WASHINGTON — Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky is beaming like a thousand TV lights.
On the day she is to be sworn in, she's commandeered the House Judiciary Committee hearing room for a megawatt victory celebration for a thousand or so of her closest friends.
It's her political bat mitzvah - Now I am a congresswoman! - and a splash- happy spread it is.
It's more than a fete for a neophyte, who shocked everybody, including herself, by upsetting the Republican machine in Montgomery County.
It's more than a chance for her to schmooze old pals from Washington TV (who are here), more than a chance to show she's tight with Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania (also here), more than a chance to charm 11 buses full of supporters who trekked from her district.
It is more, in fact, than one woman's political story.
For this room that hosted the Nixon impeachment vote is a perfect, powerful symbol for marking an upheaval in Congress bigger than that brought on by Watergate. There are 110 new members, the second-largest freshman class in history.
Margolies-Mezvinsky - or MMM as she and staff call her - is unconcerned this morning that her first and only novel has been trotted out for tabloid thrills back in Philadelphia.
This day she is reveling in her Democratic upset in the 2-1 Republican 13th District, her skillful crusade against insider politics, her niche as the first Pennsylvania woman to win election to Congress without the fortuity of a husband's dying in office.
MMM is already something of a media darling with everyone from C-Span to her old station WRC-TV in Washington to WCAU-TV (Channel 10) in Philadelphia, where she worked from 1968 to 1971.
She knows her way to a TV camera and "she is going to be the sound-bite queen," says Ann Kessler, who should know, since she worked with Margolies- Mezvinsky at WRC.
"She obviously has impressed a lot of people already," chimes in Peter Ford, former D.C. TV anchor. "She was doing business, and serious business, well before day one."
Indeed, since defeating Jon Fox, Margolies-Mezvinsky has been a dervish of activity.
She's organized the newly elected House women, put their priorities before the media, and counseled them on the niceties of getting TV time.
She's gone to Harvard, hired a staff, celebrated a son's birthday, chatted up the Pennsylvania Society in New York.
"And did you notice I gave birth to a hyphen?" she asks, citing her post- campaign decision to combine the Margolies and Mezvinsky of her name.
