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McCarthy (D-NY) has NRA's support for gun control
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Anti-gun Congresscritter Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) has NRA's support for gun control bill
Guns and Roses Into the Fray By VIVIAN S. TOY
AROLYN McCARTHY spent the better part of her spring and summer buttonholing colleagues in Congress to sell her latest attempt at gun control - a bill that would spend $375 million helping states update the national database used for background checks on gun buyers.
After four months of wheedling and cajoling, the House Judiciary Committee passed the bill, 30-2, in late July. She expects the bill will pass the full House this fall, because not only has she won the support of gun advocates in Congress, she even has the support of the National Rifle Association.
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This is not to say that the N.R.A. has become a fan of Mrs. McCarthy's. In fact, the gun lobby continues to label her overall position on guns as draconian and misguided. But if her bill becomes law, it will be a milestone for Mrs. McCarthy.
She stepped onto the political stage in 1996 as the consummate citizen legislator and Washington outsider, after being thrust into the national spotlight when her husband was killed and her only son seriously wounded in a gunman's rampage on a Long Island Rail Road train in 1993. But since her first days in office, this former nurse from Mineola has grown into a comfortably entrenched incumbent. She has retained the Everywoman manner that helped her sail to re-election twice, but she also has learned the nuanced art of political negotiation.
And while the woman they call Guns and Roses has not abandoned her signature issue, she also has delved into education and health care issues.
In the coming weeks, she will face perhaps her toughest political challenge as she campaigns for a fourth term in a race against Dr. Marilyn O'Grady, a Garden City ophthalmologist and a conservative Republican who in Tuesday's primary handily defeated Dan Frisa, the one-term congressman whom Mrs. McCarthy unseated in 1996, and Steve Irace, a former prosecutor.
Dr. O'Grady presents herself as a fresh face and more in tune with the predominantly Republican district than Mrs. McCarthy. Dr. O'Grady is prepared to wage a tough campaign against Mrs. McCarthy. But even Republicans say that Mrs. McCarthy will be extremely difficult to topple precisely because she has grown into her new role.
"She got to Washington to a large degree because she had endured great personal tragedy and then had become an American icon for gun-control legislation and victims' rights," said Desmond M. Ryan, a Republican lobbyist. "But she has effectively broadened her views since then, and she's evolved into a competent, capable and extremely attentive congresswoman."
Mrs. McCarthy seems entirely comfortable with what she has become. "After six years, I am a politician now," she said. "I've learned how to do the political maneuvering to get your bills passed."
When an amendment she proposed earlier this year to forgive student loans of surviving spouses of 9/11 victims was suddenly pulled after Republican leaders assured her of their support, she lobbied Democrats to defeat a different amendment on college loans that was supported by Republicans.
"It doesn't make you feel good," she said, "but if the only way to raise your voice is to defeat another bill, then that's what you have to do." Republican leaders have since promised to attach her amendment to another bill this fall.
"There are games you sometimes have to play," she said, "and it's really too bad, because we should be looking at how we legislate and not who wins."
One political quirk that has many puzzled is that despite running as a Democrat, Mrs. McCarthy remains enrolled as a Republican. She said a Republican colleague of hers summed it up perfectly for her recently when he said to her, "Everybody sees you as a Democrat, but I'll bet you haven't switched because it's the only thing you have left from your former life." She and her husband, Dennis, were both Republicans.
"Maybe I'm a rabble-rouser," Mrs. McCarthy said with a smile. "And maybe I'll switch the day I leave politics."
She knows that many in Congress initially had trouble taking her seriously, particularly in her first weeks when she was almost constantly being trailed by a gaggle of reporters seeking to chronicle her compelling personal story. "They didn't know if I was just a showboater, and they thought I might be a `gun nut,' a one-issue candidate who had nothing else to say," she said. "Let's face it, when I first got down to Washington, D.C., I didn't know anything."
But Mrs. McCarthy's critics say she has yet to make a mark outside the arena of gun control. "At this point, she still hasn't left much of a footprint beyond the gun issue," said Anthony Santino, a spokesman for the Nassau County Republican Party.
He and Dr. O'Grady, Mrs. McCarthy's opponent in the November election, also said that Mrs. McCarthy's voting record in Congress is generally more liberal than the Nassau County district she represents, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 20,000 voters.
"Her positions just don't jibe with what people in the district want," Dr. O'Grady said.
Mrs. McCarthy countered, "I don't think I would have been re-elected a second and third time if that were really the case."
