Trailblazing Jewish Democrat #6: Martin Frost

Jason Attermann — May 9, 2011 – 4:36 pm | Jewish American Heritage Month 2011 Comments (2) Add a comment

Martin Frost served as the U.S. Representative from Texas’s 24^th district for 26 years, and was the only Jewish Member of Congress from Texas in the 20^th century. 

Frost attended the University of Missouri and received Bachelor’s degrees in Journalism and History. He worked as a newspaper reporter and a staff writer for the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report until beginning law school at Georgetown Law Center. Upon graduating in 1970, he moved to Dallas to practice law.

In 1974, Frost ran unsuccessfully for the seat to represent Texas’s 24^th Congressional district. In 1978, he defeated the incumbent Democratic Congressman Dale Milford and won the general election. Frost served in the House of Representatives from 1979 until 2005. During his tenure in Congress, Frost authored bills such as the National Amber Alert and Co-chaired a special Bi-partisan Task Force on the Continuity of Congress in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Frost was a founding member of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in 1985. He assumed the Chair position of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in 1995 following the poor midterm results for the Party in 1994. Under his Chairmanship, the Democratic Party gained seats in the 1996 and 1998 elections. The 1998 midterm results marked the first time in the 20^th century that a President’s party gained seats in the 6^th year of a President’s term. At the end of his service as DCCC Chair, his peers elected him to chair the House Democratic Caucus for two terms, from 1999-2003. In this position, he was the third-highest ranking elected official for House Democrats. Frost was the first Jewish Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and the highest-ranking American Jew in House leadership in history. In his final term in Congress, he served as the ranking member of the House Rules Committee.

Frost’s activities in the Jewish community include his appointment to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, his role as Vice President of the Dallas Chapter of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), as well as his membership of the Southwestern board of the Anti Defamation League (ADL). He was a founding member of the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) and continues his involvement as a member of the Executive Committee.

Frost held fellowships at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in 2005 and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies in 2006. He has continued his law career at the firm of Polsinelli Shughart PC, and regularly contributes to many publications and news stations as a political commentator. Frost served as President of one of the leading progressive electoral organizations, America Votes, during the 2008 election cycle. He serves on the Board of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Frost is married to JoEllen Frost, a retired elementary school principal, and has three daughters.

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