[buchmausar]

Most politicians are rich in comparison to the middle class

Caroline Kennedy's uncle is just rich and privileged as she is. Yet you won't find a senator in recent memory who's worked harder on behalf of ordinary working people.

Amount of wealth is a bad barometer of merit for public office. You could say that a politician of lesser wealth might be more susceptible to bribery.

Look toward Illinois.

[Dwemadayday]

... or New Jersey or Louisiana, etc.

[xquFzpNw]

A Gay US Senator to Replace Clinton?
By: PAUL SCHINDLER
12/30/2008




Daniel O'Donnell: another Irishman for the seat once held by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Robert Francis Kennedy?


In the competition for appointment to New York's all-but-certain US Senate vacancy, the candidates most frequently discussed publicly are the daughter of a president and the son of a governor.

To be sure, Daniel O'Donnell, the out gay Democratic assemblyman from the Upper West Side since 2003, has, in sister Rosie, one heck of a famous relative, but he cannot boast in any conventional sense the gilded political lineage of a Caroline Kennedy or an Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney general.

Still, on December 29, O'Donnell met privately with Democratic Governor David Paterson to discuss the position that will open up when Senator Hillary Clinton resigns her seat upon confirmation as President-elect Barack Obama's secretary of state. The governor has the sole authority to appoint Clinton's successor, who would hold office through the November 2010 election, at which time it will be up to voters to decide who will serve the final two years of the six-year term.


Beyond Clinton and Cuomo, speculation as to whom Paterson might favor has focused on Democrats in the state's US House delegation as well as the Democratic mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown. As a state legislator representing a portion of Manhattan's Upper West Side, O'Donnell can fairly be characterized as someone with a considerably lower profile than the other names mentioned.

Still, it is worth remembering that until January 2005, the president-elect's highest political office was representing a State Senate district encompassing a portion of Chicago's South Side.

In a December 30 interview with Gay City News, O'Donnell, who in 2007 successfully steered the marriage equality bill -- not yet taken up by the State Senate -- through the Assembly, said that the initiative for the meeting came from Paterson, but that he first heard the idea floated more than a month earlier by his Assembly predecessor, Ed Sullivan. Shortly after pundits began speculating that Clinton would be nominated for secretary of state, O'Donnell said, Sullivan told his successor that he ought to be considered if the vacancy opened up and asked O'Donnell if he minded him adding his name to conversations going on between Paterson and leading Democrats statewide.

On November 21, a story on foxnews.com quoted Sharyn O'Halloran, a political science professor at Columbia University, as mentioning several possibilities for the appointment -- including Independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Harlem Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel, out lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, also a Democrat, and O'Donnell.

From O'Donnell's telling, it does not appear he gave much credence to that speculation. As recently as two weeks ago when he was chatting with Paterson about his search for an appointee, O'Donnell said he took that occasion to laud the governor for giving consideration to Randi Weingarten, the longtime city teachers' union president who is openly lesbian. The assemblyman said he emphasized to Paterson the importance of having openly gay and lesbian officials at all levels of government.

The call from Paterson's office came on Christmas Eve, asking O'Donnell if he were willing to sit down with the governor to discuss the appointment. Explaining that as a longtime Democratic activist and community board member in Morningside Heights, which Paterson represented in the State Senate, he has known the governor for many years, O'Donnell described the exchange between the two men as more "conversational" than a typical job interview might otherwise be.

Still, O'Donnell said, he highlighted aspects of his professional and personal résumé that might not be widely known -- that he grew up on Long Island, where many from his large family still live; that he worked as a Legal Aid lawyer in Brooklyn; that his longtime partner grew up in upstate New York; and that the couple owns a weekend farmhouse, "not a home on Martha's Vineyard."

Should O'Donnell beat out his better-known competitors, he would be the first openly gay US senator. But he is making no predictions on what the governor will do, except that he will wait until he has to act -- after Clinton is confirmed and makes it formal that she is leaving the Senate, which will come no sooner than Inauguration Day, and perhaps weeks later.

"He'd be crazy to do anything other than that," O'Donnell said.


©GayCityNews 2009

[worldofwarcraft]

^ What's your point, BR ?

[Jueqelyl]

Apparently a gay senator is a "big deal"?

[Riprincattiva]

Apparently a gay senator is a "big deal"?

^ Apparently, so is a congressional pay raise.

.

[giftbestcom]

^ Apparently, so is a congressional pay raise.

.

You know what else I think is a BIG DEAL?
Apparently BR and I are two peas in a pod on this issue

[2CNWXAqN]

^
Take all this to the thread in Forum Issues.