Richard C. Himelfarb, a political science professor at Hofstra University, said Mrs. McCarthy was arguably to the left of her congressional district. "But part of her success has to do with Long Island's becoming less reliably Republican that it was before," he said. "So at some level she really is in step with a changing Long Island."
He noted that according to the Almanac of American Politics, she gets high marks both from liberal and conservative organizations. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gave her a 65 percent rating on her voting record, he said, which suggests that she is a fairly reliable, but not a certain, Democratic vote. But the conservative United States Chamber of Commerce also gave her a 65 percent rating. "That tells me she is not hostile to business and recognizes that small business is very important in her district," Mr. Himelfarb said.
Dr. O'Grady maintained that Mrs. McCarthy had not done enough for the district and noted that even gun control was "not an area where her record is one of great accomplishment."
Mrs. McCarthy suffered a bitter defeat in 1999, when she tried unsuccessfully to pass a bill that would require background checks on all buyers at gun shows.
Norman J. Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute, said Mrs. McCarthy "probably hasn't accomplished much on the gun issue, but you can't really blame her for that when President Clinton and the Democratic leadership were pushing for it, too. The politics of this are simply very nettlesome."
Her new bill to improve background checks is not as sweeping as the gun show bill. She has pleaded with her more liberal colleagues to keep their tougher anti-gun measures out of the bill, so it has the support of Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who once served on the N.R.A.'s board; it is likely to pass.
She named the bill the Our Lady of Peace Act, after the church in Lynbrook where a man with a record of mental health problems opened fire during a morning Mass in March and killed the pastor and an elderly parishioner. The suspect, Peter J. Troy, had passed a federal background check for gun buyers because many states have not added mental health records and other potentially disqualifying information to the F.B.I.'s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Her bill would help bring the federal system up to date.
Jim Kessler, policy director for Americans for Gun Safety, said the bill was "not a headline grabber" because it did not change gun laws and did not add new restrictions. "But if Our Lady of Peace passes and background checks truly become as instant as they're supposed to be, it will be much harder to argue against a law requiring background checks at gun shows," he said. "One bill leads to the other."
Mrs. McCarthy vows she hasn't given up on the gun show bill and is determined to reintroduce it. The next time, she said, she will define gun shows less broadly and perhaps more important, she will be much better prepared to fight for its passage.
"I know you have to stay on message, and you can't get distracted," she said. "I know what I have to do now."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/nyregion/15MCCA.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Guns and Roses Into the Fray By VIVIAN S. TOY
AROLYN McCARTHY spent the better part of her spring and summer buttonholing colleagues in Congress to sell her latest attempt at gun control - a bill that would spend $375 million helping states update the national database used for background checks on gun buyers.
After four months of wheedling and cajoling, the House Judiciary Committee passed the bill, 30-2, in late July. She expects the bill will pass the full House this fall, because not only has she won the support of gun advocates in Congress, she even has the support of the National Rifle Association.
Advertisement
This is not to say that the N.R.A. has become a fan of Mrs. McCarthy's. In fact, the gun lobby continues to label her overall position on guns as draconian and misguided. But if her bill becomes law, it will be a milestone for Mrs. McCarthy.
She stepped onto the political stage in 1996 as the consummate citizen legislator and Washington outsider, after being thrust into the national spotlight when her husband was killed and her only son seriously wounded in a gunman's rampage on a Long Island Rail Road train in 1993. But since her first days in office, this former nurse from Mineola has grown into a comfortably entrenched incumbent. She has retained the Everywoman manner that helped her sail to re-election twice, but she also has learned the nuanced art of political negotiation.
And while the woman they call Guns and Roses has not abandoned her signature issue, she also has delved into education and health care issues.
In the coming weeks, she will face perhaps her toughest political challenge as she campaigns for a fourth term in a race against Dr. Marilyn O'Grady, a Garden City ophthalmologist and a conservative Republican who in Tuesday's primary handily defeated Dan Frisa, the one-term congressman whom Mrs. McCarthy unseated in 1996, and Steve Irace, a former prosecutor.
Dr. O'Grady presents herself as a fresh face and more in tune with the predominantly Republican district than Mrs. McCarthy. Dr. O'Grady is prepared to wage a tough campaign against Mrs. McCarthy. But even Republicans say that Mrs. McCarthy will be extremely difficult to topple precisely because she has grown into her new role.
"She got to Washington to a large degree because she had endured great personal tragedy and then had become an American icon for gun-control legislation and victims' rights," said Desmond M. Ryan, a Republican lobbyist. "But she has effectively broadened her views since then, and she's evolved into a competent, capable and extremely attentive congresswoman."
