Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand is New York’s junior senator. She had been in the House for just one term when Democratic Gov. David Paterson in 2009 appointed her to the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. After a bumpy beginning in the job, she began to earn respect for her tenacity, and won a 2010 special election with ease. Read More

Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand is New York’s junior senator. She had been in the House for just one term when Democratic Gov. David Paterson in 2009 appointed her to the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. After a bumpy beginning in the job, she began to earn respect for her tenacity, and won a 2010 special election with ease.

Gillibrand (JILL-uh-brand) hails from a politically sophisticated family. Her father, Douglas Rutnik, is an attorney and lobbyist who had close ties to Zenia Mucha, a top aide to former Republican Gov. George Pataki. Her grandmother, Polly Noonan, was a prominent Democratic activist in Albany and longtime companion of Albany Mayor Erastus Corning (1942-83). Her grandmother used to bring Gillibrand along with her on the campaign trail. Gillibrand attended the all-girls Emma Willard School in Troy and graduated from Dartmouth College, where she majored in Asian studies and attained fluency in Mandarin Chinese. She traveled widely, worked as a summer intern for Republican Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, graduated from law school at the University of California-Los Angeles, and did a United Nations internship in Vienna, Austria. After law school, Gillibrand clerked for a Reagan-appointed federal Appeals Court judge and served briefly as special counsel for Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo. She then joined a major New York law firm, Boies, Schiller & Flexner. Gillibrand raised money for Clinton’s first Senate campaign in 2000.

In 2005, she launched a quixotic campaign against four-term U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, a rising Republican star with a seat on the Appropriations Committee, who had never faced a serious re-election challenge. With hard work but also a lot of luck, Gillibrand won the seat. Although Sweeney was a strong incumbent, he developed some serious vulnerabilities during the campaign. He missed several weeks of House votes after he was hospitalized in February 2006 for the treatment of vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels. He got negative press about a fundraising event in Utah that included a ski vacation and dinner at the home of a pharmaceutical lobbyist. In April 2006, there were more negative news stories, including accounts of Sweeney’s visit to a college fraternity party. The state Democratic Party issued a press release asking, “What is a 50-year-old congressman doing at a frat party at 1 a.m.?”

Still, as late as August, polls showed Sweeney with a solid lead. He called Gillibrand a carpetbagger who lived not in the Hudson Valley-based congressional district but in a Manhattan high-rise. He also accused her campaign of making anonymous and intimidating phone calls to his wife. He emphasized his independence from the unpopular Bush administration and contrasted his working-class background with Gillibrand’s prep-school pedigree. Gillibrand did plenty of negative campaigning of her own. She demanded that Sweeney release police reports from two arrests in 1977 and 1978 and from a 2001 automobile accident; he called on her to release her income-tax returns. In October, it was revealed that Sweeney had traveled to the Northern Mariana Islands with Tony Rudy, an associate of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in a scandal that involved several congressional junkets to the islands. Then, one week before the election, the Albany Times Union reported that Sweeney’s wife had called local police in December 2005 to complain that the congressman was “knocking her around.” Sweeney’s campaign at first insisted that the police report on the incident was “false and concocted by our opposition,” but he eventually conceded that state police were called to his home.

Sweeney spent $3.4 million to Gillibrand’s $2.6 million. But in a year when Clinton and Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer were heading to landslide statewide victories and Republicans were dragged down by Bush, Gillibrand won 53%-47%.

When she arrived in the House, Gillibrand began posting a “Sunlight Report” of her daily schedule, including meetings with lobbyists. She held “office hours” in grocery stores throughout the district. She got the committee seats she wanted—on Agriculture and Armed Services. On the issue of Iraq, she voted for a nonbinding resolution calling for withdrawing troops but also for a bill providing funding for the war without a timetable for troop withdrawal. She cast conservative votes on gun-related issues, compiling a 100% score from the National Rifle Association. Gillibrand said she grew up in a family of hunters and kept two rifles under her bed and that she “always believed in protecting hunters’ rights. … It’s a core value for our region and our state.” She opposed driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and voted for a controversial bill granting immunity to telecommunications companies that had cooperated with government requests for warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens’ communications.

Defending the seat for the first time in 2008, Gillibrand did prodigious fundraising and collected $4.6 million. Her opponent was state Republican Chairman Sandy Treadwell, who spent nearly $6 million of his own money on his campaign. But Gillibrand’s moderate-to-conservative stands on issues paid off. She won 62%-38%.

