Christine Quinn

Christine Quinn
Speaker of the New York City Council
Incumbent
Assumed office January 2006
Preceded by	Gifford Miller
Member of the New York City Council from the 3rd district
Incumbent
Assumed office 1999
Preceded by	Thomas K. Duane
Constituency	Manhattan's West Side
Personal details
Born	July 25, 1966 (1966-07-25) Glen Cove, New York
Political party	Democratic
Domestic partner	Kim Catullo
Residence	Chelsea, Manhattan
Website	NYC Council: District 3

Christine Callaghan Quinn (born July 25, 1966) is a Democratic politician and the current Speaker of the New York City Council. The third person to hold this office, Quinn is the first female and first openly gay speaker.

In 2007, the New York Post named Quinn the third-most powerful woman in New York, after Hillary Rodham Clinton and Diane Sawyer. She was rated one of the "Forty Under Forty" by Gotham Magazine.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life

Quinn was born in Glen Cove, New York. She graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1988. She served as head of the Housing Justice Campaign for the Association of Neighborhood and Housing Development. Quinn entered politics to manage the City Council campaign of Thomas Duane in 1991, after which she was Duane's Chief of Staff for five years. She later became the Executive Director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, and was appointed a member of the NYC Police/Community Relations Task Force by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

She resides in Chelsea with her partner, Kim Catullo. Her former partner, Laura Morrison, is Chief of Staff to State Senator Tom Duane.

Political career

Quinn ran successfully for the city council in 1999. As of 2009, she still represents the council's third district, representing Chelsea, Greenwich Village, and Hell's Kitchen, as well as parts of SoHo and Murray Hill. In January 2006, at the age of 39, after serving on the city council for almost seven years, Christine Quinn was elected city council speaker.

In 2008, Quinn acknowledged the existence since 2001 of a practice of appropriation of funds to fictitious organizations; documents provided to The New York Times by Quinn’s office indicated that about $17.4 million of such funds were appropriated to groups with names such as "The Coalition for Informed Individuals" and "Firewood Senior Services."

Before becoming speaker, Quinn served as chair of the Health Committee, during which she sponsored the Equal Benefits Bill and the Health Care Security Act, which requires that city contractors provide parity in benefits between married spouses and registered domestic partners. This and the Health Care Security Act (which ensures health care for grocery workers) were passed over Mayor Michael Bloomberg's veto. However, the courts threw out the Equal Benefits Bill for conflicting with existing competitive state bidding laws. Quinn led the council's opposition to the mayor's West Side Stadium plan, helping to defeat the proposal.

Quinn has boycotted the annual St. Patrick's Day parade in New York because of the Ancient Order of Hibernians's policy against homosexuals marching openly (i.e., displaying signs, banners or badges advertising their sexual identity). She tried unsuccessfully to broker a deal with the organizers in 2006 to allow her to wear a gay pride pin. Subsequently, she was named 2008 Irish American of the year by the weekly newspaper Irish Echo.

Preceding the controversial lecture by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University in 2007, Quinn wrote to the university requesting that his invitation to speak be withdrawn.

In 2008, Quinn backed Mayor Bloomberg on a controversial bill that overturned voter-approved term limits and allowed for the mayor, city councilmembers (including her), and borough presidents to run for third terms, reversing the results of two successive public referenda. The Public Advocate and Comptroller both denounced this move; neither sought a third term. In June 2009, the City Council passed a budget that imposed a 40% budget cut on the Public Advocate's Office. No other city agency had its budget cut more than 6%.^{[citation needed]}

Just eight days before the 2009 elections, she endorsed her party's ultimately unsuccessful mayoral candidate, Bill Thompson. Quinn was re-elected in 2009 to her council seat and, on January 7, 2010, was elected to a second term as speaker by the 49 member Council. On November 8, 2011, Quinn was accused of being inpolite for chewing gum during her speeches and behind the mayor's speech.

in 2011, Quinn reached a budget deal that averted the layoffs of about 4,000 teachers and saved 20 city firehouses that were slated to close.

She, along with the New York City Council, has led efforts to make Greenmarkets around the city accept food stamps. She is also opposed to the practice of requiring applicants for food stamps to be electronically fingerprinted. New York state stopped fingerprinting food-stamp recipients in 2007, though the practice has survived in New York City at the Bloomberg administration’s request.

Quinn is expected to run for New York Mayor in 2013.

External links

• New York City Council: District 3 - Christine C. Quinn
• The New York Observer's Christine Quinn Archives
• Searchlight 2002 - District 3

Non-profit organization positions
Preceded by Matt Foreman	Executive Director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project 1996-1998	Succeeded by Jeffrey Montgomery
Political offices
Preceded by Thomas Duane	Member of the New York City Council from the 3rd district 1999–present	Incumbent
Preceded by Gifford Miller	Speaker of the New York City Council 2006–present	Incumbent