Rumor has it she may be the next senator from NY.
Kirsten Gillibrand
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
Adapted from the National Journal's Almanac of American Politics
The sprawling 20th Congressional District of New York clamps around the Albany metro area and includes much of the Hudson Valley—the grand river south of Albany and the smaller river, freshly fed by the Adirondacks, to the north.
The congresswoman from the 20th District is Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat elected in 2006. She comes from a politically sophisticated family: her father was an attorney and lobbyist with ties to George Pataki; her grandmother was a prominent Democratic activist in Albany who brought Gillibrand along with her on the campaign trail.
Gillibrand attended an all-girls prep school in Troy and graduated from Dartmouth College, where she majored in Asian studies. After law school at UCLA, Gillibrand clerked for a federal appeals court judge and served briefly as special counsel under Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, before going to work for a major New York City law firm.
Gillibrand’s run for Congress appeared improbable when she launched her campaign for Congress in 2005. The incumbent was four-term John Sweeney, a rising Republican star with a seat on the Appropriations Committee, who had never had a serious reelection challenge.
As the campaign progressed, Sweeney showed signs of rust and faced other distractions. Sweeney took leave from House voting for several weeks after he was hospitalized in February 2006 for treatment of vasculitis, a brain inflammation condition. He also had to contend with negative press surrounding two ski trips, a fundraising event in Utah that included dinner at the home of a pharmaceutical lobbyist and another that he took at state expense.
As late as August, polls showed Sweeney with a solid lead. But Gillibrand’s aggressive campaign put Sweeney on the defensive. In TV ads, Sweeney accused her campaign of making anonymous and intimidating phone calls to his wife.
In October, Sweeney faced the specter of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, when it was revealed that he had asked the House Ethics Committee for guidance on whether to amend a disclosure report for a 2001 trip he took to the Northern Mariana Islands with Tony Rudy, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in the scandal.
Then came a late-breaking revelation of a domestic disturbance that doomed his campaign. 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.” After initial denials, the Sweeney campaign conceded that state police were called to their home.
Sweeney had spent $3.4 million to Gillibrand’s $2.6 million; Gillibrand came out on top and won 53%-47%.
After the election, Gillibrand began posting the “Sunlight Report” of her daily schedule, which included meetings with lobbyists (though her schedule was not quite so prominently displayed as freshman Montana Democratic Senator Jon Tester, who followed a similar practice). Anticipating a competitive reelection challenge, she raised $668,000 in her first 3 months in office and launched aggressive constituent outreach efforts that included holding office hours outside grocery stores. |
