| First, a little background, Gottfried has represented most of the West Side of Manhattan since 1971. He is chairman of the Assembly Health Committee, and sponsored New York's income-limited public option -- Family Health Plus and Child Health Plus, which he is working to expand into a full public option -- along with many other important health care reforms.
In the interview with City Hall's Edward-Isaac Dovere, Gottfried praised Gillibrand as a progressive:
She is a smart, hardworking progressive public leader who could do a lot of other things in life and make a lot more money and spend a lot more time with her family, but has chosen to fight for a progressive agenda in public service.
He noted that some of the antipathy to Gillibrand among NYC Democrats was due to:
geographic snobbery.
"I think people from Manhattan sometimes assume that if you're in elected office from north of Westchester you somehow can't share our values," he said, while adding he was glad to see Gillibrand's modulation on several key issues over the course of the last year.
And Gottfried makes clear where he stands on Harold Ford of Tennessee, Merrill Lynch, the DLC, NBC and the Park Avenue Regency:
The issue is not so much that he spent most of his life somewhere else. To me the issue is what he does and what he stands for, and that when he came to New York he did not come here and get involved in our problems and issues -- he got involved in his own economic welfare. There's nothing wrong with that, but it shouldn't be the basis for running for high office.
snip
I don't think there's much of a constituency among New York Democrats for standing up for the downtrodden Wall Street bankers. I think Harold Ford will discover that it's one thing to raise a lot of money on Wall Street, and it's another thing to run in a Democratic primary.
snip
I expect that there will be candidates who think that this is their moment to take advantage of a lot of voter anger. We'll see how that pans out. I believe New York State and particularly the Democratic primary vote is still well rooted in progressive values.
The bolded part refers to the fact that Ford lived and worked in NYC for almost two years before registering to vote, much less involving himself in any way in city or state issues.
In endorsing Gillibrand, Gottfried joins his Congressman Jerry Nadler, the most progressive member of the NY Congressional delegation, who told Liz Benjamin of the Daily News that he had "no problems. Period" with Gillibrand and called Ford "a disaster."
Gottfried's endorsement will mean a lot to his overwhelmingly Democratic constituents, and to those like myself outside his district who are aware of his decades of progressive leadership in the Assembly.
In other campaign news, a new Marist poll finds that the avalanche of puffy pro-Ford news stories, op-eds and editorials in the NYC media have had no effect on the horse-race question -- Gillibrand leads Ford by 44-27, about the same as two weeks ago. |
