican in presidential elections and taken conservative Republican policy positions, McCaughey suddenly switched her party affiliation to Democrat and soon announced plans to run for governor against Pataki.[5] McCaughey was the early frontrunner for her new party's nomination process,[53] in part because of her statewide name and face recognition and in part because of the financial support of her wealthy then-husband.[54] During her campaign for governor, she was criticized for firing a succession of campaign aides and political advisers and possibly changing her core political beliefs in order to appear more electable to New York voters.[5] As her opinion poll numbers sank, her husband took away more than half of the funds he had pledged to her campaign.[10]
McCaughey was defeated in the Democraticprimary election by New York City CouncilmanPeter Vallone (who then lost the general election to Pataki, 54 percent to 33 percent). McCaughey had earlier received the nomination of theLiberal Party of New York for governor and stayed in the general election. McCaughey's campaign attracted little support, and she received only 1.65 percent of the general vote for governor.[55] Following the election, she divorced and then sued her former husband alleging "$40 million fraud", claiming that he promised to fund her campaign unconditionally.[10]
McCaughey has worked on patient advocacy and healthcare policy issues since leaving office in 1999. She was a member of the board of directors ofGenta, a company focused on the delivery of products for cancer treatment from 2001 to her resignation in October 2007.[56][unreliable source?] She was also a member of the board of directors of theCantel Medical Corporation, a medical device manufacturer, from 2005 to her resignation in August 2009 to avoid the appearance a conflict of interest while she was engaged in advocacy on healthcare reform legislation.[57]
In 2004, she founded the committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID) in reaction to a rise inantibiotic resistant staphylococcus aureus and other hospital-borne infections.[58] The non-profit RID is "devoted solely to providing safer, cleaner, hospital care".[59] She remains the chair and representative of the organization.[59]
In August 2007, theAmerican Cancer Society dedicated $15 million to a public awareness campaign on inadequate access to healthcare for the 47 million Americans not covered by insurance.[60][61] It claimed that there would be a greater decline in cancer deaths if more cases of cancer were diagnosed in the early stages.[60] The society noted that studies had shown that patients without insurance were more than twice as likely to have their cancer diagnosed in the late stages of the disease.[60] One of the cancer society's commercials stated, "We're making progress, but it's not enough if people don't have access to the care that could save their lives."[60]
McCaughey criticized the campaign, saying that it should instead refocus on educating people about cancer prevention and detection.[62] She argued that evidence had shown that the US had higher rates of cancer survival than countries with universal healthcare coverage because of shorter wait times for treatment, better availability of new drugs for therapy, and more frequent cancer screenings.[62] She expanded her argument into a "Brief Analysis" published the following month by theNational Center for Policy Analysis in which she maintained that the US was number one in the world in cancer care.[63] Sources for her analysis included a paper from theNational Bureau of Economic Research, a non profit, non partisan research organization,[64] and an article in the British medical journalLancet Oncology, which analyzed 2000–2002 cancer survival figures from Europe.[65] The American Cancer Society responded by citing a study of nearly 600,000 cancer cases that concluded that compared to people with private insurance, uninsured patients in the US were 1.6 times more likely to die within five years of their diagnosis.[66]
McCaughey published an op-ed on February 9, 2009, and claimed that the Obama administration's pendingAmerican Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 stimulus contained the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, hidden provisions that would harm the health of Americans as well as the healthcare sector of the economy.[67] She argued that the bill would establish two powerful new bureaucracies: theNational Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.[67]
McCaughey said the National Coordinator would monitor patients' electronic medical records to ensure that doctors and hospitals treated patients in a way that "the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective" and that doctors and hospitals deviating from the government's "electronically delivered protocols" would be penalized.[67][68][unreliable source?] She said that the Federal Coordinating Council would be composed of appointed bureaucrats charged with a costcutting agenda that would slow the development of new medical products and drugs and ration healthcare for senior citizens.[67][69][unreliable source?] She opined that the bureaucrats would use a comparative effectiveness formula, which, in theUnited Kingdom, had resulted in a requirement that senior citizens go blind in one eye before the government would pay for a treatment to save the sight in the other eye.[67]
