My first impressions of our new senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, were negative, and they hardly improved with her rapid abandonment of the ugly position she took on immigration reform as a congresswoman from an upstate district full of nativist white people to fit in better with the minority-heavy city she now represents. Although her new stance is no longer rabidly xenophobic, her instantaneous waffle shows she doesn’t believe in anything but herself. Not a recommendation for higher office.
That was before I actually knew much about her. But for the real sleaze factor that goes far beyond any mere shuffling of positions for opportunistic advantage, let’s delve into her professional associations:
Lawyer Gillibrand worked for the firm Davis, Polk & Wardwell for eight years, four of them as legal muscle for none other than Philip Morris, the world’s biggest cigarette maker. PM, later sued by the U.S. government for decades of conspiracy and fraud in peddling a deadly product, paid the firm $305 an hour for Gillibrand’s services.
According to a tobacco control advocate, Gillibrand’s name (her maiden name actually, Kirsten Rutnik) appears on 1,175 documents obtained from Philip Morris’ company files as a result of the 1998 mega-settlement with states. Four hundred of them remain confidential based on attorney-client privilege.
Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, later hired Gillibrand’s high-powered (Republican) lobbyist father in 2005. PM execs and its political action committee together contributed $24,200 to daughter Kirsten’s congressional campaign.
No doubt our new senator will argue that she was just toiling in the vineyards and couldn’t refuse her powerful bosses by not taking the tobacco case. That would make her a ruthless corporate toady and hardly the tough, independent ‘centrist’ that she likes to paint herself (with Chuck Schumer’s slavering assistance). In any case, she clearly did not feel it was inappropriate or unethical to perform these tasks, and we should judge her accordingly—especially when she waxes on about her concern for ‘children and families’.
Gillibrand and Paterson: with friends like these. . .
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