Roy Goodman
Member of theNew York State Senate from the26th district
In office January 1, 1969 – January 10, 2002
Preceded by	Whitney North Seymour Jr.
Succeeded by	Liz Krueger
Personal details
Born	Roy Matz Goodman (1930-03-05)March 5, 1930 New York City, U.S.
Died	June 3, 2014(2014-06-03) (aged 84) Danbury, Connecticut, U.S.
Party	Republican
Spouse	Barbara Furrer ​ ​ (m. 1955; died 2006)​
Relations	Israel Matz (grandfather)
Children	3
Education	Harvard University (AB,MBA)

Roy Matz Goodman (March 5, 1930 – June 3, 2014) was an American politician and businessman who served as a member of theNew York State Senate from 1969 to 2002. He was the Republican nominee in the1977 New York City mayoral election, receiving 4.08% of the vote.

Goodman was born in New York City on March 5, 1930. He was the grandson ofIsrael Matz, the founder of theEx-Lax company. As a child, he attendedCamp Androscoggin.^[1] Goodman received an undergraduate degree fromHarvard University in 1951 and an M.B.A. fromHarvard Business School in 1953.

Prior to serving in the Senate, Goodman was the New York City Director of Finance under MayorJohn Lindsay in 1966 and 1967. He served as chairman of the New York County Republican Committee from 1981 to 2001. He ran for theNew York State Assembly in 1964, but lost the Republican nomination toBill Green.^[2]

In 1968, Goodman was elected to the New York State Senate for District 26 on Manhattan's East Side (later District 28). He would serve for 34 years, in the 178th through 194th New York legislatures, until his retirement in 2002.^[3]

He served as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Investigations, Taxation and Government Operations.^[4] He was considered a leader of theliberal Rockefeller wing of theNew York State Republican Party. Goodman's supporters would sometimes refer to him as "The Statesman of the State Senate."

In 1977, Goodman ran forMayor of New York City. He defeatedBarry Farber, a talk radio host in the Republican primary. In the general election, Goodman finished third behind Democratic CongressmanEdward I. Koch and New York Secretary of StateMario Cuomo, a Democrat who ran on theLiberal Party ticket.

Goodman was nearly defeated in 2000 byLiz Krueger. At first, Krueger was leading Goodman by several hundred votes. After a recount and the counting of the absentee ballots, Goodman was declared the winner in late December. In 2020, theNew York Times reported that months after the election, in 2001, election workers discovered "hundreds of ballots" from a Krueger-leaning area in an air conditioning duct.^[5]

Goodman resigned from the State Senate in early 2002. As of 2026, he remains the last Republican elected to office in Manhattan.

In 1981, Goodman became chairman of the New York County (Manhattan) Republican Party. In Goodman's first decade as county chairman, the only other Republican elected official in Manhattan was liberal U.S. RepresentativeBill Green, who represented the Upper East Side.

Goodman's tenure in the 1990s witnessed the expansion and then the contraction of the Republican Party in Manhattan. In 1990, RepublicanJohn Ravitz was elected to theNew York State Assembly. In 1991,Charles Millard was elected to theNew York City Council. In 1993,Andrew Eristoff also won election to the Council. In 1992, Bill Green was ousted byCarolyn Maloney, who served in congress until her defeat in theDemocratic Primary in 2022 toJerrold Nadler. Millard attempted to win back the seat for Republicans in 1994, but he was soundly defeated. Both Millard and Eristoff eventually left the City Council, and their seats were won by Democrats. Ravitz remained in office until 2002, when he lost the special election to succeed Goodman in the Senate toLiz Krueger. He did not seek re-election to the Assembly.

Goodman is notorious among New York Republicans for his role in pickingPierre Rinfret as the Republican candidate forgovernor in 1990. Republicans had difficulty finding anyone to run against incumbent DemocratMario Cuomo, who was considered unbeatable. Goodman checked hisRolodex and found Rinfret, whom he knew socially.^[6][7] Goodman picked Rinfret because he waspro-choice on abortion and, as a millionaire economist, could spend some of his own money on the campaign.

On election Day, Rinfret received about 21 percent of the vote and barely outpolledHerbert London, the candidate of theConservative Party of New York State.

Goodman was a Fellow For Life of theMetropolitan Museum of Art, a patron of theMetropolitan Opera, a Patron of theNew York Philharmonic Society, president of the Goodman Family Foundation, and a member of theCouncil on Foreign Relations. He served on theUnited States Commission of Fine Arts from 1985 to 1989.^[8]

Goodman married Barbara Furrer in 1955; they had three children and were married until her death in 2006.^[9]

Goodman died from respiratory failure at a hospital inDanbury, Connecticut, on June 3, 2014, aged 84. He had fallen ill while traveling home to New York from Harvard Business School in Massachusetts, where he had attended graduation ceremonies for one of his grandchildren.^[9]

• 1930 births
• 2014 deaths
• 20th-century American Jews
• 21st-century American Jews
• American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
• Deaths from respiratory failure in the United States
• Harvard Business School alumni
• Harvard College alumni
• Jewish American people in New York (state) politics
• People from the Upper East Side
• Politicians from Manhattan
• Republican Party New York (state) state senators
• 20th-century American businesspeople
• Businesspeople from New York City
• 21st-century members of the New York State Legislature
• 20th-century members of the New York State Legislature

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from February 2023