[Marinausa]

N.Y. / Region

Kennedy Shadow Looms Over Senate Hopefuls



Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Try the pastries, urged Representative Steve Israel at the Mar-Logg
Restaurant in Utica, one of his stops on an upstate tour. He would
like to be appointed senator.

By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: January 5, 2009


UTICA, N.Y. — It is not easy competing with a Kennedy. This axiom of American politics has been true for more than half a century.

But nowhere is it more obvious than in New York nowadays, where United States Representatives Steve Israel and Carolyn B. Maloney, who both aspire to the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, have followed the lead of Caroline Kennedy and crisscrossed the state in a campaign-style dash through city halls, train stations and offices of local party leaders.

They have variously invited reporters to lunch, cheerfully passed around cream-filled pastries and publicized every stop on their schedules, but still attracted scant attention compared with the heiress to America’s most storied political dynasty.

Mr. Israel was greeted by four reporters Monday afternoon at the Mar-Logg Restaurant in Utica, where patrons barely seemed to notice as he held court in the rear of the diner. He said the low-key reaction did not trouble him.

“Look, she’s Caroline Kennedy,” said the congressman, after sitting down to lunch with a group that included Utica’s mayor, David R. Roefaro; and State Assemblywoman RoAnn M. Destito. “And it doesn’t bother me, dissuade me or affect me in the least.”

Mr. Israel, who represents central Long Island, and Ms. Maloney, from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, have two decades of service in Congress between them and are unquestionably politicians in their own right. Yet they have spent the last several days traveling through the requisite campaign stops for statewide office in New York: Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse.



James Rajotte for The New York Times

U.S. Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, who hopes to fill Hillary Rodham
Clinton’s senate seat, with State Assemblyman Joseph D. Morelle on a visit
to Rochester City Hall on Monday.

On Monday, after visiting Rochester, Ms. Maloney tried to turn her lack of renown into an asset.

“If this is a celebrity beauty contest, I am not going to win,” Ms. Maloney said in a telephone interview as she was wrapping up her upstate tour. “But if people want to look at someone’s record and their service and their work to help people, I think I have a chance.”

Clips of Ms. Kennedy’s hurried exit from Syracuse City Hall as she ducked reporters’ questions last month are still being played on cable news channels. Ms. Maloney’s town hall forum at a church there on Sunday earned a 350-word article in The Post-Standard, the local paper.

At times, Mr. Israel and Ms. Maloney seemed to be competing for who could meet with the most local of political officials in the area. Mr. Israel’s trip included visits with not only the mayors of Syracuse and Utica but also the mayor of Hornell, in the Southern Tier (population about 8,500).

Ms. Maloney dropped in on the chairman of the Monroe County Democratic Committee, Joseph D. Morelle, and the president of the Syracuse Common Council, Bea González.

If this all looks suspiciously like a campaign, Mr. Israel, Ms. Maloney and Ms. Kennedy certainly are not calling it that. In fact they are all going out of their way to avoid appearing to be seeking the Senate seat too aggressively for fear of antagonizing Gov. David A. Paterson, who has sole authority to make the appointment.

Mr. Paterson’s vetting process for the seat remains a subject of speculation and some mystery, and he seems exasperated with all the fuss about it. Except for confirming the names of those who say publicly that they have been interviewed by Mr. Paterson, the governor’s aides have not released any information about how Mr. Paterson is reviewing people. His spokeswoman, Risa B. Heller, said on Monday that the process was confidential.

Ms. Maloney emphasized in the interview that the decision rested “completely and totally” with the governor.

When asked if his visit to the restaurant in Utica was a campaign stop, Mr. Israel insisted: “There’s no campaign when you don’t have any voters. It’s a job interview.”

But anyone who dropped in on Mr. Israel’s visit to the diner could have been forgiven for thinking he was running for office. He shared his views on promoting environmentally friendly technology (“I am on an evangelical mission to do this”) and the need for the federal government to better understand how they can help state and local governments cut costs (“I was a city councilman”).

He took delight in sampling the local desserts and then insisting that the reporters who were invited to sit down at his table try one. His favorite seemed to be the lobster tail, a cream-filled pastry dusted with powdered sugar.

“You can’t leave Utica without trying an Italian pastry,” Ms. Destito observed.

And as in any campaign, there has been the occasional flub. In Buffalo on Saturday, Ms. Maloney mispronounced Tonawanda, a town nearby that is home to a General Motors plant. In the interview on Monday, Ms. Maloney brushed off the blunder, even as she carefully enunciated each syllable of the town’s name.

“I think people should listen to what you have to say, not how you say it,” said Ms. Maloney.

Neither Ms. Maloney nor Mr. Israel was eager to talk about Ms. Kennedy, but her shadow seemed to lurk. Mr. Israel noted that his visit to Rochester was his fourth or fifth in the last two years. Ms. Kennedy skipped Utica on her tour and told reporters that her visit to Rochester was her first.