Critics claimed McCaughey's claims were distorted, pointing out that the National Coordinator was not new but had been created five years earlier byGeorge W. Bush[70] and that the 2009 legislation was not about limiting doctors' ability to prescribe treatments but instead establishing a system of electronic records to give physicians complete and accurate information their patients.[71]
FactCheck.org noted that comparative effectiveness research had been funded by the US government for years but agreed with McCaughey that there would be penalties for health providers that did not use the electronic records system.[72] The effectiveness research council was a new initiative, as McCaughey had said. However, supporters of the stimulus bill provision said that research funded would provide additional evidence to guide treatment decisions and save lives and money by avoiding unnecessary, ineffective, or risky treatments.[73]
McCaughey's viewpoint was soon echoed and extended by conservative talk show hostRush Limbaugh and multipleFox News Channel broadcasters.[71][73] Republican US RepresentativeCharles Boustany Jr. ofLouisiana, a heart surgeon, added that he feared that comparative effectiveness research would be misused by federal bureaucrats to "ration care, to deny life-saving treatment to seniors and disabled people".[73] Other conservatives agreed that the legislation could put the federal government in the middle of the doctor-patient relationship.[73]
McCaughey opposed the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 debated in Congress in 2009. She made allegations about certain provisions of the bills that provided for Medicare payments to physicians for end-of-life and living will counseling and aboutEzekiel Emanuel, then an adviser to the Obama administration's budget director and chairman of thebioethics department at the National Institutes of Health.[74] McCaughey's claims may have inspiredSarah Palin's more high-profile claims that the legislation would lead to so-calleddeath panels.[75][76][77][78] The provisions in the legislation that McCaughey advocated against were removed from the bill before it became law.[citation needed]
In July 2009, McCaughey claimed that a section in the pending healthcare legislation, "Advance Care Planning Consultation", actually prescribed "euthanasia for the elderly" because it included provisions that
would make it mandatory—absolutely require—that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner [and inform them how to] decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go in to hospice care ... all to do what's in society's best interest or in your family's best interest and cut your life short.[79][80][81]
McCaughey's choice of words and analysis were described byThe Atlantic'sJames Fallows as inaccurate and sensationalistic.[79]Politifact responded that the end-of-life counseling was voluntary, calling McCaughey's claim a "ridiculous falsehood" and giving it their lowest accuracy rating, "pants on fire".[80][82] Factcheck.org called the claims "nonsense" and stated that what that section of the bill would actually do is "require Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling sessions helping seniors to plan for end-of-life medical care, including designating a health care proxy, choosing a hospice and making decisions about life-sustaining treatment."[81] During an appearance onThe Daily Show with Jon Stewart which aired on August 20, 2009, McCaughey repeated these assertions about the counselling sessions and referred to the Factcheck.org as "spot-check dot org", claiming they failed to adequately read the House health care bill.[83] In a rebuttal, Factcheck.org stood by their analysis and provided further analysis, which led them to conclude that McCaughey had misinterpreted the bill.[83]
In August 2009,WNYC'sOn the Media also addressed McCaughey's claims, concluding that the provision actually mandated that the federal government compensate "counseling sessions" on elder law, such as estate planning, "will writing and hospice care".[79]
McCaughey described Emanuel in aNew York Post opinion article as a "Deadly Doctor" who advocated healthcare rationing by age and disability.[78][84] Factcheck.org said this was incorrect and that "Emanuel's meaning is being twisted ... he was talking about a philosophical trend, and ... writing about how to make the most ethical choices when forced to choose which patients get organ transplants or vaccines when supplies are limited."[85] An article inTime magazine said that Emanuel "was only addressing extreme cases like organ donation, where there is an absolute scarcity of resources", and quoted Emanuel as saying: "My quotes were just being taken out of context."[75]The New York Times noted that Emanuel had opposed the legalization of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide when such proposals were being debated in the late 1990s.[74]
McCaughey resigned from the Board of Cantel Medical Corporation on August 20, 2009 "to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform", according to a press release by the company.[57] Other reports claimed that she resigned after negative reactions to her performance onThe Daily Show with Jon Stewart one day earlier.[86][87][88][89][90]
In an appearance onMSNBC'sMorning Meeting on October 6, 2009,[91] McCaughey advocated gradually extending the minimum age for Medicare coverage upward from 65 to 70 in order to keep the Medicare system solvent.
