Born in the colonial British Empire, Elizabeth Furse
became an anti-apartheid activist, an advocate for migrant
farm workers and Native Americans, and founder of a
peace institute. She claimed her first elective office in
1992, representing a U.S. House district that encompassed
suburban Portland, Oregon. Through a series of legislative
initiatives, Representative Furse sought to turn the
national dialogue away from its old Cold War focus to
domestic reforms.
Elizabeth Furse was born a British subject in Nairobi,
Kenya, on October 13, 1936. Her grandmother, Dame
Katherine Furse, established the Women’s Royal Naval
Service (the “Wrens”) during World War I. Her father was
a naval lieutenant who later settled in the then-British
colony of Kenya as a coffee planter. The family moved to
South Africa, where Furse’s mother established an antiapartheid women’s group, “Black Sash.” Elizabeth Furse
marched with the group at the age of 15. In 1955 she
left South Africa to live in London, where she met and
married an American doctor. They moved to Los Angeles,
and Furse became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1972. The
couple raised two children, Amanda and John, though they
eventually divorced. Furse later married John Platt. In 1974 Furse earned a BA at Evergreen State College, in Olympia,
Washington. In California, Furse had been active in the
United Farm Workers movement led by Cesar Chavez.
When she relocated to Oregon in 1978, she worked as the
director of the Oregon Legal Services Restoration Program
for Native American tribes from 1980 to 1986. In 1985
Furse founded the Oregon Peace Institute for nonviolent
conflict resolution. With her husband, she also became the
owner and operator of a vineyard.
In 1992, when suburban Portland’s Democratic
Representative Les AuCoin left the House to run for one
of Oregon’s U.S. Senate seats, Furse entered the race for his
seat as a long-shot candidate. The district stretched from
Portland along the Columbia River to the Pacific coast and
took in Washington and Yamhill counties. Furse defeated
Gary Conkling, a former AuCoin aide, in the primary 60
to 40 percent, largely with support from women voters and
groups, including EMILY’s List. In the general election,
she faced a well-known state politician, Oregon treasurer
Tony Meeker. Furse made her support for abortion rights
a prominent feature of her campaign, which contrasted
sharply with Meeker’s anti-abortion policy. She also used
gender as a campaign theme, capitalizing on the outrage over the Senate’s conformation hearings of Clarence Thomas
to the Supreme Court. She echoed Democratic presidential
candidate William J. (Bill) Clinton’s promises of job
creation and political change in Washington and eventually
went on to edge out Meeker 52 to 48 percent.1
When Furse took her seat in the 103rd Congress (1993–
1995), she received assignments on three committees:
Armed Services; Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs;
and Merchant Marine and Fisheries. In the 104th
Congress (1995–1997), she resigned from her initial
assignments to join the Commerce Committee. In 1995
Furse quit the Women’s Caucus to protest a Republican
Member’s politicking on behalf of her 1994 election
opponent who was running against abortion rights; she
expressed special contempt because her GOP colleague
shared her own abortion rights position.2
Furse supported the Clinton budget in 1993 and the
1994 crime bill but opposed the North American Free
Trade Agreement, citing its danger to small businesses
in her district. She also secured funding for Portland’s
Westside Light Rail Project. During her first term, Furse
introduced an amendment requiring European allies to pay
for a large portion of the bill for American troops stationed
on the continent.3
She also supported one of Bill Clinton’s
lightning rod campaign issues: the recognition and further
incorporation of gay servicewomen and servicemen into
the military.
From her seat on the Armed Services Committee, Furse
spoke out about the problem of nuclear proliferation.
She brought attention to the longtime American-British
collaboration on weapons development, noting the
existence of more than 40 joint working groups that had
carried over into the post-Cold War Era. She accused U.K.
Prime Minister John Major’s government of undercutting
American nuclear nonproliferation efforts. “We feed the
British nuclear weapons complex, and right now they
are biting the hand that feeds them,” Furse declared. “It’s
a tragic irony that I, as a Member of Congress and the
Armed Services Committee, can be better informed on
U.K. defense matters than a British Citizen or MP.”4
After
the House voted on a nuclear test ban bill in 1992 to take
effect in 1996, the Pentagon pushed to lift the moratorium
to allow tests of nuclear weapons under one kiloton yield.
