Kate Browning's Troubling Views on Civil Rights

On June 26, voters across New York will go to the polls to decide the future of their state’s politics through primary elections. The 2018 midterms are a critical for desperate Democrats, hoping to retake the House of Representatives for the first time since the 2010 Census and subsequent redistricting. Polling indicates historic levels of excitement on both sides of the aisle, and leaders think this could finally be the year. Not wanting to leave it to chance, they’ve been thumbing the scales in favor of more conservative candidates they see as having the best shot of winning.

One such candidate is Kate Browning in New York’s 1st Congressional District, which went for Donald Trump in 2016 by nine points. Of the five Democrats running in her primary, Browning is the only one who has not endorsed Medicare For All. A former Suffolk County Legislator from Shirley, NY, she is best known for her salt of the earth, blue collar appeal, and her no nonsense, tough on crime outlook. Browning currently boasts the support of heavy hitters like Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Women’s Equality Party, former Congressman Tim Bishop, and former New York State Democratic Party Chair Judith Hope, all of whom hope she will be able to muster the votes needed to oust two-term Republican Congressman and outspoken Trump ally Lee Zeldin.

However, that may prove more difficult than expected given that some of her positions—past and present—on a number of hot button issues from abortion to civil rights and immigration, may not inspire likely Democratic voters.

After obtaining US citizenship in 2000, Browning became a member of the Right To Life Party which was founded in 1970 to oppose legal abortion in New York. She would keep her affiliation for two years until the party failed to gain enough signatures to appear on the ballot.

In the past, when the issue has come up, Browning’s response has been to dismiss it, and imply ignorance of what the party was. She told Newsday that she has “always believed in a woman’s right to choose,” noting that she had only just become a citizen in 2000, and was not yet politically involved (that would come three years later, with her first successful run for county legislator).

However, Browning’s response rings hollow considering the fact that by 2000, she’d already been living in the US for nearly eleven years. She and her husband moved to Shirley, NY, from Germany in 1989.

On the campaign trail, Browning has repeatedly affirmed that her views mirror those of former Vice President Joe Biden—religious but pro-choice—and stressed the importance of access to abortions, but in an appearance with the East End Action Network from January, she suggested an alternative.

“If you’re going to say, ‘no more abortions,’ then you better put the money behind those babies,” Browning told interviewer Rebecca Dolber. “[B]ecause they may be born to single parents who have no money or be born with severe disabilities that we need to be responsible for and make sure that they’re taken care of for.”

Abortion isn’t the only issue where Browning’s views may raise eyebrows. The wife of a law enforcement officer, Browning has a tendency to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt.

In a Facebook live appearance from April, Browning told viewers that there is a “balance” between Black Lives Matter (BLM) and responses to it from the right. “Yes, all lives matter,” she said echoing the deliberate misrepresentation of BLM’s central premise as a way of downplaying it. Continuing on, she suggested that officers who break protocol and violate policy should be held accountable, but added that “there has been a record number of law enforcement officers who have been murdered.”

“We have to respect our law enforcement,” explained Browning. “We cannot blanket all law enforcement as being evil or improper because of a few incidents that have occurred.”

Browning’s refusal to criticize the police could prove especially problematic as it pertains to immigration in light of recent news about ICE detention centers and their treatment of children. As a Suffolk County legislator, Kate Browning chaired the Public Safety Committee. On her watch, ICE began renting space in the Suffolk County Jail to detain undocumented immigrants—men, women, and children.

According to a December 2017 report from Newsday:

The new detention deal, adding Riverhead to that complement of space available to ICE, specifies an allotment of beds, with 100 set aside for men, 30 for women and 20 for juveniles, according to the agreement.

The new deal significantly boosts the reimbursement rates paid by the federal government, to $200 a day for adults and $225 for children, up from the $123.86 paid under the old agreement for male criminal suspects. Hourly rates for guard and transportation costs are also being elevated.

