Kirsten Gillibrand

Citizens Against Government Waste published its annual list of congressional earmarks (they actually call it the Congressional Pig Book list).

Of course, what one person calls wasteful spending, another person calls bringing home the bacon, and now that Democrats are in the majority, New York was supposed to be getting more federal money.

The state made out with a good portion, particularly in the Catskills, where Maurice Hinchey brought in $43.7 million.

Here is a list of what some members from New York, and a few from elsewhere, brought their districts, according to the list. (It's in numbers of millions):  read more »

Freshman Democratic Reprentative Kirsten Gillibrand is among those featured on the cover of the newest issue of the National Journal.

The magazine says she is one of the "new players in the ideological middle of the House."

Gillibrand was elected in the Republican-leaning Congressional district that includes Albany, and notably parted ways with Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer on the issue of granting undocumented residents driver's licenses.  read more »

Michael Bloomberg’s former aide Rich Wager, who was looking to unseat freshman Democratic Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand, is out of the race.

Still in the primary race for the nomination to run against Gillibrand--in this Republican-leaning district upstate--are former state party chairman Sandy Treadwell, real estate broker John Wallace, and retired Army officer Mike Roque.

Wager's full statement is after the jump.  read more »

The top two fund-raisers in Congress right now are Charlie Rangel and Kirsten Gillibrand, according to Congressional Quarterly.

Rangel has generated $2.7 million over the first three quarters of this year, and Gillibrand raised $2 million over the same period.

The rest of the list is here.

More after the jump.  read more »

Kirsten Gillibrand, the upstate freshman Democrat who has more money than the Republican National Campaign Committee, is still chugging along.

Here's an invitation to another one of her fund-raisers, for November 5 at the Mandarin Oritental Hotel. To be an "Event Chair," the asking price is $28,500.

Representative John Hall, a Democrat whose district is in the Hudson Valley, told me last night he is concerned that illegal immigrants who obtain a driver's license under Eliot Spitzer's plan could use it as a "breeder document to secure more documentation."

Hall, who was in town for the Empire State Pride Agenda fund-raiser at the Hilton, told me:

"I'm concerned with what kind of security measures will be in place to ensure that people receiving licenses are who they say they are and that it won't be used as a breeder document to secure more documentation. My wife was assistant state attorney general in Tennessee when they did the same thing and their experience in Tennessee was that more undocumented immigrants came to the state specifically because they knew they could receive a driver's license where they couldn't in other states. So, it does increase the traffic in the states that choose to do this. I haven't made up my mind yet but I'm concerned that the procedures to protect our security."

Hall did say that he's undecided about Spitzer's plan, but the concerns he raised are among the most critical and detailed yet from a Democrat in New York's delegation.

Hall is one of the three freshman Democratic congressman in the state that Spitzer, as head of the party here, has to help re-elect. (The others are Kirsten Gillibrand, who opposes the plan, and Michael Arcuri, whose office hasn't returned several messages about the issue.)

Representative Anthony Weiner, a likely mayoral candidate, has also been critical of the plan, saying in a statement that it raised "legitimate problems."

"Under Governor Spitzer's plan, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have skipped out on his visa and gotten a New York license."

 

That's what Republican congressional candidate Richard Wager of upstate New York said in a public statement just now. His goal is to get the freshman Democrat in the area, Kirsten Gillibrand, to comment on Eliot Spitzer's proposal, which may not be so popular in Republican-heavy areas like Gillibrand's district.

I emailed Gillibrand's spokeswoman for a response and got a phone call half a second later. "The congress woman is not for illegal immigrants getting New York State licenses," Gillibrand spokeswoman Rachel McEneny said.

UPDATE: Wager's press release is after the jump.  read more »

Here are a couple of events that got left off our list yesterday.

A new political club in Assemblyman Rory Lancman’s district - which used to be represented by Brian McLaughlin before he was implicated in a contract-rigging scandal - is having its first meeting tonight in Fresh Meadows, featuring as guest speaker Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Another event happening tonight, unrelated, is the first in a series of planned New York City fund-raisers for Democratic Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, who defeated incumbent John Sweeney in a Republican-leaning district upstate and has been the target of Republican challenges ever since.

If you've got any others, feel free send them in or plug them in the comments section. Details for the Gillibrand fund-raiser are after the jump.  read more »

In January, New York sent four freshmen to congress. So far, they have authored a total of 23 bills.

Nine came from Michael Arcuri upstate. Another nine came from John Hall in the Hudson Valley. And the last five came from Kirsten Gillibrand from Glens Falls.

Yvette Clarke of Brooklyn, so far, has not authored any. (After a reader pointed this out to me, I checked it on Library of Congress web site.) I emailed Clarke's office to ask if that was accurate. A spokesperson from Clarke's office, Vanessa Milara, emailed to say, “Yes that site is accurate. She has not introduced legislation, however she has co-sponsored a variety of legislation."

True to her word, newly elected Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand has followed up on a pre-election pledge to make her daily schedule public. This is, needless to say, a highly unusual practice in Washington.

The first one is here.

* Breakfast honoring Rep. Ike Skelton, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

* Congressional Open House with constituents visiting from the district.

* Floor Votes (See Congressional Record)

* Ceremonial Swearing-In with Speaker Pelosi

* Reception for constituents

* Rep. Gillibrand had no scheduled meetings with registered lobbyists.

-- Azi Paybarah

The spokeswoman for Albany DA David Soares is leaving to work for Congresswoman-elect Kirsten Gillibrand.

Serph Maltese may have been approached to join Eliot Spitzer's administration.

Cablevision is looking to hire a lobbyist who knows how to make political contributions.