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In an August 7, 2012, opinion piece inTheWall Street Journal, McCaughey described as "phony" an assertion that repealing theAffordable Care Act would increase federal deficits.[92]
In a September 15, 2013, opinion piece in theNew York Post entitled "Obamacare will question your sex life", McCaughey wrote:
"Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?" Be ready to answer those questions and more the next time you go to the doctor, whether it's the dermatologist or the cardiologist and no matter if the questions are unrelated to why you're seeking medical help. And you can thank the Obama health law.[93]
Politifact rated this assertion as "Pants on Fire",[94] and FactCheck.org also called it false.[95]
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In an October 25, 2013, appearance on Fox News, McCaughey said that the Affordable Care Act would have the effect of "eviscerating Medicare".[96]
On herTwitter feed[97] and on television,[98] McCaughey stated that members of Congress and other government employees were granted a "special subsidy" and a "premium illegally arranged by Obama" under the Affordable Care Act. Factcheck.org, Politifact, and fact checkers at CNN all found that assertion to be false.[99][100][101][102]
In 2025, McCaughey, now a resident ofConnecticut, sharply criticizedGovernorNed Lamont over his decision to sign H.B. 8002, a housing and zoning reform bill, into law. She told theNew Haven-basedWELI-960 AM "Rich boy Lamont wants a homeless encampment in every town," adding that she is already "gearing up" for a run for governor in2026. She calledstate senatorRyan Fazio and formerNew BritainmayorErin Stewart, the two current Republican primary candidates, "kids," alluding to their young ages (35 and 38 years old respectively), juxtaposing them with her self-described "decades of experience, public policy knowledge and the strength to stand up to rich boy Lamont."Connecticut Democratic Party chairmanRoberto Alves accused McCaughey of "further [illustrating] what we’re seeing more and more of in theRepublican field: candidates drifting further away from Connecticut values and deeper into extreme politics and unaffordable economic policies". If elected, McCaughey would become the first Republican to win a statewide election in Connecticut since 2006.[103]
On January 12, 2026, McCaughey announced her campaign for governor of Connecticut in the November 2026 election.[104]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | George Pataki Betsy McCaughey Ross | 2,488,631 | 48.8% |  27.4% | |
| Democratic | Mario Cuomo(incumbent) | 2,364,904 | 45.4% |  7.7% | |
| Independence Fusion | Tom Golisano | 217,490 | 4.1% | ||
| Right to Life | Robert T. Walsh | 67,750 | 1.3% | 2.1% | |
| Republicangain fromDemocratic | Swing | +27.4% | |||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | George Pataki(incumbent) | 2,571,991 | 54.3% | 5.5% | |
| Democratic | Peter Vallone | 1,570,317 | 33.2% | 12.2% | |
| Independence | Tom Golisano | 364,056 | 7.7% | 3.6% | |
| Liberal | Betsy McCaughey Ross | 77,915 | 1.7% | ||
| Right to Life | Michael Reynolds | 56,683 | 1.2% | 0.1% | |
| Green | Al Lewis | 52,533 | 1.1% | ||
| Republicanhold | Swing | +5.5% | |||
A specialist in 18th-century history ... she readily admits she is no health care expert.
Sec. 1003. Protection of Consumer Choice. Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the following: (1) An individual from purchasing any health care services. (2) An individual from purchasing supplemental insurance (offered consistent with this Act) to cover health care services not included within the comprehensive benefit package.
In perhaps the most bizarre element of this episode, McCaughey stood behind Governor Pataki, in full view of the camera, displaying an unflinching, toothsome smile for the duration of Pataki's speech.
a former lieutenant governor of New York and now the quartermaster of much of the high-powered intellectual ammunition against the proposals. Ms. McCaughey has been the hammer to Ms. Palin's nail.
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Geff Yancey | Republican nominee forLieutenant Governor of New York 1994 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by Anthony DiPerna | Conservative nominee forLieutenant Governor of New York 1994 | |
| Preceded by | Liberal nominee forLieutenant Governor of New York 1998 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Lieutenant Governor of New York 1995–1998 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
