Strength Rooted In Collaboration

Last week, after Barack Obama visited Gabrielle Giffords' hospital room, three of her colleagues stayed behind, Rebecca Traister writes:

In addition to her husband and parents, three of Giffords’s colleagues stayed in her room after the president left: Pelosi, now the House minority leader; Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida; and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who has lately edged away from her own pro-gun politics by removing the rifles she once kept under her bed. As Gillibrand told CNN, Giffords was squeezing her hand while she talked about how they wanted to grab pizza and beer together, and Wasserman Schultz was promising a New Hampshire vacation when Giffords first opened her eyes, a moment that Wasserman Schultz compared to the birth of her children. In this tableau are embedded hints of other kinds of mythic female strength, rooted in collaboration, friendship and support.

Sharron Angle'll Give Her A Run For Her Money

The Washington Post on the Senate majority leader's latest gaffe:

Harry Reid ...took a strange turn in his remarks during a fundraiser for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. During his remarks, Reid referred to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) as the Senate's "hottest member."

The Chairman And The Mayor

Preparing to become chairman of the New York state GOP, Ed Cox wants Mayor Giuliani to reconsider his plan to run for governor and take on Democratic Sen. Kristen Gillibrand instead.

Come Home, Arlen and Kirsten

On the Hugh Hewitt radio show on Monday, President Nixon's elder grandson, Christopher Nixon Cox, expertly game-planned the GOP's renaissance in New York state -- and if Republicans can make it there, they can make it anywhere. His segment starts about 11 minutes in. Executive summary: If the party were playing its cards right, Sens. Specter and Gillibrand would both be Republicans.

Give It Up, Pinch

Even "Huffington Post" didn't like the smell of the New York Times hit piece on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), speculating that the paper attacked her for representing the tobacco industry as a young attorney because it's still mad that Caroline Kennedy didn't get the Senate seat.

Plus The President Smokes: Film At 11

As a young lawyer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was assigned to represent Phillip Morris. While it's not actually a scandal, a New York Times expose goes on and on and on. It suggests that the Times hasn't gotten over Gillibrand being named to Hillary Clinton's seat instead of Caroline Kennedy.

Getting Gilly With It

"The New Republic" has ten interesting things about New York's new senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, including:

She's one of a few representatives to disclose her daily schedule online, so reporters and constituents can see who's got access to her. She also posts her earmark requests.

The Proof Is In The Sausage

The New York Times has two big stories about the state's new senator this morning. One is about how Gov. David Patterson muffed the selection process. The other is about its most excellent outcome, his choice of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, a feisty, intelligent, Mandarin-speaking centrist Democrat with Presidential ambitions who fits so perfectly with the Zeitgeist that it's hard to imagine Patterson considered anyone else. If she'd move to California, I'd vote for her.

Obviously, he did consider someone else, because he had to, namely Caroline Kennedy. The Times suggests he has suffered political damage as a result of the Senate derby. From this distance, it's hard to see why. Sure, it wasn't pretty, but politics usually isn't. The governor deserves props for keeping someone out of the Senate who wasn't qualified and who seems to have thought (along with many of her media and political boosters) that she could gain the office by pedigree.

Amid the Times's Saturday-morning sneers (what's really eating 'em, anyway?) is that Gillibrand has the support of the NRA and only votes for gay rights 80% of the time. Political insiders predict that when she no longer has to worry about what her relatively conservative rural upstate district thinks, she'll abandon her interesting mix of positions and become a decent, unimaginative, lockstep liberal just like Caroline Kennedy. We'll see. Says one of the downstate pols who think Gillibrand isn't liberal enough, yet:

“If we have royalty, it’s the Kennedys,” said Assemblyman Peter M. Rivera, a Bronx Democrat and chairman of the Assembly’s Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force. “The way she was treated, the backbiting and the attacks, it was insulting,” he said....

But we don't have royalty. We have politics. We have backbiting, attacks, and insults, and that's just the way we like it.