You Still Don't Read Much About Lesbians In American Politics, Right?

So wrong... in so many ways-- Gingrich, Molinari, Paxon

Chekov's last play, The Cherry Orchard, was performed for the first time in 1904. There's a production of it in New York next week-- free no less-- starring Ellen Burstyn and one of my friends snagged some tickets. I'm a Chekov fan; he's a Burstyn fan. I don't know much about her except that she was in The Exorcist and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore back in the '70s. I knew even less about Karen Burstein who I mixed her up with.

But Karen Burstein wasn't getting Academy Award nominations in the '70s and Ellen is the only Burstyn/Burstein in the NYC area she wasn't related to. Karen grew up on Long Island-- a 5 Towns gal-- and her sister was a state Supreme Court judge ands her sister was an editor for People Magazine and author and the other sister, Ellen-- the reason for my confusuion-- was a TV news anchor when I was growing up on Long Island. In the 70s Karen was a state senator and later worked for the good Cuomo (Mario) and then as a NYC family court judge. She ran for the Democratic nomination for Attorney General in 1994 and came in first of four candidates, beating an incumbent and a young Eliot Spitzer.

1994 was a bad year for Democrats. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was reelected to the Senate but Cuomo, running for a 4th term, was beaten by Republican George Pataki. Democrat Carl McCall was reelected Comptroller anyway but Burstein narrowly lost her bid to a third rate Republican from Buffalo, Dennis Vacco, 2,294,528- 2,206,188. [In 1998 Vacco was defeated by Eliot Spitzer and went on to a life as a sleazy lobbyist who barely managed to avoid a prison term.] But the reason he was able to defeat Burstein was because of Staten Island Republican boss Guy Molinari (who is still the Staten Island Republican boss). A couple of days before the election, Molinari outed Bustein as a lesbian. From the NY Times editorial:

Complaining that the Republican candidate for State Attorney General was "too much of a gentleman" to bring it up, Guy Molinari, the Staten Island Borough President, did bring it up. Karen Burstein, the Democratic candidate, is a lesbian, he said at a Columbus Day meeting of a police group, and for that reason not fit for the office.

Mr. Molinari, who is also New York City chairman of George Pataki's Republican campaign for governor, is half right on the subject. He is right to characterize himself as less of a gentleman than the Republican candidate, Dennis Vacco of Buffalo. He is contemptibly wrong to quarrel with Mr. Vacco's position that sexual orientation has no relevance to the job's qualifications.

Ms. Burstein, who has a comfortable lead in current polls, neither conceals nor promotes her homosexuality, and both candidates have rightly been content to treat her life style as irrelevant.

The only relevance of Mr. Molinari's remarks is their negative bearing on his own fitness for borough office and his responsible job with the Pataki campaign. Mr. Pataki was commendably forthright in denouncing the statements and calling on Mr. Molinari to "say that it was a mistake for him to inject this into the campaign."

Mr. Vacco also distanced himself from Mr. Molinari's statements but lamely refused to condemn them, saying he could not control his supporters. "Is my condemnation going to change their attitude, change their minds?" he asked. No, but it would make clear that he will not countenance a two-level campaign, the lower level being the gutter politics that Mr. Molinari brought to street level at the Columbus Day rally.

To make this story even more bizarre, Molinari was succeeded as the Congressman from Staten Island-- every congressman from Staten Island from John Murphy in 1973 to the current indicted mafioso freak, Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm, has been a criminal-- by his daughter, Susan (who now works as a lobbyist for Google and was responsible for Google funding ALEC). But back when she was still in Congress, there were constant rumors that she was a lesbian. She settled that, in the eyes of many, by marrying another congressman, Bill Paxon. Problem was that Paxon was pretty well known in gay circle as a closet case (and was the lover of Brit Hume's son, who Gingrich drove to suicide). He was chair of the NRCC and very ambitious, ambitious enough to lead a coup against Newt Gingrich that would have seen him replace Gingrich as Speaker. Dick Armey snitched-- he wanted to be Speaker-- and Paxon took the fall for Boehner and DeLay, who were both part of the plot. Paxon's political career was over and, naturally, he became a lobbyist (for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which handles Boeing).

After Paxon's affair with Hume was exposed and Hume killed himself, Molinari and Paxon blamed the Democrats: "[B]ecause Bill was 40 when we were married and hadn't been married before, the rumors were I was gay and he was gay." Today Guy Molinari is virtually the last Republican official still supporting Grimm. I wonder if he ever connects his outing os Burstein with what happened to end the congressional careers of his daughter and son-in-law.