Sorry the title was wrong. I had to be away from my laptop and had this set to publish automatically, but had also scheduled the 3rd profile in this series, on Tulsi Gabbard, to publish an hour earlier. For some reason, the Gabbard profile did not publish (it’s up now) and I missed the error in the title of this one. Apologies all. I’ll start reading the comments, now.
Well, because Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has announced an exploratory committee for POTUS, we’re doing two of these profiles this week! Usually, it is one per Friday, as candidates announce, but the field is growing quickly, friends!
I have been profiling Democratic candidates not according to platforms (which interest me greatly) or “electability” (which I find to be a slippery concept), but according to how well their life experience does or does not prepare candidates to connect with voters and/or to govern effectively. My introduction to the series was here and I previously gave profiles on Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, and Tulsi Gabbard.
So, now, let’s look at the life experience of Kirsten Gillibrand, the junior senator from New York and most recent Democrat to announce her candidacy (or, at least, her exploratory committee) for POTUS in 2020.
Early Life and Background:
Kirsten Elizabeth Rutnik was born in Albany, NY on 9 December 1966 to Douglass Paul Rutnik and Polly Edwina (Noonan) Rutnik. Kirsten is the middle daughter of 3 children. Her older brother, Douglass Paul Rutnik, Jr. is co-founder of VeraCloud Technologies, and her younger sister, Erin Rutnik Tschantret is a former actor turned CFO of Urban Pirates, a Baltimore, MD-based company which conducts cruises on reconstructed 19th-C pirate ships.
Both Kirsten’s parents are attorneys and she was born into a very political family. Her grandmother, also named Polly Noonan, ran the Hudson Valley area Democratic machine (although she preferred the term “organization” “because machines have no heart.”) and founded the Albany Democratic Women’s Club and used her position to help people. She was also a very colorful character, telling her granddaughter that she neither smoked nor drank, “but I can cuss like a son-of-a-bitch!” Gillibrand’s Senate colleagues know that she also loves colorful language and she admitted to talk show host Stephen Colbert that she will find refraining from profanity on the presidential campaign trail difficult. (When Colbert asked her what term she’d miss the most, her response was “rhymes with ‘duck!’”)
Kirsten’s father was also involved in Democratic politics in Albany, NY and also worked as a lobbyist. Her parents divorced in the 1980s and her father later remarried. “Tina,” as Kirsten was known to family and friends until after law school, was raised Roman Catholic, and she has made the faith her own, but she openly disagrees with her Church’s positions on LGBT matters, birth control, and abortion. But Gillibrand draws strength from the “peace and social justice” tradition within Catholicism.
We already see from this part of Gillibrand’s background both strengths and weaknesses for her as a POTUS candidate. On the negative side, she grew up in a political family, and, as we will see later, a family whose political connections have helped her rapid rise. But we live in a time in which politicians for whom politics is a “family business” are less and less trusted by voters. Whether it is the Bush family, the Clinton and Gore families, the Udalls, the Kennedys, etc., “legacy” candidates who might be considered part of a “political dynasty” are looked on with distrust as “part of the system.” However, while Gillibrand’s family was very political and provided her role models (especially female ones), it could hardly be called a political dynasty. “Rutnik” is not a nationally known political name. However, her father’s lobbying career could hurt her since many voters now consider “lobbyist” a curse word far worse than anything that rhymes with “duck.”
Likewise, despite the continuing secularizing forces in this nation (which have made Millennials the least religious generation in our nation’s history), the majority of Americans are still people with religious convictions and the Catholic Church is the largest religious body in both the nation (not true until well into the 2nd half of the 20th C.) and the world (true for centuries). Many progressives will think first of the sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church and it’s opposition to marriage equality and to LGBTQ rights more generally, as well as it’s opposition to both birth control and abortion rights. Gillibrand could be forced to constantly reiterate her disagreements with parts of Catholic teaching, which, in turn, could alienate more conservative Catholic voters. She could well need the spiritual strength she draws from the peace and social justice strands of Catholicism.
Education:
Many, if not most, middle class to upper class Catholic families send their children to private schools, but they are usually Catholic parochial schools. Those who depart from this pattern usually do so out of dedication to the public school ideal and send their children to be educated alongside their Protestant and other neighbors. Instead, “Tina Rutnik” graduated from Emma Willard School, a private, non-sectarian, all girls boarding school in Troy, NY founded in 1814. Studies have shown that, whether at the secondary or post-secondary level, all-female institutions often do a better job at educating women for leadership. In mixed-sex settings, boys interrupt and girls are taught not to value their questions or answers. In a setting in which ALL the athletes, student body leaders, etc. are female, students learn to defy patriarchal patterns and become very empowered women. Gillibrand’s experiences at Emma Willard reinforced her home female role models of an attorney mother and a powerful political grandmother.
