When David A. Paterson, then governor of New York, appointed Kirsten E. Gillibrand
to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat in 2009, there was little feeling
that she would become a key voice in a movement of resistance from the
left. As a Blue Dog congressional Democrat representing an upstate
district, Ms. Gillibrand had an A rating from the National Rifle
Association. She had an uptown bearing but talked about the guns she
kept tucked under her bed. Working as a young lawyer, she defended the tobacco industry.
Recounting
the skepticism that surrounded her, Senator Gillibrand wrote in her
2014 memoir, “Off the Sidelines,” that she was regarded as “a parakeet,”
without original thoughts of her own. Upon Ms. Gillibrand’s
appointment, the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario ran an
unflattering picture of her with the headline: “Anti-immigrante.”
Representative Nydia M. Velázquez considered her a poor choice for the
job; others compared her to Tracy Flick, invoking Reese Witherspoon’s
portrayal of a grating teenager whose averageness is obscured by her
ruthless desire to ascend in the movie “Election.”
Ms.
Gillibrand’s reflections are without bitterness, and without calls to
vengeance; her critics were her teachers. “I was new at my job, and I
needed to address my inexperience and weaknesses head-on,” she wrote.
Last Sunday found Ms. Gillibrand delivering an impassioned speech at a rally in Battery Park protesting President Trump’s executive order curtailing immigration to the United States from a selection of predominantly Muslim countries. She was Tracy Flick recast as Norma Rae.
The anti-Trump revolution that has been fomented in the early days of
his administration has no use for conciliation or nuance and, taking
that as the measure for making friends and designating enemies, has
anointed Ms. Gillibrand as a soul mate in focused opposition. During her
eight years in the Senate, she has amassed a record far more liberal
than her earlier political dealings would have predicted, reversing her
position on guns, being a co-sponsor of the Dream Act and challenging
the military on sexual assault issues, but it is now, in this explosive
moment, that her transformation has come into high relief.
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Ms.
Gillibrand has been alone among Senate Democrats in voting against all
but one of the president’s cabinet picks (she voted in favor of Nikki R.
Haley’s appointment as United States ambassador to the United Nations).
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, to the disappointment of
many of her admirers, advanced Ben Carson as housing secretary. Young
progressive women in New York who have suddenly been making activism as
much a part of their daily habits as chia seed pudding have become
infatuated with Ms. Gillibrand, who has long drawn the adoration of the
Sheryl Sandbergs of the world — members of the celebrity-feminist
corporate class that we now know women seeking the presidency cannot
rely on solely.
A
few weeks ago, at a convening of hundreds of Brooklynites organizing to
counter the Trump administration, I met a 30-year-old public school
science teacher named Liat Olenick who lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant and,
though never having been particularly political, was now going to three
or four protests a week, and spending what time remained calling elected
officials every day. Early on she cold-called Ms. Gillibrand’s
Manhattan office to set up a meeting with staff members to talk about
the fight against the cabinet choices. She was shocked to have her phone
call returned the next day, and to get a meeting shortly thereafter.
She said it took a month and a half of back and forth to elicit the same
response from Senator Chuck Schumer’s office.
“My
initial impression of Gillibrand was that she was a moderate voice in
the Senate,” Ms. Olenick told me. “When I thought about the firebrands
who could lead the opposition, she wasn’t one of them. But I think
people are feeling really surprised and hopeful about her. She has a
remarkable composure and thoughtfulness and she definitely has the
appearance of sincerity.”
It
is precisely that impression — that she isn’t scheming, that she isn’t
tacking left simply for political utility, even if, in fact, she might
be — that could put her ahead of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a mentor, in a
race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Both have been
talked about as prospective candidates. Liberals like the governor more
than they used to, and he has seemingly become more progressive,
standing up for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and behaving as a champion of
the marginalized, a warrior against future and present Trump-based
indignities. On Saturday night, when people flocked to Kennedy
International Airport to protest the executive order on immigration, the governor ordered the Port Authority to reverse its decision
to allow only those holding plane tickets to board the AirTrain,
proclaiming that the voices of New Yorkers would be heard. Still, he has
never shaken the impression that expedience is his first calling.
Ms.
Gillibrand is honest about what she did and didn’t know at the
beginning of her tenure in the Senate. She is willing to admit her
mistakes and the gaps in her knowledge. Swelling support for her comes
at a time when her closest colleague, Mr. Schumer, a fellow Democrat who
is the Senate minority leader, has been the target of repeated protests
from constituents who are either aggrieved over his approval of some of
Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees or who simply want to let him know they
expect him to lead the resistance without wavering.
On
Saturday, a big group convened outside his apartment building in Park
Slope, Brooklyn, pointing to the backs of the fake skeletons they
carried — the theme was “Get a spine.” Three days later, thousands more
marched to the building to remind him that he was being held
accountable. This was after he had already publicly wept over the
immigration ban and suffered the president’s derision for doing so, and
after he had announced that he would oppose most of the rest of the
cabinet appointments.
But
the fear of compromise is profound. “This isn’t the time for elected
officials to be overly tactical,” Bill Lipton, state director of the
progressive Working Families Party, told me. “This is the time for
people to demonstrate the moral clarity to inspire millions of people to
get involved in politics and start a movement. And Kirsten deserves
credit for really doing that.”
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