{{Short description|American politician (1936–2024)}} {{Infobox officeholder | office = 39th New York City Comptroller | term_start = January 1, 1974 | term_end = December 31, 1989 | predecessor = Abraham Beame | successor = Elizabeth Holtzman | office1 = Member of the New York State Senate | term_start1 = 1966 | term_end1 = 1973 | party = Democratic | birth_name = Harrison Jacob Goldin | birth_date = {{birth date|1936|2|23}} | birth_place = New York City, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|2024|9|16|1936|2|23}} | death_place = New York City, U.S. | alma_mater = Princeton University (AB)<br>Yale University (LLB) | occupation = Lawyer | spouse = {{marriage|Diana Stern|1966}} | children = 3 }}
'''Harrison Jacob Goldin''' (February 23, 1936 – September 16, 2024), often known as '''Jay Goldin''',<ref name = Fried>{{cite web|title=Harrison J. Goldin, 88, Is Dead; Comptroller During Fiscal Crisis|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/nyregion/harrison-j-goldin-dead.html|last=Fried|first=Joseph P.|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=September 18, 2024|date = September 19, 2024|page = B11|url-access=subscription}}</ref> was an American lawyer and politician. He served as a member of the New York State Senate from 1966 to 1973 but was better known for his almost-sixteen year tenure as New York City Comptroller from January 1974 to December 1989.
==Early life== Harrison Jacob Goldin was born on February 23, 1936, into a Jewish family in the Bronx, New York City to Harry and Anna Goldin (née Eskolsky),<ref name = Fried/> the son of a doctor and grandson of a rabbi.<ref name="GoldinPlan">{{cite news |last=Purdum |first=Todd S. |date=1989-08-08 |title=Goldin's Plan: Making Drama of His Record |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/08/nyregion/goldin-s-plan-making-drama-of-his-record.html |access-date=2025-01-02}}</ref> He graduated as Science Valedictorian from the Bronx High School of Science in 1953, and received an A.B. summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1957, and an LL.B. from Yale Law School, where he was articles editor of the Yale Law Journal and was elected to the Order of the Coif.<ref name = Fried/> Goldin was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School. Just prior to his graduation, Goldin turned down several top Wall Street jobs, and instead chose to work during the Kennedy Administration as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Civil Rights.<ref name = Fried/>
==Career== After working two years with the Justice Department as a civil rights lawyer in the South, Goldin returned to New York and joined the prominent law firm Davis, Polk & Wardwell.<ref name="GoldinPlan"/> He was a member of the New York State Senate from 1966 to 1973, sitting in the 176th, 177th, 178th, 179th, and 180th New York State Legislatures. After previously seeking the office in 1969, he was elected New York City Comptroller in 1973, and held the office for four terms.<ref name = Fried/> His first years as comptroller were consumed by a deep fiscal crisis, during which the city was nearly driven to bankruptcy.<ref name = Fried/> His tenure coincided with the mayoralties of Abraham Beame and Ed Koch. Though historian Kim Phillips-Fein has described conflict between city mayors and comptrollers as "more or less inevitable", Goldin was noted for his clashes with both, especially Koch, with an animosity that ''The New York Times'' said often ran "nasty and personal".<ref name = Fried/><ref name = FC>{{cite book|title = Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics|last = Phillips-Fein|first = Kim|authorlink = Kim Phillips-Fein|publisher = Picador|year = 2017|isbn = 978-1-250-16007-2}}</ref>{{rp|60}}
In 1981, Goldin's office was investigated after he solicited campaign contributions from a businessman who was seeking to build bus shelters in the city; the investigation closed without charges against him.<ref name = Fried/> He was then investigated later in the decade over his ties with trader Ivan Boesky, who had pled guilty to insider trading, but no charges were filed against Goldin.<ref name = Fried/>
Goldin twice sought higher office. In 1978, he ran for New York State Comptroller, but lost to Republican Edward Regan, who had been endorsed by retiring Democratic incumbent Arthur Levitt Sr.<ref name = Fried/> In 1989, he ran in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City, challenging Koch, but was defeated by David Dinkins, coming in last place with only 2.7% of the vote.<ref name = Fried/>
After leaving public office in 1989, he opened Goldin Associates, a financial advisory and turnaround consulting firm.<ref name = Fried/><ref>[http://www.goldinassociates.com Goldin Associates] official site</ref> The firm's notable cases included Drexel Burnham Lambert, Rockefeller Center, Enron<ref name = FC/>{{rp|307}} and Refco. Goldin Associates was acquired by Teneo in 2020.<ref name = Fried/>
He was a founding Chair (then Chair Emeritus) of the Council of Institutional Investors and a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. Goldin was an adjunct professor of Accounting at the Stern School of Business at New York University and an adjunct professor of law at Cardozo and New York Law Schools. He was also a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School.
==Personal life and death== In 1966, Goldin married Diana Stern, and they had three children.<ref name = Fried/> He was the nephew of the Talmudic scholar Judah Goldin.<ref>{{cite news |title=Former JTS Dean Is Dead at 83 |work=Forward |date=5 June 1998 |page=9 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/367584404 |via=ProQuest}}</ref>
Goldin died at a hospital in Manhattan on September 16, 2024, at the age of 88.<ref name = Fried/>
==Further reading == *Dinkins, David ''A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic'', PublicAffairs Books, 2013
==References== {{reflist}}
{{s-start}} {{s-par|us-ny-sen}} {{succession box | title = New York State Senate<br>34th district | before = E. Ogden Bush | years = 1966 | after = John E. Flynn}} {{succession box | title = New York State Senate<br>30th district | before = Jerome L. Wilson | years = 1967–1972 | after = Robert García}} {{succession box | title = New York State Senate<br>31st district | before = Joseph L. Galiber | years = 1973 | after = Israel Ruiz, Jr.}} {{s-off}} {{succession box | title = New York City Comptroller | before = Abraham Beame | after = Elizabeth Holtzman | years = 1974–1989}} {{s-ppo}} {{succession box | title = Democratic nominee for New York State Comptroller | before = Arthur Levitt, Sr. | after = Raymond F. Gallagher | years = 1978}} {{s-end}}
{{New York City Comptroller}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldin, Harrison J.}} Category:1936 births Category:2024 deaths Category:20th-century American Jews Category:20th-century American lawyers Category:Candidates in the 1978 United States elections Category:Candidates in the 1989 United States elections Category:Democratic Party New York (state) state senators Category:Harvard University fellows Category:Jewish state legislators in New York (state) Category:Lawyers from New York City Category:New York City comptrollers Category:Politicians from the Bronx Category:Princeton University alumni Category:The Bronx High School of Science alumni Category:Yale Law School alumni Category:20th-century members of the New York State Legislature