Three vie for chance to challenge Gillibrand

 The 2012 New York Republican Senate primary is scheduled for June 26. The contenders hoping to challenge Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in November’s general election are Wendy Long, Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos and U.S. Representative Bob Turner.

The Jewish Star compiled information about the three candidates from their websites.

Wendy Long

Long, a conservative lawyer, grew up in New Hampshire and is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Northwestern University School of Law. She has lived in New York for 14 years. She was a law clerk for Judge Ralph K. Winter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Long was a litigation partner with Kirkland & Ellis LLP when she left to assemble the Judicial Crisis Network (originally the Judicial Confirmation Network). She organized a national nonprofit group to help win Senate confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. She is a member of Mitt Romney’s justice advisory team. She recently opposed a bill that would require microstamping of ammunition sold in New York, believing that it would not reduce crime but instead cost New York jobs and money. She is concerned about the size of the federal government and the national debt, and would work to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Public schools are failing, Long says, and she considers improving public-school education an important issue. She is pro-life and an advocate of Second Amendment rights, and she supports a continued alliance between the U.S. and Israel. She disapproves of President Obama’s support of same-sex marriage, saying that it compromises the First Amendment and citizens’ religious freedom, and she wants it to remain a state issue. Long lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.

George Maragos