Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn may have a (controlled?) disagreement over the living wage bill, but that doesn't mean Bloomy won't attend Quinn's wedding this Saturday--and dole out some serious dough on a wedding gift.
“You know, I probably should go to the bridal registry of some place or other,” the mayor said Tuesday, according to The New York Daily News, explaining that he'd make a donation to a charity chosen by Quinn and bride-to-be Kim Catullo. “But it’s just easier, say — and I think in this case, I think Chris Quinn would appreciate that more ... than, you know, another mug, silver spoon, whatever plate.”
Quinn, who like her fiancé lost her mother to cancer, told reporters they had a good cause in mind.
“Kim and I have created a donation fund at Memorial Sloan-Kettering (Cancer Center) in memory of our mothers,” Quinn said. “I appreciate the mayor’s generosity to that fund. That’s very nice.”
(This isn't the first time, of course, that billionaire Bloomberg has played the philanthropist, and made donations to the fight against cancer. Just last month hizzoner visited Vietnam and pledged $220 million to World Tobacco Control, an anti-smoking nonprofit).
When Quinn and Catullo share vows Saturday, it will be one of the highest-profile same-sex marriages in New York's-- and the country's-- history. The New York Times takes a look at the guest list:
On the evening of May 19, Ms. Quinn will marry her girlfriend, Kim M. Catullo, at the Highline Stages, an event space in the meatpacking district. Judith S. Kaye, a former chief judge of the state, will officiate; the nearly 300-person guest list includes the mayor, the governor and New York’s two United States senators.
Bloomberg and Quinn, of course, were two of New York's most vocal advocates for gay marriage last year during the run-up to the passage of the marriage equality act.
Quinn, considered a frontrunner to succeed Bloomberg as mayor, insists there's nothing political about her wedding.
“There’s really not a political implication to this for me as it relates to electoral politics,” Quinn told The Times. “We’re trying to make it really a day, a night that’s about friends and family and us.”