Richard Lawrence Ottinger (born January 27,1929) is an American retired lawyer,politician,and legal educator from New York. A Democrat,he served in the United States House of Representatives for eight terms,from 1965 to 1971 and from 1975 to 1985.
In the 1964 elections,he was elected as a Democrat to the 89th United States Congress and was re-elected twice in 1966 and 1968. After the 1964 run,Ottinger was criticized for using a loophole in election laws to spend $193,000 of his own money to get around a limit of $8,000 in the race. He set up multiple committees and gave money of all of them. Most prominently,Ottinger's mother,Louise,and sister,Patricia Heath,had set up 22 different committees that in turn donated $6,000 apiece to his campaign.[3]
In 1972,he sought to return to his old congressional seat,but lost in a hotly contested election to the Republican incumbent RepresentativePeter A. Peyser. His comeback effort was successful in 1974,when he was elected to the House from a different district. He was re-elected to the four succeeding Congresses (in 1976,1978,1980,and 1982),retiring in 1985. He bolstered his reputation as a leading legislator by founding the bipartisan Environmental Study Conference (ESC) in the House of Representatives in 1975,which grew to a membership of over 150 Members in less than a year.[5]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
United States 
United States Air Force 
Captain 