With a chuckle, Mr. Israel also described walking into a meeting at Buffalo City Hall on Dec. 17 to discuss his interest in the seat with Byron W. Brown, the mayor. Of course, Mr. Israel was not the only person on Mr. Brown’s schedule that day.

As he entered City Hall, Mr. Israel said, he noticed a large gathering of reporters, photographers and camera operators. “I said, ‘Wow, I’m really popular in Buffalo,’ ” he recalled on Monday.

Then someone politely pointed out that the media had gathered for another reason. “They said to me, ‘No. They’re not here for you, they’re here for Caroline Kennedy.’ ”


Nicholas Confessore contributed reporting from Albany.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

[Grizli]

Op-Ed Columnist
Sweet on Caroline


By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 6, 2009


WASHINGTON

Ask not, you know, what your country can, like, do for you. Ask what you, um, can, you know, do for your country.

After a lifetime of shying away from the public spotlight, Caroline Kennedy asked herself what she could do for her country.

Her soft-spoken answer — to follow her father and two uncles and serve in the Senate — got her ripped to shreds in the, you know, press.

I know about “you knows.” I use that verbal crutch myself, a bad habit that develops from shyness and reticence about public speaking.

I always thought that Caroline and her brother, John, had special magic capital in America because of their heartbreaking roles in the Kennedy House of Atreus.

Joe Kennedy, the wily patriarch of the clan, had pioneered the use of Hollywood glamour in pursuit of Washington power. With his glossy pop-culture political magazine, George, John reversed that equation, using his stature as an American political prince to persuade Salma Hayek to pose on the cover of his magazine.

I wrote a column once saying that it seemed like a frivolous use of his time. I thought he should run for office and employ his special clout to make life better for Americans. He died before he had the chance.

So I found it bizarre that when Caroline offered to use her magic capital — and friendship with Barack Obama — to help take care of New York in this time of economic distress, she was blasted by a howl of “How dare she?”

People are suddenly awfully choosy about who gets to go to the former home of Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Robert Torricelli.

Although Americans still have enough British in their genes to be drawn to dynasties, W. has no doubt soured the country on scions. And the camps of the other two New York dynasties — the Clintons (still bitter about Caroline’s endorsement of Obama) and the Cuomos (who’d like that Senate seat for Andrew) — have certainly done their best to undermine Caroline.

Congress, which abdicated its oversight role as the Bush crew wrecked the globe and the economy, desperately needs fresh faces and new perspectives, an infusion of class, intelligence and guts.

People complain that the 51-year-old Harvard and Columbia Law School grad and author is not a glib, professional pol who knows how to artfully market herself, and is someone who hasn’t spent her life glad-handing, backstabbing and logrolling. I say, thank God.

The press whines that she doesn’t have a pat answer about why she wants the job. I’ve interviewed a score of men running for president; not one had a good answer for why he wanted it.

Robert Duffy, the mayor of Rochester, complained that when the would-be senator visited the Democratic headquarters there recently, she did not respond to pictures in a conference room of her father, mother, brother and herself as a little girl. Isn’t it creepy to expect her to emote on cue? Isn’t it more authentic to want to keep some of your most private feelings to yourself?

I know Caroline Kennedy. She’s smart, cultivated, serious and unpretentious. The Senate, shamefully sparse on profiles in courage during Dick Cheney’s reign of terror, would be lucky to get her.

And believe me, she talks a whole lot better than the former junior senator from New York, Al D’Amato, who once wailed that he was “up to my earballs” in some mess, and another time complained to me that those “little Jappies” bring over boats full of cars and then take the boats back empty.

Anyhow, it isn’t how you say it. It’s what you say. Hillary Clinton is a great talker, but she never stood up in the Senate to lead a crusade against any Republican horror show, from Terri Schiavo to the Bush administration’s dishonest push to war.

Sitting in the Senate gallery on Tuesday as senators were sworn in by Dick Cheney, I saw plenty of lawmakers who had benefited from family.

Two Udalls were being sworn in, under the watchful eye of Stewart Udall. Mark Begich, the new senator from Alaska, is the son of a former Alaska congressman. The classy Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, son of the late Gov. Robert Casey, was there in a festive pink tie. John McCain, whose wife’s money and Arizona pull made his Senate election possible, looked on with a smile. Hillary, whose husband paved the way for her to join this club and run for president, chatted with colleagues. Jay Rockefeller wandered about, as did Chris Dodd, son of Senator Thomas Dodd. And Teddy Kennedy, walking with a cane, worked the room with his old brio.

It isn’t what your name is. It’s what you do with it. Or, in the case of W., don’t.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company