It seems that New York Governor David Paterson will announce today that he is appointing second term House member Kirsten Gillibrand to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate. No sooner had the news hit the wires than talk began about a revolt in the New York Democratic Party over Gillibrand’s blue dog credentials and support for 2nd Amendment rights.

Representative Carolyn McCarthy of Long Island, a staunch supporter of gun-control laws, said in an interview Thursday that she would challenge a fellow Democrat, Representative Kirsten E. Gillibrand, if Gov. David A. Paterson names Ms. Gillibrand to the Senate.

With Caroline Kennedy having withdrawn from consideration as a possible successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the governor is said to be leaning toward selecting Ms. Gillibrand, a congresswoman from the Albany area. But her support of the National Rifle Association and co-sponsorship of bills like H.R. 4900 have outraged Ms. McCarthy, who was elected to Congress after her husband was killed by a deranged gunman in a 1993 massacre on the Long Island Rail Road.

Paterson clearly tried to be a bit cagey in this selection.

First, he sought to solve the Utica Problem which Caroline Kennedy posed by appointing an upstate politician. (Though taking somebody from the capitol region may not be what many supporters had in mind.) Also, by picking Ms. Gillibrand, Paterson manages to keep the quota of women in the Senate on an even keel after Hillary’s departure. If he wasn’t going to appoint an African-American like Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, she was likely viewed as a safe pick.

That might turn out to backfire with the Governor’s own party, though, as the article above suggests. Gillibrand is a blue dog all the way, with more than NRA support on her record. Considering that she’s the first Democrat to hold that particular seat in over 40 years, this isn’t terribly surprising.

Carolyn McCarthy doesn’t really seem all that likely to mount a serious primary challenge in 2010. She’s already 65 years old and her Long Island background coupled with her seriously left-leaning bent won’t win her a lot of support upstate. The threat itself, however, sends a signal of its own. There are other gun control advocates who may well see Gillibrand as a weak choice and mount a more serious challenge. All of this may bode well for moderate Republicans like Pete King, who is already mulling-over a run at the Senate seat himself. If his opponents get bogged down in internecine warfare, he might well be the first New York Republican Senator in nearly twenty years.