Mrs. McCarthy seems entirely comfortable with what she has become. "After six years, I am a politician now," she said. "I've learned how to do the political maneuvering to get your bills passed."
When an amendment she proposed earlier this year to forgive student loans of surviving spouses of 9/11 victims was suddenly pulled after Republican leaders assured her of their support, she lobbied Democrats to defeat a different amendment on college loans that was supported by Republicans.
"It doesn't make you feel good," she said, "but if the only way to raise your voice is to defeat another bill, then that's what you have to do." Republican leaders have since promised to attach her amendment to another bill this fall.
"There are games you sometimes have to play," she said, "and it's really too bad, because we should be looking at how we legislate and not who wins."
One political quirk that has many puzzled is that despite running as a Democrat, Mrs. McCarthy remains enrolled as a Republican. She said a Republican colleague of hers summed it up perfectly for her recently when he said to her, "Everybody sees you as a Democrat, but I'll bet you haven't switched because it's the only thing you have left from your former life." She and her husband, Dennis, were both Republicans.
"Maybe I'm a rabble-rouser," Mrs. McCarthy said with a smile. "And maybe I'll switch the day I leave politics."
She knows that many in Congress initially had trouble taking her seriously, particularly in her first weeks when she was almost constantly being trailed by a gaggle of reporters seeking to chronicle her compelling personal story. "They didn't know if I was just a showboater, and they thought I might be a `gun nut,' a one-issue candidate who had nothing else to say," she said. "Let's face it, when I first got down to Washington, D.C., I didn't know anything."
But Mrs. McCarthy's critics say she has yet to make a mark outside the arena of gun control. "At this point, she still hasn't left much of a footprint beyond the gun issue," said Anthony Santino, a spokesman for the Nassau County Republican Party.
He and Dr. O'Grady, Mrs. McCarthy's opponent in the November election, also said that Mrs. McCarthy's voting record in Congress is generally more liberal than the Nassau County district she represents, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 20,000 voters.
"Her positions just don't jibe with what people in the district want," Dr. O'Grady said.
Mrs. McCarthy countered, "I don't think I would have been re-elected a second and third time if that were really the case."
Richard C. Himelfarb, a political science professor at Hofstra University, said Mrs. McCarthy was arguably to the left of her congressional district. "But part of her success has to do with Long Island's becoming less reliably Republican that it was before," he said. "So at some level she really is in step with a changing Long Island."
He noted that according to the Almanac of American Politics, she gets high marks both from liberal and conservative organizations. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gave her a 65 percent rating on her voting record, he said, which suggests that she is a fairly reliable, but not a certain, Democratic vote. But the conservative United States Chamber of Commerce also gave her a 65 percent rating. "That tells me she is not hostile to business and recognizes that small business is very important in her district," Mr. Himelfarb said.
Dr. O'Grady maintained that Mrs. McCarthy had not done enough for the district and noted that even gun control was "not an area where her record is one of great accomplishment."
Mrs. McCarthy suffered a bitter defeat in 1999, when she tried unsuccessfully to pass a bill that would require background checks on all buyers at gun shows.
Norman J. Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute, said Mrs. McCarthy "probably hasn't accomplished much on the gun issue, but you can't really blame her for that when President Clinton and the Democratic leadership were pushing for it, too. The politics of this are simply very nettlesome."
Her new bill to improve background checks is not as sweeping as the gun show bill. She has pleaded with her more liberal colleagues to keep their tougher anti-gun measures out of the bill, so it has the support of Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who once served on the N.R.A.'s board; it is likely to pass.
She named the bill the Our Lady of Peace Act, after the church in Lynbrook where a man with a record of mental health problems opened fire during a morning Mass in March and killed the pastor and an elderly parishioner. The suspect, Peter J. Troy, had passed a federal background check for gun buyers because many states have not added mental health records and other potentially disqualifying information to the F.B.I.'s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Her bill would help bring the federal system up to date.
Jim Kessler, policy director for Americans for Gun Safety, said the bill was "not a headline grabber" because it did not change gun laws and did not add new restrictions. "But if Our Lady of Peace passes and background checks truly become as instant as they're supposed to be, it will be much harder to argue against a law requiring background checks at gun shows," he said. "One bill leads to the other."
Mrs. McCarthy vows she hasn't given up on the gun show bill and is determined to reintroduce it. The next time, she said, she will define gun shows less broadly and perhaps more important, she will be much better prepared to fight for its passage.
"I know you have to stay on message, and you can't get distracted," she said. "I know what I have to do now."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/nyregion/15MCCA.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878