Following a report about potential challenger Cenedella's 'personal blog', Gillibrand attacks
Kirsten Gillibrand. Photo by Azi Paybarah.
10:56 am Jan. 23, 20121
After a panel discussion on cyber crime this morning, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand seized on a New York Times story about one of her potential challengers, Republican businessman and anti-tax activist Marc Cenedella, whose personal blog reportedly featured posts about women, sex, and drugs.
"I think it fundamentally shows a lack of judgment," Gillibrand told reporters at the event at NYU's Kimmel Center. "And I have concerns because I feel like the nature of the rhetoric is very anti-women and very disrespectful and disregards women. And I think it's a matter of judgment that, and a level of inappropriateness, that's not appropriate for anyone seeking any office."
According to the Times, there were posts on Cenedella's blog about a "new holiday for men" that involved women providing steaks and oral sex, and a separate entry that endorsed a link to a Biblical justification of polygamy.
Representatives for Cenedella did not tell the Times whether Cenedella authored the posts, but a statement from the company said it was a "maintenance staging site." An unnamed adviser told the paper that the entries were from a previous site that had multiple authors.
In recent weeks, Cenedella has been traveling the state meeting with Republican leaders about a possible challenge to Gillibrand.
Last week, in his first on-the-record comments about the race, Cenedella attacked the senator for her support of the Protect IP Act, or PIPA.
"Kirsten Gillibrand almost destroyed the Internet itself with her misguided PIPA bill," said Bill O'Reilly, a spokesman for Cenedella, in an email responding to the senator's comments this morning. "That's a lot more relevant to New Yorkers than silly web links that appeared on a shared blog seven or eight years ago. Ms. Gillibrand should spend more time reading the legislation she sponsors and less time on muckracking opposition research projects. Pretty amazing that she wants to bring up the Internet at all this week."
On Friday, Gillibrand announced on Facebook that it was time to take "a step back and start over" on the bill.
Cenedella, who is on the "leadership council" of the anti-tax Club for Growth, has drawn considerable interest from local Republicans for his willingness to fund a large portion of what could be a very expensive race.
But his media rollout has gone somewhat less smoothly. A story in the Buffalo News last week reported that, on one of his western swings, former Erie County executive Chris Collins had been harshly critical of Cenedella's preliminary stump speech.
The Times story this morning noted that the paper had been made aware of the blog posts by an "opponent" of Cenedella. The only two declared candidates for the Senate race are Gillibrand and another Republican, Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos.
Gillibrand won election to the House in 2006 in a conservative-leaning upstate district in part by pouncing on and amplifying domestic-violence allegations against the Republican incumbent.
In early 2010, her Senate campaign reacted aggressively, if not swiftly, to a primary threat from former congressman Harold Ford.
Her Republican opponent last year, former congressman Joe DioGuardi, raised just over $3 million dollars for the campaign, to Gillibrand's $13 million.
This is the first time Gillibrand has explicitly criticized either of her potential 2012 challengers.
Ooo, if this report is true, women voters should avoid Marc Cenedella like the plague! If he supports polygamy, women might one day find themselves slated to become concubines in harems, because that's what polygamy is all about. Incidentally, polygamy was only accepted in the Old Testament, which is a Jewish book, not the New Testament, which is a Christian book. Both St. Paul and Jesus said a man should "have but one wife," so those who support polygamy are certainly not Christians. And while some (extemely backward) men might think polygamy is just hunky-dory (all that sex with multiple partners, while the women not only have to remain faithful to the man and take their turn in his bedroom, but they also have to share all the housework and child-rearing among themselves, while he doesn't have to lift a finger to wash a dish) men should question the mental makeup of any woman who is so unsure of herself that she feels she must have other women help her to run a household. Such women haven't grown up and mean big trouble somewhere down the line. And that's not taking into consideration the women's natural jealousy of one another as they fight to be the man's favourite, and it's also not taking into consideration all those umpteen MOTHERS-IN-LAW, all demanding why THEIR daughter AND HER KIDS aren't getting favoured treatment from the man ...................
Jancis M. Andrews