Competitors for NY Senate Seat Up Sponsorship of Legislation
Kirsten Gillibrand and Carolyn Maloney, two members of the U.S. Congress from New York, are both planning to run for New York’s Senate seat in 2010. Maloney is a long-term congressional veteran with a lot of legislation already under her belt; she was a principal architect of credit card protection earlier this year for example. Maloney has introduced 52 bills to the 111th Congress, 13 of them in June and July alone. The most prominent of these bills is a reintroduction of the classic Equal Rights Amendment, an effort that already has 57 cosponsors to it.
Kirsten Gillibrand, the temporary appointee to that New York Senate seat, has introduced 31 bills to the 111th Congress as of today. Senator Gillibrand was slow off the bat, with just 10 bills to her name before June, when Rep. Maloney made it clear that she would challenge Gillibrand in the 2010 Senate election. Since then, she’s introduced a flurry of bills, 21 in June and July alone, including a bill to ban trans fats in federally-funded school lunches and to honor Geraldine Ferraro’s Vice Presidential run.
Is this a sincere effort to pass legislation? Is it an exercise in resume padding? Watch to see whether these bills go anywhere, and listen to hear reference to them in stump speeches. This will give you your answer.