Furse, in opposing that allowance, cited the nearly half-billion yearly price tag for nuclear tests and paraphrased
a line from George Orwell’s book 1984: “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, a small nuclear
test is not a nuclear test.”5
In 1993 she joined forces
with House colleague John McKee Spratt Jr. of South
Carolina in cosponsoring an amendment to ban research
and development of low-yield nuclear warheads; the
measure became part of the 1994 defense authorization
bill. “I introduced an amendment last year that killed an
entire generation of nuclear weapons,” Furse recalled. “If
I do nothing else, it makes going [to Washington, DC,]
worthwhile.”6
In 1994 Furse won a razor-thin re-election against
Republican Bill Witt, beating him by 301 votes out of more
than a quarter-million votes cast. She raised $1.1 million in
campaign funds—more than twice Witt’s total—but nearly
succumbed to Witt’s strong organizational base and an
electorate that widely supported the Republican “Contract
with America.” In 1996 she again faced Witt but won
by a more comfortable margin of 52 to 45 percent.7
She
surprised political observers in 1995 by entering the
Democratic primary for the seat of resigned Oregon Senator
Robert William Packwood, of whom Furse had been highly
critical after charges of sexual harassment were made public
by some of his former aides. The nomination eventually
went to U.S. Representative Ronald Lee Wyden.
Throughout her three-term House tenure, Furse was
an advocate for women’s issues as well as what she called
women’s unique perspective on the meaning of “security”—
both national and domestic. “The whole matter of security . . . men see it in terms of national defense. But what about
domestic violence?” Furse said. “A woman who is living in
a home where she is battered is living where there is a real
war going on. We have to decide whether we’re going to
continue spending too much on the Pentagon and too little
on domestic security—things like safer streets and shelters
for victims of domestic violence.”8
Furse praised the Women’s
Caucus as a space where “we could think about things we
wanted to do together [and find] cosponsors. We could work
as a team there and so that was very, very helpful.”9
Furse also supported the 1993 Freedom of Access to
Clinic Entrances Act after a spate of violence outside
abortion clinics. “While the decision is difficult, once it is
made, women should not be prevented from or harassed
while exercising their rights, and physicians must be allowed
to practice medicine without fear for their lives,” Furse
said on the House Floor.10 In 1997 Furse cosponsored the
Children’s National Security Act, an omnibus bill that included initiatives ranging from health insurance for
children to health care research and education, assistance
for caregivers, firearm child safety lock requirements, school
construction, and economic security for families. “Children
who do not get sufficient health care in their early years
have real trouble maturing, and I believe that we need to
invest in things like child health because a healthy child
can prosper,” she said.11 The bill would be funded with cuts
from the Pentagon budget. “I believe it’s time to change the
focus of our priorities, to reflect that national security means
providing children a quality education, access to health care,
and a safe place to live and learn,” Furse told colleagues.
“We cannot continue to invest in outdated Cold War
weapons systems while we neglect our children.”12
Furse became a major proponent for affordable health
care coverage and greater research into women’s health
issues. As early as 1993, she supported government-funded
health care, speaking out in support of the American Health
Security Act.13 In 1997 she again pushed for expanded
health care coverage for the then-estimated 10 million
uninsured American children. Furse proposed adopting
an Oregon state program that insured children in low-income families for as little as $35 per month. Again, she
cast her argument in appropriated military language: “I
think what we are dealing with is a national security issue.
If we do not have healthy children, we do not have healthy
adults, we do not have people who can be the best and the
brightest that they could be.”14 In 1996 she introduced
the Women’s Health Environmental Factors Research Act,
which proposed greater funding for research into synthetic
compounds in the environment and their effect specifically
on women. Furse also pushed for greater research and
funding for diabetes, a disease her daughter Amanda had.15
Furse, who supported term limits, announced during
her third term that she would not seek re-election in 1998.
After she retired from the House in January 1999, she
worked as the director of tribal programs at the Institute for
Tribal Government in Portland. Furse resided in Helvetia, a unincorporated Washington County community northwest of Portland, where she managed a winery with her husband. In
2014 she unsuccessfully ran for the position of Washington
County, Oregon, commissioner.16 She died at her farm on April 18, 2021.17
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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