Christine Quinn

Christine Callaghan Quinn (born July 25, 1966) is an American politician.

A member of the Democratic Party, she formerly served as the Speaker of the New York City Council.

The third person to hold this office, she was the first female and first openly gay speaker.

Her mother died of breast cancer in 1982.

She attended School of the Holy Child in the village of Old Westbury on Long Island in New York, and graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1988.

Her maternal grandmother, Ellen (née Shine) Callaghan, was a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

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 served as 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.

In a 1999 special election, Quinn ran for New York City Council in the 3rd district.

The 3rd district covers the Manhattan neighborhoods of Chelsea, Greenwich Village, and Hell's Kitchen, as well as parts of West Village, SoHo and Murray Hill.

Quinn became the Democratic nominee and defeated Republican Joseph Mauriello, 89%-11%.

Because the district lines were redrawn after the 2000 census, her term lasted only two years.

In 2001 Quinn won a full term on the City Council, defeating Republican Michelle Bouchard 75%-25%.

She was reelected in 2003 after the districts were redrawn according to population shifts (all council districts must have an equal number of residents).

In 2005 she was reelected to a four-year term unopposed.

Quinn was elected Speaker of the New York City Council in January 2006 and reelected in 2010.

She is the first female and first openly gay person to hold this position.

Preceding the controversial lecture by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University in 2007, Quinn wrote to the school requesting that his invitation to speak be withdrawn due to his support of state-sponsored terrorism and hate speech, the latter particularly with regard to the Holocaust.

Her request was denied.

New York State stopped fingerprinting food-stamp recipients in 2007, but the practice continued in New York City under the Bloomberg administration.

In April 2008 the New York Post reported that Quinn's office had appropriated millions of dollars to organizations that did not exist, and that the money was then secretly routed to organizations favored by individual councilmembers.

In a news conference that followed Quinn said, "I had no knowledge of it; I did not know this was the practice".

She said she had found out about it only a few months earlier, alerted authorities, and ordered staffers to stop the practice, but that they did not listen.

Quinn hired a criminal defense lawyer to represent her in the federal and city investigations.

In 2009 she was reelected to a third term with 81% of the vote.

While on the City Council, Quinn served as Chair of the Health Committee.

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 bill (along with the Health Care Security Act, which ensures health care for grocery workers) passed over Mayor Michael Bloomberg's veto.

Quinn also "shepherded" a ban on indoor smoking at commercial establishments through the City Council; the bill passed 42–7.

Records showed that nearly 25% of those "secret slush" funds went to organizations in Quinn's district and that two of the biggest recipients had contributed to Quinn's 2009 mayoral run.

In September 2011 one of the city council's lawyers reported that the federal "investigation has been closed without taking up any action," but only after two councilmen were indicted at the cost of $100,000 to the city.

Under Quinn's leadership, the New York City Council led efforts to make Greenmarkets accept food stamps.

She also opposed requiring applicants for food stamps to be electronically fingerprinted.

Under New York City law, the City Council Speaker has authority over the yearly City Council funds, worth almost $400 million (in 2012), to distribute among 51 members.

This discretionary funding system, sometimes called the "slush fund", has been criticized, with some councilmembers alleging Quinn to have cut funding to their districts as a form of political retaliation.

She repeatedly denied these allegations.

She ran to succeed Michael Bloomberg as the city's mayor in the 2013 mayoral election, but lost the Democratic primary.

Quinn is a political contributor on CNN and MSNBC.

Quinn was born in Glen Cove, New York, one of two daughters of Mary (née Callaghan) and Lawrence Quinn.