Gillibrand Spends Donor’s Money on Private Travel and Flower Power

She believes in income redistribution and that the rich have lived too high above the common people for far too long.

And now we learn that the good Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, 53, used much of her campaign funds in that spirit.

She spent $57,000 for flowers, $4,250 to pay for parking tickets, more than $450,000 for private jets, and $12,500 for tickets on British Airways, Aer Lingus and Iceland Air. And the money came mostly from wealthy donors who want the senator to stay in office for various reasons, presumably some of which are altruistic ones.

The New York Post was good enough to review her federal election filings over the past decade.

The good senator got some 25 tickets in Washington, DC, for “parking, photo enforcement, or minor moving violation[s],” a DMV spokesman told The Post.

The senator, so opposed to white privilege and entitlements, knows how hard parking is in DC. She can’t always park where citizens are required to park. When she got tickets, rather than pay them herself, she allowed her campaign donors the privilege. It totaled $4,250, which on average, is only $170 per ticket.

“There is a prohibition on using campaign funds of a federal candidate committee for personal use purposes,” an FEC spokesman told The Post.

Gillibrand, a flower child

She spent $57,300 on flowers — including flower deliveries in France.  As the Post noted, the equality-loving, flower-power senator “favor[s] upscale city shops, largely eschewing florists from her native Albany — or anywhere upstate. Gillibrand’s largest single flower expenditure was to New York City’s PlantShed, where she dropped $1,833.17 in January 2012. Her favorite New York florist was Manhattan’s Zeze Flowers — where she spent roughly $16,850.”

Gillibrand said the flowers were gifts for supporters.

But more than giving flowers to others, Gillibrand loves to give herself vacations. Campaign donors paid for vacations and Christmas trips to England and Iceland. How many voters she persuaded to support her in Iceland remains unclear.  Her house husband, Jonathan, is from England and they like to go there on holidays. What better way to enjoy the spirit of the season than to get the free vacation as a yuletide gift?

This could also arguably support the senator’s ideals on income redistribution, as records show many of her top donors have a higher income than her.

The good senator, like all true believers in income redistribution, believes that the cut off for government taking from others to give to those who make less is just above her salary level, which happens to be $174,000.

It is pretty clear that income redistribution has to work too for, as anyone but a stupendous dunce can see, there is no way Sen. Gillibrand could take all the trips she makes to Iceland, France and England on a salary of less than $200,000.

“The senator recorded 12 payments for travel-related expenses to British Airways. International flights charged to the campaign were recorded in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2018,” The Post reported.

In April 2018, Gillibrand hired a chauffeur in England, which she charged to her campaign. This way she did not, at least, get any parking tickets.

But, again and again, we see that the income-redistributing-senator gets high marks for practicing what she preaches. Instead of giving money to big, rich airlines like American or United, she prefers to support smaller owners of private jets.  She spent $462,900 of donors’ money on flights provided by the boutique charter service Zen Air.

The senator also spent donor’s money:

1. $390 at Hermès of Paris for no one knows what.  She called it “office expenses, ”
2. $435 at Hermes to buy gifts, she said, for unnamed supporters,
3. $500 for fine art photography from the Virgin Islands,
4. $300 for the New York’s Playwrights Horizon Theater for “research.”  This was truly fine of her. It turns out Gillibrand sent a staffer to watch “The True” — a play about Gillibrand’s untruthful grandmother, the notorious Polly Noonan.

The Post also took a moment to compare Gillibrand with the Empire Welfare State’s other great senator, Charles Schumer, whose private air travel was a third of Gillbrand’s — $125,000.

Schumer did not use campaign funds to pay parking tickets, spent only $1,350 on flowers and his gifts were not from France or the Virgin Islands.  His gifts were a bit cheesy, however. In fact, that’s what he gave as gifts – cheesecakes.

To wrap it all up and bring it home, the Post quoted Larry Sabato, a political analyst and professor at the University of Virginia, on how Gillibrand spends donor’s money.

“Why visit her husband’s family? What does that have to do with campaigning? If I was a donor to Sen. Gillibrand, I would want more information.  If I am going to give her money, I would like to know if it’s going to legitimate campaign purposes, and some of those don’t sound particularly legitimate to me. It may be legal but that doesn’t mean it’s within the spirit of the law.”

George Frobisher