Kirsten Gillibrand: A Strong Progressive

When eight women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment against Democratic Senator Al Franken in December of 2017, Kirsten Gillibrand was the first to call for his resignation. The very next day, after an outpouring of similar calls for his resignation, Senator Franken stepped down. Gillibrand has a firm and long-standing track record of fighting for victims of sexual assault and promoting gender equity that goes well beyond Franken; she’s been pushing to fight sexual assault in the military. For her, it is ingrained in her family’s legacy of strong women involved in politics, with her grandmother being an influential player in New York State politics and the founder of the Albany Democratic Women’s Club. A Democratic senator from New York, Gillibrand joined what is now a slew of Democratic candidates for president on January 15 when she announced the launch of her exploratory committee from Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show”; she officially launched her candidacy on March 17.

Gillibrand grew up in Albany and attended Dartmouth College and then the UCLA Law School, from which she graduated in 1991. After practicing law privately, Gillibrand served as a law clerk in the Second Circuit on the U.S. Court of Appeals before being appointed as the Special Counsel to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Clinton administration. Gillibrand became involved in politics in 1999 and worked on Hillary Clinton’s campaign for Senate. Five years later, she ran for New York’s 20th Congressional District, beating its Republican incumbent. Later, when Hillary Clinton was appointed to be President Obama’s Secretary of State in 2009, Gillibrand was appointed to fill her seat, where she has remained since.

Though Gillibrand is a longtime Democrat, she has undergone a significant shift from centrist conservative to proactive progressive. At the beginning of her career, she possessed an A-rating from the NRA, opposed amnesty for illegal immigrants, and advocated for English to be the United States’ official language. In the decade since, that A-rating has gone down to an F-rating, and Gillibrand has emerged as a clear progressive leader on issues such as abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and making Medicare available for all.

Gillibrand commands respect within her party and amongst fellow candidates, but despite having a liberal approach, she has fallen behind her peers with no major endorsements, including none from all 21 of the Democratic New York State Congresspeople. Overshadowed by her Charles Schumer, she doesn’t have much exposure to her state’s Congresspeople, and she has had trouble finding support and wider institutional recognition. She doesn’t even register on the political aggregation site FiveThirtyEight’s endorsement primary, which tracks party insider support of candidates.

Gillibrand isn’t lacking in her positions or policies. She refuses funds from all PACs (Political Action Committees) and checks all the boxes for a progressive Democratic candidate: she favors addressing climate change, is a supporter of increased minimum wage and a working-class America, is an avid advocate for the DREAM Act and immigration, and boasts a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood for supporting women’s health and reproductive rights. What Gillibrand is lacking in is individuality in a field of 14 trail-blazing Democrats. Whether or not she can overcome that barrier will be the defining feature of her candidacy.