Poll: NYC Mixed on Gillibrand, Negative On Her Gun Stand

NY1's new city poll suggests that New Yorkers aren't sure about Kirsten Gillibrand. Her approve/ disapprove/ don't-know split is 34/36/30. But she would certainly have done better if her gun-friendliness were not so well-known: while 18 percent said it made them more less likely to support her, 37 percent (!) it made them less likely to do so. (Interestingly, a statewide Marist poll has 21 percent of upstaters saying her gun politics makes them like her more, and 60 saying it makes no difference, so she would seem to lose more from those positions than she gains by it.)

Of course everyone involved is working on that: Gillibrand was murky on the subejct at her Sunday press conference, and Chuck Schumer, who actually predicted/demanded to Gillibrand's face at her introductory press conference that she would "evolve" on guns, pushed the subject again after her Senate swearing-in today. "She'll come to the big city," Schumer said, and "learn the damage that guns can create."

Gillibrand says she comes from a hunting family, so she probably already knows about the damage guns can do to flesh; presumably Schumer was talking about the emotional cost. But if she really needed educating in that, she'd be some kind of monster. Let us be charitable, and assume Schumer meant that she must learn who's running the New York Democratic Party these days, and what it takes to get along there.