Congrats, Senator Gillibrand!

With Caroline Kennedy pulling out - perhaps because she feared rejection, perhaps because of marriage troubles, NY Governor David Patterson picked upstate moderate Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, a 42-year-old lawyer who is a great fund-raiser and who beat a GOP incumbent in the rural GOP-tilting counties around Albany two years ago, to succeed Hillary Clinton. The press has stressed Gillibrand's Blue Dog Democrat leanings (anti-gun control and anti-immigrant) and Republican father (which helped lure former GOP pit bull and NY Senator Alfonse D'Amato - whom she served as a deputy, along with NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (a Democrat and son of former NY Governor Mario Cuomo), then a U.S. housing and urban development secretary but until today a rival for the U.S. Senate post) to the press conference. But I also know that Gillibrand's family has long been linked to the Albany (NY) Democratic machine, since longtime Albany Mayor Erastus Corning was close to her family, her grandmother - Polly Noonan - was a Democratic Party women's leader, and her grandmother and Mayor Corning were also linked. I actually interviewed Noonan on the phone in summer 1995, not asking her directly about her relationship with Corning but about the opinions and actions of Corning and other Albany Democratic leaders on the issue that concerned me - abortion policy - back even before "Roe vs. Wade." Her memory about this was a little cloudy - but she did say that people sometimes assumed things about other people (like Corning's position on abortion policy, or about their reputed relationship?) without really knowing. I don't know whether Noonan survives today, but congratulations to her daughter and their family on the Senate appointment. Gillibrand is probably a Democratic to the right of the typical NY state Democrat, but in the mold of the IN Congressperson whose campaign I've volunteered for (Baron Hill), as both are moderates that the Democrats need to put and keep in office if they are to forge a new Democratic-Obama-cratic political majority. (Nevertheless, waiting in the wings for a possible primary run against Gillibrand - from the left - are two of my former NYC Congresspeople, Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler. If Gillibrand emerged from the 2010 primary as the Democratic Senate candidate, she would help balance a Democratic ticket that might be otherwise all-male and all-NYC-based - something that no doubt helped motivate Patteron's selection.)

-- Perry