Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand dipped and dodged a full-on attack from her GOP challenger Mike Sapraicone over her support of Prop 1.
Sapraicone challenged Gillibrand on her assertion that Prop 1 would protect abortion and equal rights for women and argued that the amendment is vaguely worded to allow boys to play women’s sports and allow young kids to undergo gender reassignment surgeries without parental permission.
“It doesn’t talk about abortion. We need to remember this is New York state. We’ve had the most expansive abortion law in the country for over 50 years. This proposition is not changing the way abortion is. It’s only taking the rights away from parents,” Sapraicone said during one of the most heated exchanges of the Spectrum News/NY1 debate.
“You’re absolutely wrong,” Gillibrand immediately fired back, pointing to states like Connecticut and New Mexico that have Equal Rights Amendments, like Prop 1 is being billed.
“They have lawsuits that said you have an Equal Rights Amendment in your Constitution and you cover all male reproductive care, but not all female reproductive care like access to abortion is fundamentally unequal,” Gillibrand said.
“What are equal rights when I think of my daughter, when a man can go into that locker room and say he’s a girl and he’s going to compete with them,” Sapraicone shot back.
“Do you know how many examples there are in our state? It’s less than a handful. You are using a red herring,” Gillibrand responded.
Sapraicone said he was “pro life” but would not support a national abortion ban.
The two candidates also sparred over immigration
Gillibrand called for “right sizing” legal immigration into the US on top of dedicating resources to clearing a backlog of asylum seekers taking advantage of the laws currently on the books.
“We need a system that actually works and it’s broken right now. We need to rightsize immigration to make sure we have the right number of visas for the right number of jobs that we have within our communities, our states and our country,” Gillibrand said.
Sapraicone pointed out that Gillibrand has had 15 years in the Senate to address immigration, including a short-lived bipartisan deal that was in the works in the chamber earlier this year.
“I’m sure you’re a powerful powerful influential person in the United States Senate. Why were you not able to even get that bill on the floor of the Senate?,” he said.
The two took a more similar tone on Israel.
Sapraicone, said he wouldn’t object to Israel directly targeting Iran after a massive missile bombardment earlier this month.
“I think we should support Israel as best we can. We shouldn’t be micromanaging what Israel’s doing,” the former NYPD detective and private security firm owner said.
Gillibrand, took a more roundabout approach to her answer, but ultimately agreed that Iran has already attacked Israel, thus justifying a measured retaliation.
“If Israel decides they need to target some part of Iran’s infrastructure for nuclear weapons or missile production, some cyber response, it’s absolutely in their right to do that because they’ve already been attacked,” Gillibrand said.
Sapraicone is trailing Gillibrand significantly according to recent polling. A Siena College poll released this week had Gillibrand leading with 57% of the vote compared with Sapraicone’s 31%.
If successful, Gillibrand would go on to serve her third full term in the US Senate.
Wednesday’s debate was held at the University of Albany in the state capital.