A New YorkDemocratic state senator running in the US congressional primary next week is digging in her heels after posting a controversial tweet that said lawmakers “past child-bearing age” were not well positioned to fight for abortion rights and should make way for younger legislators.
On 5 July, state senator Alessandra Biaggi, 36, fired off the tweet that, at the time, gained little notice.
“At the risk of sounding ageist, it’s still important to ask: when a majority of Congress is past child-bearing age, how fierce can we expect their fight to be?” tweeted the Democratic challenger to representative Sean Patrick Maloney, who has represented New York’s 18th congressional district since 2013, but is running in the 17th congressional district this year against Ms Biaggi.
The story might end there, except for the fact that, with only a few days to go in the tight New York congressional primary race, a pro-Maloney group breathed new life into the controversy-stirring remark by plastering the quote onto campaign materials dispersed this week.
A subsequent tweet attached to the original 5 July posting attempted to clarify the state senator’s comments: “And let me be [very] clear: it’s not that we don’t need our elders in office; it’s that they are well represented and must make space for younger leaders.”
Despite her earlier attempts to assuage any accusations of ageism, the response in recent days has been much icier among the Democratic congressional candidate’s colleagues.
Senator Biaggi’s 82-year-old Democratic peer, Sandra Galef, a Putnam County assemblywoman, decried the 36-year-old’s comments as discriminatory for both age and sex.
“I was elected to the assembly when I was 52. I was of post-child-bearing age. Why would she say this? The people who vote are 50 and older. Why would you want to divide people by age?” said Ms Galef in an interview with the New York Post.
The 82-year-old lawmaker also confirmed that she fully intended to back Ms Biaggi’s rival in the race for the Democratic nomination.
For her part, the progressive candidate does not appear to be letting the negative feedback from some of her colleagues deter her from pressing on in defending a post she characterised on Monday as one of her “finest tweets”.
“Hudson PAC thanks for sharing one of my finest tweets w/voters in NY-17 who believe that age diversity in our leaders is quite important for results,” Ms Biaggi wrote, alongside a picture of the fliers that displayed the original message from July.
Ms Biaggi defended her remarks again after getting into a Twitter argument with political strategist Jennifer Cunningham, who is known for advising on Eric Schneiderman’s 2010 attorney general race and serving as a long-standing informal adviser to the campaigns of Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York state.
“@Biaggi4NY If you had any respect for me – or women over child-bearing age – you wouldn’t say it in the first place,” tweeted Ms Cunningham in response to an earlier remark the state senator had made about elected officials being “woefully unprepared to respond” to the overturning of Roe v Wade earlier this summer. “Politically, it’s also one of the dumbest moves I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand,” she quipped.
Instead of backing down, Ms Biaggi again defended the original merit of her tweet by tweeting back that “when a generation of elected leaders fails to protect our rights, and respond by sending fundraising emails, it merits asking whether we need new diverse leaders”.
When asked for comment about the original tweet, a spokesperson from Ms Biaggi’s campaign stood by the state senator’s remarks, noting that the original message was intended to highlight how the New York Democrat hoped to see a government “as diverse as our country”.
“Alessandra Biaggi believes our government should be as diverse as our country – including racial, economic, gender and age diversity – which is why we need more young people in Congress,” said spokesperson Monica Klein in an emailed statement to The Independent. “Just as we need more women, working people and people of colour.”
The Twitter dispute occurred less than a week before voters go to the polls in the heated primary race for the 17th congressional district. But the state senator – who has gained the endorsement from other progressives within her party, most notably representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – isn’t the only candidate in the race to weather last-minute controversies.
Just this past week, Ms Biaggi accused Mr Maloney of using his position as Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chief to redirect funds from the November mid-term elections to his own re-election campaign.
“Maloney is asking for money to help Democrats defeat Trump, but the link goes to his own fundraising page for his primary election against me,” Ms Biaggi tweeted last Tuesday, using the image from the mass text sent by the DCCC head as evidence for her accusation.
A spokesperson for Mr Maloney’s campaign, Mia Ehrenberg, told the New York Post that Ms Biaggi’s claims were incorrect, and the funds were being redirected to the November mid-terms.
“Representative Maloney has raised millions for Democrats all across the country and given nearly a million directly from his campaign to the DCCC,” Ms Ehrenberg told the Post.
Representative Maloney has also been criticised for dodging reporters’ questions. When he recently sat down for an interview with The Times Union – a slot for which he’d allotted just 15 minutes – he abruptly hung up on the interviewer with less than half of the time left.
The New York Democratic congressional primary is scheduled to run on 23 August.
