In New York we have the unusual situation of voting for two senators in the same year. Chuck Schumer is the incumbent running for reelection and Kirsten Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacant seat when the latter became Secretary of State in the Obama administration. So in some respects, Ms. Gillibrand is running for the Senate for the first time rather than as an incumbent.
As a Congresswoman in 2007 she was a member of the “Blue Dog” coalition of conservative Democrats. In the Senate Ms. Gillibrand has been quiet as a church mouse. Perhaps that is because she doesn’t want people to notice her metamorphosis from a moderate Democrat from upstate New York with a 100% approval rating from the National Rifle Association to another far left Harry Reid “pet”, voting with the Democratic leadership 97% of the time. Now that she is in the Senate she has been endorsed for election by a leading gun control group which the NRA strongly opposes which prompted this response from the NRA
“She was either being dishonest with her voters in the congressional district or she’s being dishonest to the voters in New York state,” said the NRA’s chief lobbyist, Chris W. Cox. “Either way, the key word is dishonest.”
Gillibrand’s spokesman had no comment.
Ms. Gillibrand voted in favor of giving stockholders a vote on executive compensation in corporations. Does she favor giving Americans a vote on her and her colleagues’ compensation? In July 2009, she voted yes on a Congressional pay raise. So we need to keep those greedy corporate types in check, but she gets to vote herself a raise? But that’s not all; when as an attorney she represented corporations she had a very different role. As an attorney representing Philip Morris her job was to keep the Department of Justice from finding out that Philip Morris’ own research showed that tobacco was harmful.
“So when the Justice Department tried to get its hands on that research in 1996 to prove that tobacco industry executives had lied about the dangers of smoking, the company moved to fend off the effort with the help of a highly regarded young lawyer named Kirsten Rutnik [now Gillibrand].” – New York Times, March 26, 2009
Call it inconsistent, but whatever you call it, Ms. Gillibrand doesn’t like to talk about it.
