Drama doesn't stop in high school

Looking over the events that make up the last year of Senator Kristen Gillibrand’s political life, it may appear that she is fighting for her spot as Queen Bee in a competitive suburban high school. Since taking Hillary Rodham Clinton’s seat as New York senator in mid- December, unimpressed New Yorkers have watched Senator Kristen Gillibrand accumulate one failure after another. Even with her summer fighting for “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and anti-abortion Stupak amendment to the health care reform bill, Senator Gillibrand could not seem to catch the attention of her public. The public appeared to have forgotten about her.

Gillibrand is not eeking out her place amongst a group of pre-teen girls, however. Her latest nemesis comes in the form of conservative Harold Ford, a former Tennessee congressman who plans to run against her in the primaries. The tides have slowly begun to change as New Yorkers compare her viewpoints against Ford’s extremely conservative takes on gay marriage and abortion rights. According to a hopeful account presented in The National Journal Online, the percentage of New Yorkers who said they hadn’t heard enough about Gillibrand dropped from 58 percent to 44 percent.

Gillibarnd seems to have quite literally been born into and for her position. Born in Albany and raised upstate New York, Senator Gillibrand now lives on the banks of the Hudson River in Hudson, New York, with her husband, Jonathan Gillibrand, and their two young sons, five-year-old Theodore and one-year-old, Henry. After attending Albany's Academy of Holy Names, Senator Gillibrand graduated in 1984 from Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, the first all women's high school in the United States. A magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College in 1988, Gillibrand went on to receive her law degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1991 and served as a law clerk on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. During the Clinton Administration, Senator Gillibrand served as Special Counsel to the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Andrew Cuomo. She then worked as an attorney in New York City before becoming a Member of Congress.
Job creation and economic development have always been Senator Gillibrand’s top legislative priorities. Using her seat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Gillibrand has worked to increase investment in infrastructure, rural broadband, health care information technology, and renewable energy, and worked closely with the Obama Administration and Senator Charles Schumer to ensure that New York gets its fair share of federal dollars.

Most recently, Gillibrand has been making headlines as she and Ford square off about hot-button issues like health care and job creation. At the same time, each is struggling to avoid personal tax questions. But taxes are only part of the mini-campaign as each side attempts to highlight jobs that each Democrat has held that might not play very well with primary voters.

The Gillibrand campaign threw the first stone, charging that Ford needs to clarify whether he paid New York taxes on his income as vice chairman of Merrill Lynch before becoming a full-time resident here. Ford, after several days of confusing answers, says he has. The attack continued as the Gillibrand campaign referenced Ford’s banking connections, "New York depends ... on Wall Street executives to report their income honestly and appropriately," said Gillibrand adviser Jefrey Pollock, clearly playing up the deep public distrust toward Wall Street.

Not to be outdone, the Ford campaign followed with its tax-related rebuttal, saying Gillibrand needed to release all tax returns dating to her time as a "tobacco lawyer." Garnering public attention is not something with which Gillibrand has always struggled. The reference made by the Ford party is to a multiyear stretch in the 1990s in which Gillibrand defended tobacco giant Philip Morris against charges it had lied about the dangers of smoking. Lawyers working the case did so by choice and Gillibrand has since faced questions about campaign contributions made by those in the tobacco industry. "How much was the unelected senator paid to help big tobacco cover up the addictiveness of nicotine?" asked Ford spokeswoman Tammy Sun. "Did she file tax returns for her windfall on behalf of big tobacco?"

One of her recent political stands Gillibrand has taken up is that of Public Option in Obama’s health care reform plan. After a failed attempt last year, Gillibrand and 15 other senators are trying to revive the plan for a government-backed insurance plan. This revival has come in lieu of budget reconciliation, which would mean that the plan would be allowed to be passed with only 51 senators backing it rather than the former 60.

“Despite New Yorkers being widely opposed to the Democrats’ plans for health care reform and the ‘public option,’ Senator Gillibrand continues to align herself with the extreme left-wing of her party,” state GOP chairman Ed Cox said in a statement to the New York Post. “By urging parliamentary-style trickery and backdoor measures, Senator Gillibrand attempts to ramrod through healthcare legislation that would bankrupt New York State and cripple the country’s health care system.”
The Ford camp, anxious to perpetuate any argument, has said, “First, Senator Gillibrand became one of only seven Senators to vote for taxpayer funding of ACORN, and now she joins the gang-of-four supporting an esoteric rule-making device after failing to make their case to the voters. New Yorkers need a Senator who will legislate and govern in their interests, as opposed to the far left of the Democratic Party.”

While the future remains uncertain, Gillibrand has responded in turn. Making the case that ignoring the health care crisis is simply not an option. Her campaign has stated, “Ed Cox, Harold Ford, and the entrenched special interests all ignore the fact that New Yorkers support President Obama’s plans to reform health care.”

Recent polls put Gillibrand ahead of Ford. "The areas where he is most vulnerable and most out of step with New Yorkers are areas where she has led in her first year in the Senate," said Gillibrand spokesman Matt Canter. A Siena Research Institute poll found that Ford has 16 percent amongst Democrats in comparison to Gillibrand’s 42 percent.