NY Senate Votes to Expel Anti-Gay Sen. Hiram Monserrate
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Citing his misdemeanor conviction assault on his girlfriend, the New York state senate has voted to expel Hiram Monserrate , by an overwhelming majority.
Senators voted 53 to 8, with one abstention, to remove Monserrate effective immediately.
According to the New York Daily News, Sen. Eric Schneiderman (D-Manhattan) said after the vote, “Sen. Monserrate’s abusive and unlawful conduct damages the integrity of the New York state Senate and demonstrates a lack of fitness to serve in this body.”
Immediately after last nights vote, New York Gov. David Paterson also called a special election for March 16 to fill Monserrate’s seat.
The Queens Democrat was convicted in October of misdemeanor assault, and was sentenced to 3 years probation, ordered to serve 250 hours of community service and undergo a year’s worth of counseling for jealousy and anger issues, for slashing his live in girlfriend, Karla Giraldo, in the face with a broken glass last year after dragging her across the lobby of his apartment building.
Monserrate is the first New York lawmaker to be expelled in nearly a century, and has vowed to mount a legal challenge to the ouster from his Senate seat, but he also said he would run to reclaim the seat in the special election.
“This is clearly a much, much bigger issue than just me,” Monserrate told his former colleagues during a 16-minute floor speech. “This is about the process and the rule of law.
The defiant Monserrate added he hopes none of them slip up one day and find themselves “at the mercy of certain colleagues with unfortunate political agendas.”
He also apologized to his colleagues and asked for their “forbearance and foregiveness.”
“I know that my behavior has brought unwelcome discredit to this chamber, and for that, I am deeply sorry,” he said. “But, as Rev. Jesse Jackson once said, ‘God isn’t through with me yet.’”
Monserrate was one of eight New York Senate Democrats who voted against a marriage equality bill that failed in December.
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“Slip up”? He beat the crap out of his girlfriend and sliced her with broken glass. He’s an abuser. And while waiting for his punishment from the Senate, he had the hypocrisy to vote to deny same sex marriage to GLBT couples who don’t knock each other across the room. Pathetic.
I am outraged that several “Democrats” deliberately endorsed violence against women by voting against expulsion.
The citizenry should now demand to know the terms of Monserrate’s probation and whether he is fully complying with them. The order of protection, for example, bans third party contact with Giraldo. Is that being respected? No manipulative notes passed from Monserrate to Giraldo via 3rd parties including Monserrate’s lawyers? Then too; tax payers are funding Monserrate’s counseling sessions. We should know whether we’re getting our money’s worth from the sessions. In them, is Monserrate acknowledging that he is an abuser and working on a plan that will prevent him from ever abusing again? If in the counseling sessions Monserrate is repeating the absurdities he presents to the media, then there can be no anti-abuse progress made in those counseling sessions. Being as Monserrate wants to tie up the court system fighting his expulsion, major media venues should ask whether he is working on his abuse-related issues in the counseling sessions. What the media should not do is toi give Monserrate a free public relations soap-box for spurting whatever nonsense he wishes to spurt.