American Conservative Union backs Wendy Long to face Gillibrand
Wendy Long. Reid Pillifant
11:00 am May. 23, 2012
The American Conservative Union endorsed Wendy Long this morning in the Republican primary to challenge Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
In a statement emailed by the Long campaign, the ACU's chairman, Al Cardenas, calls Long "the strong choice for conservatives," owing to her "long record of work and support for conservative principles."
Long served as counsel to the Judicial Crisis Network for several years, and has made her ties to national conservative groups a selling point of her candidacy against two other Republican challengers, Representative Bob Turner and Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos. Long's campaign hopes to leverage that activist network to build a warchest to use against Gillibrand, who has nearly $10 million dollars on hand.
The ACU endorsement itself wouldn't seem to help much with Long's bottom line. The group's PAC, and its super PAC, each reported just over $10,000 at the end of April.
Through March, Long had raised just over $141,000, with $20,000 coming from two conservative PACs, Citizens United and the Susan B. Anthony List.
In what has become a preferred talking point of Republicans this cycle, Cardenas also said Gillibrand had "abandoned her moderate stances as a congresswoman from upstate New York on issues such as Second Amendment Rights to become a clone of the senior Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. I urge all conservatives to support Wendy Long in the Republican Primary June 26 and help her defeat Kirsten Gillibrand in November.”
