Christine Quinn has exactly an hour for an interview, hard finish at 2:30 p.m. “Let’s talk through the picture,” she suggests as photographer Masato Onoda snaps away in her comfortably no-frills office. Before the bell tolls, Quinn will have discussed Donald Trump; Hillary Clinton; Brexit; the impending French election (we met May 5); Jaqui Lividini; a Titanic survivor (her grandmother); a charming jewelry fascination shared with her sister and late mother, and why she loves politics but not the clothes she wore as a politician.
Mostly, Quinn is revved up to discuss Women in Need, which holds its annual gala tonight. She became the organization’s chief executive officer in November 2015. Quinn speaks with passionate pragmatism, a condition perhaps innate but no doubt honed during her former (and maybe future) life as a hard-scrabble New York politician.(Her career before she lost the 2013 mayoral primary to Bill de Blasio.) She maintains that people have a distorted view of homelessness, believing that most homeless are single men, their plights exacerbated, if not driven, by severe mental illness. She counters that incorrect perception with a statistic: 70 percent of those residing in New York shelters are families; a full quarter, children under the age
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