Browning told Newsday that the agreement had never come before the legislature. She expressed concern at the time with the financial side of the arrangement. But she has since defended the deal on the campaign trail and the use of administrative warrants, which have a significantly lower threshold for probable cause than in criminal cases (simple government interest suffices), to snatch up undocumented immigrants.

In a forum with progressive opponent Elaine Dimassi, when asked about the immigrant detainment, a visibly uncomfortable Browning condemned detention without probable cause, but assured the audience that that was not happening. According to Browning, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s office had provided her a list of those undocumented immigrants detained by ICE at the jails, and all had been picked up with probable cause for serious offenses. “These are rapists, these are people who have committed sexual assault,” she said, adding that “criminals don’t belong on our streets period.”

On Twitter, Browning denied that any children were being held at the Suffolk County Jail despite the reports of the facility’s 20 bed allotment for juveniles and specified federal reimbursement rate for “children.” I was unable to reach a spokesperson for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office, but was told on background that the Newsday report was incorrect and that the youngest held at the jail were 16-year-olds. My requests for data on those detained went unanswered.

ICE has been operating on Long Island with the cooperation of the Suffolk County police, rounding up students based on vague accusations of gang involvement—often based on evidence as weak as wearing non prohibited sports attire in school—and shipping them off to detainment centers to await deportation.

Browning has always portrayed herself a tough on crime crusader. And while perhaps not openly hostile to the immigrant community, she has appeared blind to it at times.For example, as part of an effort to combat drug dealers, she proposed legislation that would have required purchasers of prepaid cell phones to provide an identification to the seller for entry into a registry which would be accessible by law enforcement.

“Presented as an anti-crime measure, this misguided proposal would violate the privacy rights of anyone who chooses to purchase prepaid phones. It would treat innocent people as criminal suspects for merely purchasing a cell phone,” the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote of the bill at the time, noting that while the measure would have unintended consequences for groups like immigrants, the poor, and domestic abuse victims, it would do little to prevent crime. “It would target the poor and would have a disproportionate effect on Latinos and other minority groups. And it would do little, if anything, to make us safer – it may well do just the opposite.” Browning’s bill was eventually tabled, but in 2016, she tried to resurrect it.

On another occasion, when a controversial bill came forward to crack down on “loitering”—an effort seen by many as an attack on migrant workers—Browning went out of her way to sympathize with a woman complaining about “illegals” who was speaking in defense of the bill. “I’ve seen what you’re dealing with,” Browning said, before questioning the speaker on whether or not the measure could be turned on union demonstrators. Indeed, this seemed to be her sole objection. She eventually voted against the measure.

For her congressional campaign, Browning has made a point of calling for a clean DACA and criticizing President Trump’s calls for a border wall, but there’s no getting around her record. Browning’s views are so controversial that one of her primary opponents, Vivian Viloria Fisher, a women’s health and immigration rights advocate and progressive, has outright refused to endorse Browning should she become the nominee, fearing her commitment on those issues was insincere based on her voting record in the legislature.

“We have enough equivocation or bending of the truth in Washington,” Fisher said.

Meanwhile, David Pechefsky, another of her progressive primary opponents, was noncommittal stating that he respected “Kate’s public service and her commitment to unions,” but cautioning that he had “serious concerns about her positions on a number of issues particularly around ICE and criminal justice.

“The onus is on her to reach out to all the different communities in the district and convince people that she really is a candidate that’s going to represent everyone,” Pechefsky added.

Still, not all of Browning’s primary opponents are so concerned. Dimasi told me she has committed to supporting the nominee regardless of who wins. DiMasi did note, however that Browning’s centrist platform might not excite younger voters, but clarified that they were symptomatic of a Democratic Party that is “very risk averse.”

“Fearlessness looks good on us,” she explained. “Younger generations need that in their candidates.”

Outside of the Twitter interaction, Kate Browning did not respond to requests for comment.