When Clinton was named President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for secretary of State, Gillibrand was not the first person to spring to mind as a likely Clinton successor. Paterson considered appointing New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, which would have removed Cuomo as a possible primary opponent to Paterson in 2010. But Paterson also gave serious thought to appointing Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late president. But after Kennedy performed weakly in a series of upstate public appearances and in an interview with The New York Times, she withdrew. Two days later, Paterson announced that he was appointing Gillibrand, a surprise pick considering that several more-prominent political figures and more- senior House members were interested. But arguing in Gillibrand’s favor was her moderate politics on some issues.

On Jan. 27, 2009, Gillibrand was sworn in as the youngest U.S. senator. She held early meetings with Paterson, Clinton, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, New York’s senior senator and a member of the Democratic leadership. Soon afterward, Gillibrand began modifying some of her positions that were out of step with the party, particularly on gun control. “There’re a lot of concerns in many of our city communities about gun violence, about keeping our children safe, and keeping guns out of the hands of criminals,” she said. Gillibrand subsequently opposed Senate amendments that would have allowed licensed gun owners to carry concealed firearms across state lines and repealed the District of Columbia’s tough gun laws.

But she had to contend with a variety of unwanted developments. The New York Times published an unflattering front-page article in March 2009 that said Gillibrand, as a lawyer for Philip Morris in 1996, helped defend the tobacco company against allegations that it lied about the existence of internal research on the health effects of smoking. Within weeks of her appointment, news stories began appearing about potential Democratic primary challengers, including Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Steve Israel and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. By January 2010, an even more prominent possible opponent surfaced—former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford, who had moved to New York three years earlier to become an adviser to Merrill Lynch after losing a bid for a Senate seat in his home state. A savvy and ambitious centrist, he called on her to drop her support for health care legislation and questioned whether she was independent enough to represent the state.

Gillibrand, however, had two powerful patrons—Schumer and Obama. They personally lobbied would-be challengers to give her a clear path to the nomination. At the same time, Schumer—who was known for being less than thrilled at having to often share the spotlight with Clinton—seemed to delight in taking his new colleague under his wing. He pressed Senate leaders to give her the committee assignments she desired, put her name next to his on project funding announcements in the state and introduced her to deep-pocketed Democratic donors. “He does look after me in a lot of ways,” Gillibrand told The Times in May 2009.

Ford initially was undaunted by such strong support, saying he would not be “bullied or intimidated” by “party bosses.” He and Gillibrand traded barbs in the news media throughout the early months of 2009 while he traveled the state. Nevertheless, in early March, he announced that he, too, would not run. He said he had “examined this race in every possible way,” but arrived at the conclusion that a divisive, costly and negative primary would only benefit the Republicans.

Gillibrand turned her full focus to legislating. The reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, passed into law in the lame-duck session of 2010, included a number of her proposals, such as banning junk food from schools while establishing nutritional standards for other schools. She worked to win a ban on drop-side cribs that were blamed for causing 32 infant deaths. She joined with several senators to get a bipartisan bill through committee requiring senators to post online their earmark requests for home-state funding projects. Meanwhile, she was able to banish any remaining doubts among Democrats about whether she was a reliable vote. In 2010, according to the National Journal’s rankings, she was tied with Schumer as the 10th most liberal member of the Senate.

The issue that brought Gillibrand the most attention by far was her call for repeal of the 17-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring openly gay military service members. She introduced legislation in July 2009 at a time when interest in the issue was lagging—its leading champion, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, was dying of cancer. In subsequent months, she lobbied former House colleagues as well as fellow senators, pushed for hearings and set up a website featuring videos of gay and lesbian veterans telling their stories. “If you care about national security, if you care about our military readiness, then you will repeal this corrosive policy,” she said in an emotional floor speech shortly before it passed the Senate. It became law soon thereafter, earning her widespread praise from progressive and gay rights groups.

Gillibrand’s poll numbers remained lackluster throughout 2009, giving some Republicans hope for the 2010 special election for the remainder of Clinton’s term, which was to be held concurrently with the general election. But by April 2010, Gillibrand had amassed a $6 million war chest, and GOP luminaries like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Gov. George Pataki took a pass. She easily dispatched primary challenger Gail Goode, a New York lawyer. In the general election, her opponent was former Rep. Joseph DioGuardi, an accountant from Westchester County. He assailed her support for the economic stimulus bill and other Democratic priorities while blaming her for being unable to prevent the state from losing jobs. But he remained unknown throughout much of the state, and Gillibrand coasted to re-election 63%-35%. She will be on the ballot again in 2012 for a full six-year term.