NY Gov Selects Kirsten Gillibrand For Senate, Throwing Latin@s, Queers, and Progressives Under The Bus

So Clinton’s replacement in the Senate will be Representative Kirsten Gillibrand, a conservative Democrat who has often voted with Republicans on immigration issues and LGBT issues. From Wayne Barrett in The Village Voice:

Gillibrand has described her own voting record as “one of the most conservative in the state.” She opposes any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, supports renewing the Bush tax cuts for individuals earning up to $1 million annually, and voted for the Bush-backed FISA bill that permits wiretapping of international calls. She was one of four Democratic freshmen in the country, and the only Democrat in the New York delegation, to vote for the Bush administration’s bill to extend funding for the Iraq war shortly after she entered congress in 2007.

Gillibrand is against drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants, and co-sponsored the SAVE act, a right-wing proposal intended to make life harder for undocumented immigrants, without facilitating legal immigration or addressing economic conditions driving immigration. (The SAVE act was also terrible politics for the Democratic party.)

On LGBT issues, Gillibrand has “voted against the repealing of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ legislation, opposed legislation that would grant equal tax treatment for employer-provided health coverage for domestic partners, opposed legislation to grant same-sex partners of U.S. citizens and permanent residents the same immigration benefits of married couples, and opposed legislation to permit state Medicaid programs to cover low-income, HIV-positive Americans before they develop AIDS.”

On the other hand, as Liss points out, now that Gillibrand is facing a statewide Senate race in 2010, she’s abruptly discovered her inner gay rights activist:

“After talking to Kirsten Gillibrand, I am very happy to say that New York is poised to have its first U.S. Senator who supports marriage equality for same-sex couples,” said Van Capelle. “She also supports the full repeal of the federal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) law, repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) and passage of legislation outlawing discrimination against transgender people. While we had a productive discussion about a whole range of LGBT concerns, I was particularly happy to hear where she stands on these issues.”

Hooray for lack of principles! Hopefully she’ll flop just as flippily on immigration issues.

Nonetheless, I’d rather have a real progressive in that seat. Hopefully she’ll be challenged in the 2010 primary.

One more bad thing about this selection — as Scott points out, her House seat isn’t a safe seat for Democrats, and this increases Republican odds of taking that seat.

UPDATE: It turns out that Gillibrand didn’t vote against any of those four LGBT issues, because they were never brought to a vote. (Thanks to Timothy at Box Turtle Bulletin for pointing this out to me.)

She did, however, turn down the chance to co-sponsor all four of those bills. All four of the bills had over a hundred Democratic co-sponsors, so they weren’t small or obscure bills; and according to HRC’s Congressional Scorecard (pdf link), Gillibrand has the worst record of supporting GLBT issues of any New York Democrat. So it’s fair to say that Gillibrand has been the least supportive Representative of any Dem from New York.

Nonetheless, she hasn’t actually voted against these things, so it’s not as bad as it at first appeared.