On the other hand, the average American voter would not have been able to afford to attend a private boarding school and this could hurt Gillibrand’s ability to connect. There is both a party bias and a gender bias here that may affect Gillibrand as a POTUS candidate: 1)Republican voters, though often poor or working class themselves, are used to voting for rich white men who went to elite private schools. 2) Rich MEN who went to private high schools are accepted by voters without questions about how well they can identify far more than women would be. Whether or not this becomes an issue for Gillibrand remains to be seen.
From Emma Willard, Tina Rutnik went on to Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. This both fits and breaks with the pattern of “cookie cutter” politicians. On the one hand, Dartmouth is part of the Ivy League conference of eight (8) elite Northeast universities, all but one (Cornell) of which were founded prior to the American Revolution and the Ivy League has played a very disproportionate role in educating the elites who have traditionally led this nation. On the other hand, none of the Founders went to Dartmouth (although Daniel Webster did) and no U.S. President was an alumnus (although VP Nelson Rockefeller was). Dartmouth is more well known for graduating investment bankers, business leaders, and economists, (though also actors from Fred Rogers to Meryl Streep to Mindy Kaling). Correction from Comment: Dartmouth lists both Fred Rogers and Meryl Streep, but neither graduated from Dartmouth. Rogers transferred to Rollins College in Central FL and Streep was a Vassar alumna (back when Vassar was all female) who went to Dartmouth as a summer exchange student. Wow. I won’t trust Dartmouth’s alumni claims after that. Mindy Kaling is an alumna.
While at Dartmouth, Tina Rutnik pledged the Kappa Kappa Gamma “women’s fraternity” (so called because it was founded in 1870, well before the term “sorority” came into common use), a Greek life organization with a strong emphasis on service and the empowerment of women, and which founded the National Panhellic Conference of 26 nationwide sorority organizations. Though Kappa Kappa Gamma touts its reputation for service and women’s empowerment, it is one of the many fraternities and sororities with chapters that have been involved in hazing scandals, though none have been reported of the Dartmouth chapter. Since I was raised in a religious and cultural tradition which looked on “Greek life” with suspicion, I do not know whether or not this is a valuable life experience. None of us approaches anything without bias or can achieve “pure objectivity” so I simply list my own difficulty in this area and allow readers to draw their own conclusions.
Dartmouth College (which, despite its retention of its historic name as a college is, in fact, a comprehensive research university) is well known for an undergraduate program which emphasizes student research and off campus field work, internships, and study abroad experiences, and even structures its four year curriculum so that students know which semesters and years will be spent primarily on campus and which primarily off campus. (See the Dartmouth Plan.) Young Tina Rutnik took full advantage of this, majoring in Asian Studies, and studying abroad in both Beijing and Taiwan. Gillibrand studied Mandarin Chinese and, though rusty, now, is still fluent enough to have small conversations with native Chinese speakers. Asian-Americans are a small part of the electorate, but the fastest growing population in the United States and this skill could help the blonde, blue-eyed Gillibrand to connect to this small-but-growing constituency. Further, her time in China and Taiwan and her formal study could help her in foreign policy, considering China’s large and growing importance in the world, the ongoing threat of North Korea, climate change’s affects on both East and South Asia, etc. Gillibrand graduated from Dartmouth in 1988, magna cum laude.
We see here a background rooted in the upper middle class (or lower wealthy). It is a background of relative privilege compared to most Americans, but also, a one of service. We see evidence of intelligence, intellectual curiosity, and a desire to understand the lives and cultures of those different from one’s self. To have done so well in Asian Studies with such immersive experiences, requires cultivating virtues of empathy, compassion, and it stands in stark contrast to the parochialism of Trumpism.
During her undergraduate years, Gillibrand’s lobbyist father used his connections to get her an internship at Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY)’s Albany office. Some of her rivals have used her internship for such a prominent Republican against her, but Gillibrand has been quick to point out that she was, even then, a registered Democrat, and that D’Amato’s tradition of moderate Republicanism is now all-but-extinct. She also cites that experience as teaching her the inner workings of a Senate office and motivating her to keep working for bi-partisan legislation and solutions to problems—which is the way our government was structured to work.
