And then there was a glimmer of what Diana Taylor, Freshman Senator might be like. “I think it’s a problem throughout the system,” she said, gearing up her delivery. “I think it’s a problem with Congress. I think it’s a problem with the ratings agencies. I think it’s a problem with the banks. I think it’s a problem with the population at large. Everybody’s going like this” she threw her hands up in the air. “And at the end of the day, everybody’s responsible in some way or another.”
As for what Ms. Taylor is responsible for, she still wants to tackle public health. She’s on the board of the Mailman School at Columbia and said her studies there had informed her thinking on things like microfinance “and what people actually need to survive and make their lives better.”
It’s still easy to imagine her getting involved in some tangential way, though—maybe even with her former boss, ex-governor George Pataki, who’s reportedly mulling a presidential campaign.
“Yeah, I don’t think that he’s going to run,” she said. “He’s an absolutely great guy, and if he decides to do it, I wish him the best. But I think there’s a pretty large field right now.” And there was the primary problem again. “You’re never going to get through a republican primary if you’re pro-gun control, pro-choice. He is a lot more liberal than run of the mill”.
Ms. Taylor self-identifies as a Republican, but is socially liberal herself, though fiscally conservative—a libertarian lite, perhaps. “I’m socially very liberal. I don’t understand why anybody cares who marries who. I think that guns should not be in the hands of criminals, and I’m rabidly-pro-choice. It’s nobody else’s business, and I’m fiscally quite conservative.” She says she may have inherited this from her family. “My mother has a bumper sticker on the back of her car that says ‘pro-family, pro-child, pro-choice.’”
So we were curious: where might she clash with the Mayor, whose politics occasionally differed. She shook her head, determinedly: “Not going there!”
editorial@observer.com
This story appeared in the October issue of NYO Magazine.
