How 'mama grizzly' congresswoman Ann Marie Buerkle became a delegate to the U.N.
Ann Marie Buerkle and Benjamin Netanyahu. Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, via flickr
7:08 pm Sep. 21, 2011
Last Friday, President Obama named two new congressional delegates to the United Nations. One was Russ Carnahan, a four-term Democrat from a Missouri political family, and the other was Ann Marie Buerkle, a Republican freshman from upstate New York, whose selection "left more than a few people who follow United Nations politics scratching their heads."
In her nine months in the House, Buerkle has been a fierce critic of both the Obama administration and the United Nations. Asked during her campaign last year to name the worst president in history, Buerkle replied that Obama was "doing the most harm to our country."
On Tuesday evening, in the outdoor courtyard of the Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue, Buerkle explained how the appointment to the ceremonial position came about.
"The chairwoman of Foreign Affairs [Ileana Ros-Lehtinen] asked me if I'd be interested, and I said yes," Buerkle said. "So I think the way it works, she then went to Speaker Boehner, and the Speaker recommended me to the president."
Her office checked in with Ros-Lehtinen's office in the weeks after their conversation, but neither heard anything from the administration until last Friday, when Buerkle's office got a call from the White House press office saying she had been selected, and that they would be sending out a press release shortly.
"I was honored to get the appointment," she said.
On Tuesday, she received a 45-minute briefing from the State Department about the current situation at the U.N. and a preview of the president's remarks, with another meeting scheduled for Wednesday morning. She planned to be in attendance for the president's speech, and to be back on Friday for Mahmoud Abbas' address, with a brief detour to Washington for her regular congressional duties in between.
What exactly she'll be doing at the U.N. is still a little unclear. The two congressional delegates are allowed to participate in General Assembly sessions, but they don't have power or any particular brief. The two spots are divided between the parties and rotate between the House and Senate.
"It's non-voting unless Secretary Rice isn't voting," said Buerkle. "My sense is it's just oversight. It's to understand what's going on and to be the eyes and ears for Congress, and to report back to leadership."
Buerkle brings a particularly skeptical eye to that role. Last month, she co-sponsored a bill (authored by Ros-Lehtinen) to make the United States' contributions to the U.N. voluntary rather than mandatory.
"If programs aren't consistent with our principles, I think we have an obligation—Congress has an obligation—not to fund that," she said, citing China and North Korea. "I mean, we've got money going to those countries, and certainly this whole issue with Palestine, I think we need to look at the way our money is being spent and the contributions we make to the U.N."
Buerkle mentioned the possibility of cutting off funding to Palestine over its bid for statehood, and called it "absolutely wrong of Palestine to go to the Security Council and ask for recognition as a state."
At times, the soft-spoken Buerkle was hard to hear over the sirens and traffic on Madison Avenue, and she flashed a motherly smile, even while she was attacking the president.
When I mentioned that she's a frequent and outspoken critic of the administration, Buerkle laughed and mouthed the words, "Who me?" before she critiqued Obama's approach on Palestine.
"You know, the president has taken the right approach on this particular issue, but the message from this administration over the last two-and-a-half years has emboldened Palestine," she said. "And I think that's the unintended consequence of the United States not being a reliable and a dependable ally to Israel. I think that's the policies coming out of this administration. Now he's saying the right thing. But, you know, when he talks about going back to the 1967 borders, that empowers Palestine. And it's a mixed message."
(Obama said that the 1967 borders, with land swaps to accommodate Jewish settlements, should be a basis for bilateral negotiations between Israel and a future Palestinian state.)
Buerkle went to Israel for the first time last month, along with a few dozen other House members, on a trip sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
"You see the instability of what's going on in the Middle East, whether it's Syria—we all know what's going on in Turkey, Libya, Egypt, and of course Iran," she said. "Really, the only stable democracy is Israel. And I think it's in the United States' best interest as well as Israel's, to have a good solid relationship, one we can rely on them, but they rely on us."
Asked whether she was concerned about the potential reaction in those unstable parts of the Arab world to the United States' opposition to a vote on Palestine, Buerkle said, "I don't think we're saying Palestine doesn't have a right to exist. What we're saying is, you got to go through the peace process with Israel, you can't just circumvent that process. You've got to make a good faith effort to figure this out. And they're not doing that."
A native of Auburn, New York, Buerkle worked as a nurse and substitute teacher while raising six children before she decided, at 40, to go back to Syracuse Law School, after which she became an assistant state attorney general representing the Upstate Medical Center.
In 2010, she decided to challenge the Democratic incumbent Dan Maffei, in a district that leans slightly Democratic. She was endorsed by Sarah Palin as a "mama grizzly" and "commonsense constitutional conservative...willing to put it all on the line to help put our country on the right track."
The vote was close: Three weeks after Election Day, Maffei trailed by 567 votes, and conceded the race.
Whether the appointment helps Buerkle's career in Congress is anyone's guess. She is considered to be under threat in next year's redistricting process. Also, the Cook Political Report classifies her district as a "Republican toss-up" that still leans Democratic, and Democrats have already begun trying to use her new title against her.
“On behalf of the New York State Democratic Committee, I would like to congratulate Congresswoman Ann Marie Buerkle on her new role in the Obama administration, which will give Congresswoman Buerkle a platform to promote President Obama’s foreign policy initiatives on the world stage,” said Democratic state chairman Jay Jacobs, in a press release sent yesterday that wasn't meant to be congratulatory at all. “We commend Congresswoman Buerkle for rejecting her previous views on the President and joining the team. It’s an honor to have a New Yorker serve as a proxy vote for President Obama at the United Nations.”
Buerkle said she's not worrying about redistricting.
"You know, the redistricting, and I've said this right from the beginning, we have not focused on redistricting as much as we focus on running our congressional office and doing what we should be doing," she said. "No matter who you talk to, you get a different answer about redistricting. I think they're going to draw the lines sooner rather than later. We're going to fight hard for a district, and whatever the district looks like, I'll fight hard to keep it and represent it as best I can."
Buerkle said her district contains a sizable population of Sudanese immigrants and she mentioned a particular interest in the problems in Africa.
"The famine in Somalia—you know, we're such a kind, generous country—I think everyone has reason to be concerned about that situation, and making sure that those people that are most affected get what they need, the food and supplies that they need," she said. "I really would like the opportunity to go to South Sudan and go to Somalia, and see first hand the situation. You know, being a nurse, in the health care profession—global health, I'm on the global health subcommittee of Foreign Affairs—so those are topics and issues that are really of concern to me."
She wasn't entirely sure whether the position would involve a lot of foreign travel, or where it might take her.
"But I think we'll have an opportunity to engage in all of these global topics and all of these global issues that affect the world," she said.
