It was always a question of “when,” not “if”: New York City Council Chair Christine C. Quinn officially launched her campaign for mayor today.
It a YouTube clip (above) she posted on Twitter, the out politician discusses her background and credentials, from her upbringing on Long Island to her work on the council, balancing budgets and raising wages. “I’m not about talking and finger-pointing and complaining—I’m about getting things done.”
Her sexuality doesn’t really come up—though it’s not like Quinn, 46, has ever tried to keep it a secret: She and wife Kim M. Catullo were married in a high-profile ceremony last year attended by current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer.
Though Mayor Bloomberg has been elusive in crowing her his successor, Quinn has already received endorsements from the Human Rights Campaign, several labor unions and even former Mayor Ed Koch.
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She might not want to put that last one on her campaign literature, though.
jar
Let’s hope that the fact that Quinn is a lesbian does not cloud her horrible record as speaker of the city council. She is rightfully viewed in NYC as Bloomberg’s lapdog. And her strong-arming of an exception to the twice voted term limits to facilitate a third term for the little despot should not go unpunished.
kodienyc
As someone who has worked in queer politics in New York for twenty years, I can attest to the fact that Quinn has been a horror for progressive-minded persons. I think it’s important to reject these liberal-conservative monsters with no integrity who have sold their souls (and who’ve sold us down the river) to gain political power. Quinn has certainly done so, even as queer New York City is worse off than it ever was, with the downtown community dispersed and fragmented, the movement locked down, absolutely no change in the amount of harassment and number of raids by police since 1969, much more anti-gay hostility on the street than at any time in the last twenty years, and the pushing of queer persons into family values stupidity and middle class “respectability” (read: being complacent and deceived doormats for the neoconservatives’ and businessmen’s agendas),all thanks to sellouts to the right like Quinn. Her perceived legitimacy as a candidate is especially unfortunate because New York City has so many wonderful, intelligent, dedicated gay and lesbian progressives who would be so much more qualified than she.