I'm laughing @ the hypocrisy in the dem party.....
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January 23, 2009
Snags for Kennedy Said to Be Taxes, Housekeeper
By DANNY HAKIM and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson, after a confusing and even embarrassing two-month ordeal, said Thursday that he would announce a replacement to fill Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat at noon on Friday.
Mr. Paterson made the announcement after a day of anonymous and often bitter sniping over Caroline Kennedy’s mystifying departure from the Senate field, which, after several twists and turns, was announced shortly after midnight on Thursday.
Because the governor has often contradicted his own comments about the Senate pick in the course of a single day, no one in the capital appeared ready to say for certain who the new senator would be. But among lawmakers, Democratic operatives and even some of the governor’s advisers, the name most frequently mentioned as the likely pick was Representative Kirsten E. Gillibrand, though other candidates, including Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, were not ruled out.
But if Mr. Paterson is hoping to quiet the tumult by picking Ms. Gillibrand, there are already indications he may not get his wish. Ms. Gillibrand, a centrist Democrat from upstate who has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association, is controversial among some of the party’s more liberal leaders downstate.
Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a Long Island Democrat and ardent gun control activist, said Thursday that if Ms. Gillibrand got the job, she was prepared to run against her in a primary in 2010. Ms. McCarthy was elected to Congress after her husband was killed in a gunman’s rampage on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993.
And whomever the governor appoints, the announcement is unlikely to immediately undo the public relations damage over the collapse of Ms. Kennedy’s candidacy or put to rest criticism that the governor has lost control of the selection process.
There was incredulity in Democratic circles Thursday afternoon after the governor’s camp engaged in a ferocious public back-and-forth with Ms. Kennedy’s side, reaching out to numerous news organizations early Thursday afternoon to disparage her qualifications; one person close to the governor said that her candidacy had been derailed by problems involving taxes and a household employee, but declined to provide details.
That account was at odds with Ms. Kennedy’s own description of her reasons for withdrawing. While not denying that issues had arisen, aides to Ms. Kennedy downplayed their significance, saying they had been aired out in discussions between the Paterson and Kennedy camps over the last two weeks and were not considered by either side to be disqualifying.
Ms. Kennedy’s only tax issue on the public record appeared to be a $615 city tax lien that she settled in 1994, a minuscule amount for a multimillionaire.
The person close to the governor also said emphatically that Mr. Paterson “never had any intention of picking Kennedy” because he had come to consider her unready for the job.
But several people who had spoken to the governor said he had decided on Ms. Kennedy weeks ago. A Democratic operative with ties to Mr. Paterson said the governor told Ms. Kennedy last week that she was the choice but that he would use the next few days to do “a little misdirection to keep the suspense up.”
Later Thursday, the two sides appeared to agree to a cease-fire.
At 5 p.m., Mr. Paterson’s office said “the governor considers Caroline a friend and knows she will continue to serve New York well inside or outside of government.”
No “information gathered during this selection process created a necessity for any candidate to withdraw,” the statement said, adding that “speculation to the contrary is both inaccurate and inappropriate.”
Shortly thereafter, a spokesman for Ms. Kennedy issued a statement saying: “Caroline Kennedy withdrew her name for consideration from the United States Senate for personal reasons. Any statements to the contrary are false.”
Certainly, the bid for the Senate seat was a bracing process for Ms. Kennedy. Before she began her candidacy last month, she was a quiet celebrity daughter of a storied and tragic family, fondly remembered by many Americans as a young girl in the White House who liked to ride horses.
On Thursday, an aide to Ms. Kennedy, offering the fullest explanation so far of her exit, said a personal problem had emerged on Wednesday. She called the governor around 3 or 4 p.m., the aide said, to tell him that she would be withdrawing from consideration for the appointment. According to the aide, Mr. Paterson told Ms. Kennedy to take a day to think about it.
At no point, the aide said, did the governor tell Ms. Kennedy she was out of the running. “He was saying she was a contender, she was involved, and things were going the way they were going,” the aide said. “He did not tell her either way that it was yes or no, but that she was still being considered.”
At that point, the aide said, Ms. Kennedy began consulting with friends and family. Around the same time, news outlets, including The New York Post and The New York Times, began reporting that she had withdrawn.
The Paterson administration initially refused to respond to the reports. Then, about 7 p.m. Wednesday, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson said in a brief interview that the governor had dismissed the idea that Ms. Kennedy was withdrawing as “just the rumor of the day.”
But at the time, according to Ms. Kennedy’s aide, the governor and Ms. Kennedy had already spoken about the possibility of her withdrawing.
Ms. Kennedy’s own political advisers appeared at times to be unable to reach her on Wednesday night. At one point late in the evening, Ms. Kennedy was drafting a statement reaffirming her interest in the seat. But she ultimately concluded that she would go ahead with her plan to withdraw, and released a statement by e-mail at 12:03 a.m. Thursday, saying, “I informed Governor Paterson today that for personal reasons I am withdrawing my name from consideration for the United States Senate.”
Rumors about who will get the Senate appointment spread through the capital Thursday, and several people who are longtime allies of the governor warn that he remains unpredictable, even to those close to him.
While some Democratic lawmakers and officials said they believed that Ms. Gillibrand was the front-runner, others pondered whether the attention on her was being fanned by Mr. Paterson’s own advisers to distract the press as he laid the groundwork to pick someone else, possibly Mr. Cuomo.
Still, Ms. Gillibrand’s sudden status as an apparent top candidate was enough to set off attacks from her rivals and critics, who abandoned any pretense that they would support whomever Mr. Paterson selected.
Ms. Gillibrand did her best to stay out of the line of fire, skipping a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee and declining, through a spokeswoman, to issue any statements throughout the day.
She and at least two other contenders — Thomas R. Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, and Representative Steve Israel, a Long Island Democrat — have been asked to come to Albany to attend Friday’s announcement.
Though she remains unknown to most New Yorkers, Ms. Gillibrand, 42, is accustomed to hardball politics and is considered an up-and-coming lawmaker who has built support beyond Democratic voters in her largely rural, blue-collar district.
Ms. Gillibrand, who had never held public office before, won her seat in 2006 against great odds, defeating a four-term incumbent in a race that turned intense and nasty in its final days.
She proved to be a formidable candidate, raising millions of dollars and assembling a campaign organization that aggressively exploited the personal and political baggage of her Republican opponent, Representative John E. Sweeney, who frequently found himself on the defensive.
Just before the election, for example, the Sweeney camp accused Ms. Gillibrand of being behind a published report that the police had been called to the congressman’s home during a domestic disturbance. Mr. Sweeney even ran a television spot in which his wife, Gayle Sweeney, spoke of how his rival was attempting to “slander my marriage, husband and family.”
Mr. Sweeney eventually admitted that the police had been called to his home. In the end, Ms. Gillibrand won with 53 percent of the vote.
David W. Chen and Raymond Hernandez contributed reporting.
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