Vogue: In Hillary’s Footsteps: Kirsten Gillibrand

[racaulk]

U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a petite woman with pale-blue eyes and perfectly coiffed blonde hair, is sitting at a long table in a huge barn on a farm in upstate New York. There are great sacks of onions piled up to the ceiling on pallets and a few pieces of hulking equipment used during the harvest. It’s a safe bet that this barn has been spiffed up for the senator’s visit, a very special occasion for the family that lives here. It is one of those intoxicating August afternoons—cool and dry with a gentle breeze and big puffy white clouds set against a brilliant blue sky so perfect it seems fake.

This kind of event, when staged by a different sort of politician, one less finely attuned to small-town attitudes, could strike a casual observer as too perfect to be real. But Gillibrand is nothing if not genuine, and through sheer force of personality she bends the occasion to suit her style, which is essentially folksy and earnest. She radiates kindness. But she is also direct and no-nonsense. Despite the fact that she is a Democrat (and a fairly progressive one, at that) and worked for fifteen years as a hotshot Manhattan lawyer, she seems utterly at ease among this crowd of mostly Republican farmers, with their rough hands and weathered faces. Indeed, when she arrived moments earlier—in a plain-Jane beige linen suit and flat shoes—she walked around the room and introduced herself to everyone, including the children, shaking hands and looking everyone directly in the eyes: “Thank you for coming out today.”

She tells the farmers that her goal is to understand their worries and concerns so that she can begin to create a list of New York State’s specific priorities for the farm bill, which will be written in 2012, as it is every five years. They will do most of the talking, she tells them. She is here to listen. And talk they do, with surprising intensity and an impressive fluency in the legislative language of Washington, D.C. Gillibrand studiously takes notes while the farmers talk for nearly an hour—about immigration policy, land conservation, the estate tax, the price of milk. When she does speak, she displays a dazzling mastery of arcane agricultural policy (Gillibrand is the first senator from New York to be on the Senate Agriculture Committee in nearly 40 years). In fact, when she is introduced by Chris Pawelski, the man who owns this farm, he says, “Often when you deal with a member of the Senate, you have to explain the issues in very simple terms. But the senator had an immediate grasp of complex issues; we were able to talk to her in technical terms. Her appointment to fill the rest of Secretary of State Clinton’s term was the best possible choice for farmers in this state.” After an enthusiastic round of applause, Pawelski says, “One final point: We were born one day apart. She is one day older than me.” After a beat, Gillibrand leans into her mic and deadpans, “You will be doing what you’re told,” and everyone laughs.

As the crowd files out of the barn, I express admiration to one of the senator’s aides for his boss’s ability to charm a roomful of Republicans, and he says, “She can do the same thing on derivatives, comfortably rapping about financial markets. She walks into these huge churches in Brooklyn and Queens and starts talking about the asthma rates and the environmental-justice movement. It’s just her comfort level with so many subjects.” This reminds me of something Tina Brown, the editor in chief of The Daily Beast, told me: “People underestimate how smart Senator Gillibrand is. I hosted a dinner for her to meet a number of CEOs and media figures, and in conversation she was brilliant in her analysis of the economic meltdown. And she is an amazing fund-raiser . . . an unstoppable machine when she works the room.”

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Link: http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/in-hillarys-footsteps-kirsten-gillibrand/

This is a fantastic article on the junior Senator from New York. Definitely worth the read. :hi:

[Rhiannon12866]

1. K&R for my senator and former congresswoman!

She's terrific! :patriot:

[Danascot]

2. Great article on my Senator

I am so proud of Kristen. New York couldn't ask for a better senator. If you don't know much about her, this article is a great introduction. It captures who she is perfectly.

I've had the pleasure of meeting her a few times and hearing her handle a crowd including an upstate Chamber of Congress audience of mostly Republicans. Even they liked her (though they weren't happy about it).

In addition to her encyclopedic knowledge of any issue, the thing that I really like is her very practical and ideology free attitude toward dealing with problems. Her approach is basically, here's a problem, here are the issues around it, here's what I think is the way to solve it, here's why it will work and here's what the result will be. The way she lays out her positions is irrefutable because it's clear they will work.

IMO she has the best mind in public life, on par with Rachel Maddow. If all our elected representatives were like her, the US would be on its way to greatness instead of decline.