The PowerlineBlog has the news that shocked many New York Dems:

New York Governor David Patterson has selected Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. I suggested early on in the process that New York’s large Demcratic congressional delegation might be the best source of a qualified Senator. In retrospect, I probably overrated that delegation, but in the end that’s where Patterson turned.

Gillibrand has only been in Congress since 2006, when she won an upstate seat the Republicans had held for years. She has not been a 100 percent, down-the-line liberal Democrat, having voted against the financial bailout last fall and having picked up the endorsement of the National Rifle Association.

As a state-wide office holder, Gillibrand may fall more reliably into line with her left-liberal party. Still, she seems preferable to Andrew Cuomo and Caroline Kennedy.

Read the Rest…

Steve Kornacki post on PolitickerNY that:

As unseemly as this is, there is – on the surface – something to it. Cuomo, like Eliot Spitzer before him, has skillfully turned the A.G.’s office into a veritable publicity machine, garnering wide media attention with high-profile prosecutions that, quite conveniently, will make for nice bullet points in future campaign mailers. Six years after his disastrously abortive gubernatorial bid, Cuomo’s has completed a magnificent image rehab.

Truly making the case to change the meaning of A.G. from attorney general to aspiring governor.