State Senator Jose Serrano says it's an "irony" that while some legislators are reluctant to make their member items public, they are unwilling to distribute the money evenly across the aisle."

Kos prefers the word "escalate" rather than "surge" to describe the plan for changing the troop level in Iraq.

Greg Sargent is surprised to see Fox referring to Iraq War opposition as mainstream.

And drivers get free drinks for New Year's.

-- Azi Paybarah

The Joe Bruno story is rapidly oozing outward. Capitol Confidential picks up and runs with an AP item that says lobbyist James Featherstonhaugh recently turned over to investigators documents related to a 1990s real estate project in which Bruno was an investor. The lobbyist says there was nothing untoward about the deal, and that the real estate development was a financial boondoggle. (As Hillary Clinton could tell Bruno, that may not make the questions go away.) Among the other people involved in the deal: Bruno's brother Peter, Jared Abbruzzese, and Abbruzzese's wife. Bruno's son Ken and some of his friends also bought plots of land from the venture. Ken, of course, quit his own job as a high-priced lobbyist about a year ago, amid many questions about his activities.

The most unlikely wrinkle: Featherstonhaugh's partner on the deal was Douglas Rutnik, another Albany lobbyist and the father of newly elected Democratic Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand. The incumbent Gillibrand defeated, Republican John Sweeney, made an issue of her father's background during the last election, saying she could hardly call him a tool of special interests when her old man was a lobbyist himself. You think Sweeney wishes this story came out before the election?

-- Andrew Rice

This could be interesting. Former public advocate candidate Andrew Rasiej, who now works for the Sunlight Foundation , is planning to launch a muckraking project in January focusing on lawmakers in New York.

The idea of their mission is to take hard-to-access public information about lawmakers and the legislative process, make it digitally available online, and then let the public have at it. Then, said Rasiej, a technology advisor to the group, "you have an opportunity to match that data with citizen journalists, activists, investigative reporters and others, giving them an opportunity to connect the dots, mesh the data and create a new power center in American politics."  read more »

Albany, needless to say, is simply swimming in dots just waiting to be connected.

Predictions this morning from George Arzt, former Post-man, current friend of Spitzer:

"I think Hevesi wins. I think that Spitzer wins overwhelmingly, giving the Working Family Party the 50,000 they need to stay on the ballot. I dunno if they move up from the "F" line*. Kirsten Gillibrand will upset Sweeney. I think Reynolds will eke out a win in Buffalo. Sue Kelly will win. Fossella will win. Walsh will lose."

The Senate for Democrats, he said, "is a real toss-up."

* The Working Families Party is currently on Row E.

-- Choire Sicha

Here is congressman John Sweeney's wife - the one who called 911 from her home - defending her husband and, of course, blaming Kirsten Gillibrand for the whole thing.

As Ben and Liz noted, she doesn't deny, or even address, that December 2005 incident.

-- Azi Paybarah

Republican John Sweeney's lead over Kirsten Gillibrand in the 20th congressional district upstate is a "strong" 14 percentage points, according to the new Siena poll. But Sweeney's lead is down from 19 points in August.

The poll notes "Both candidates hold voters of their own party, with Sweeney leading among Republicans 77-17 percent and Gillibrand leading among Democrats 73-21 percent. Independent voters give their support to Sweeney 46-40 percent."

-- Azi Paybarah

Ben follows Hillary's cross-wearing habits.

Kirsten Gillibrand tries making a strip club an issue in her race against John Sweeney.

Rudy's blogger thinks Hotline is cheerleading for John McCain.

New York Magazine notes that Esquire withdrew its endorsement of Tom Reynolds because of his weird press conference where he used kids as a human shield. The other Esquire endorsements are here

John DeSio wonders who posted this ad looking for a "fearless investigative reporter" on Craigslist.

Mike Bloomberg gave $143.9 million to charities last year.

Barry Popik wonders why the mayor hasn't held a fund-raiser for Chris Callaghan.  read more »

Shelly Silver parks himself on the couch and opens up to City Hall News.

-- Azi Paybarah

John E. Sweeney's still favored to win upstate, but according to Congressional Quarterly, lawyer Kirsten Gillibrand is raising some serious cash.

Gillibrand's strong early fundraising -- which ranked her 14th among all House challenger candidates as of March 31 -- has prompted CQPolitics.com to change its rating on the race to Republican Favored from Safe Republican.

Gillibrand reported raising $716,000 through the end of the year's first quarter, and had $511,000 left in cash on hand.

And that's before she puts any significant amount of her own money behind the race.

- Tom McGeveran

Erik Engquist of Crains forwards on some correspondence between him and Bill Lambdin, the Albany television reporter made legendary (in a very, very small circle) earlier this week with his brave confrontation with Kirsten Gillibrand's campaign.

Engquist emailed, "Is politics so boring that your reporters have to barge through press people rather than wait a few minutes to speak to a candidate?"

From Lambdin's response:

"It was not a matter of waiting a few minutes to speak to someone. Obviously, we can(and almost always) do that. It was a matter of an unidentified person placing himself in the middle of an open doorway and telling reporters and photogs that they could not enter an open room that many other people had already occupied. This was for an event to which we had been invited. Further, this unidentified person was claiming to speak for the candidate. How do we know he was authorized to do that? Indeed, subsequently we have been told he was not....

"It may interest you to know that I attended a breakfast today that was also attended by the candidate, Kirsten Gillibrand. She chose to come up to me, shake my hand and apologize profusely. I told her that was not necessary or expected, but it was appreciated. She has no problem with it (unless you want to assume that what she says is not what she means)."

Well, great TV in any case.