After Dartmouth, Tina Rutnik decided to follow in her parents’ footsteps and go to law school. And here, for whatever reason, she avoided the Ivy League. (Five of the Ivy League Universities have law schools: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania. Three Ivies, Brown, Princeton, and Dartmouth, have no law school.) Instead, she earned her law degree at the UCLA Law, the Law School of the University of California at Los Angeles. Now, this is a prestigious public law school and California law schools prepare students to pass the CA Bar Exam, widely believed to be the toughest bar exam in the nation. As a UCLA Law alumna, Gillibrand also has the experience of having lived on both U.S. coasts. (Whether that helps her connect to “flyover states” remains to be seen.) I have not seen much on her actual experience at UCLA Law. She apparently did not make law review. Did she work in legal aid workshops for the poor or do other pro bono work? What parts of CA life did she experience? There are answers to such questions, but I was unable to find them for this profile. Gillibrand graduated UCLA Law and passed the bar in 1991.
Marriage and Law Career:
After graduating law school, Kirsten Rutnik returned to NY and worked as a corporate lawyer from 1991 to 2006. She was hired as an associate at the Manhattan firm of Davis, Polk, & Waddell, LLP in 1991 and worked her way quickly to senior associate. Controversially, especially for Democrats, much of her work at Davis, Polk was defending tobacco giant Philip Morris International in both civil and criminal matters when big tobacco was the target of both lawsuits and federal racketeering charges. Gillibrand’s response, that this enabled her to take many pro bono cases, especially those of abused women, rings true—fitting longstanding priorities and values she’s held—but I’m not sure it satisfies her critics. In 2001, Rutnik became a partner at a different law firm, Boise, Shiller & Flexner, LLP. One of the major clients at the time was Altria Group, Inc., the parent company of Philip Morris. She left Boise, Shiller in 2005 to run for Congress in 2006.
In 2001, on a blind date, Kirsten met Jonathan Gillibrand, a British citizen and venture capitalist. He planned to be in the USA only for a year, earning his MBA at Columbia University. Instead, he stayed because the couple married in a Catholic Church in Manhattan in 2001. The Gillibrands have two sons, Theodore (b. 2003), and Henry (b. 2008). Being married to a non-citizen (a legal resident with a Green Card) may reinforce the international perspective Gillibrand would have begun in her study abroad during college. It has to foster a sense of connectedness to the rest of the world that far too many Americans (especially the current White House usurper) lack. It’s hard to be an isolationist when you have international family.
While working at Polk, Davis, Gillibrand became inspired by then- First Lady Hillary Clinton to become involved in, and eventually lead, the Women’s Leadership Forum of the Democratic National Committee. She served as Special Counsel to then HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo during the last year of the Clinton Administration, and, in 1999 and 2000, worked on Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for the U. S. Senate, in the same seat that Gillibrand holds now.
Political Career:
In 2006, Gillibrand threw her own hat into the ring of electoral politics. NY’s upstate 20th House district had long been Republican territory. But with many moving from NYC back upstate, the district was getting more diverse, and Gillibrand ran and defeated 3 term Republican incumbent John Sweeney. She served one term. She joined the Blue Dog caucus and was known as a centrist or even a ConservaDem during her two years in the House. especially on immigration issues (opposing sanctuary cities and NY’s plan to give drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants) and gun issues (the NRA loved her). Also, while supporting same-sex civil unions, as recently as 2007, she opposed marriage equality.
All of this meant that when then-Gov. David Patterson (D-NY) appointed Gillibrand to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State in 2009, she was a controversial choice for many. Yet, upon arrival in the Senate, the ambitious (only a bad word when applied to women in our culture) Gillibrand set to work changing her image and deciding to make her mark on key issues. She took the lead in the Senate to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and allow LGBT people to serve openly in the military. When that was achieved, Gillibrand began championing marriage equality and she tackled the issue of widespread sexual assault, especially in the military.
By 2013, she was a rising Senate star and her name was regularly surfaced in conversations that began, “If Hillary doesn’t become our first female President, who do you think might?” But her prominent role what her opponents see as a prominent role in urging the resignation of Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) when he accused of sexual harassment BEFORE he could be investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee—an investigation he himself instigated—has led to a major drop in support. She burned further bridges when she said that Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Will this be seen by primary voters primarily as self-serving disloyalty or as integrity and consistency on her principles?
It remains to be seen.
Update: I hold a higher view of Gillibrand than ending on that stark a note implies. So, I’ll add this bit from her Senate experience. Gillibrand has been part of the so-called “Hell No Caucus” of Senate Democrats that have opposed nearly all of Trump’s nominations. In fact, Gillibrand has the record of voting against every one of Trump’s nominations (a record she is not likely to break with William Barr) and against more of his legislative priorities than ANY of her colleagues, even Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Corey Booker, Sherrod Brown, or Amy Klobuchar. That is something that progressives who believe her transformation from Blue Dog House member to Senate liberal is simply opportunistic, should keep in mind. While I have not chosen, at this early date, “my” primary candidate, I believe Sen. Gillibrand to be “the real deal” and well worth keeping an open mind about in the primaries.
Saturday, Jan 19, 2019 · 8:01:12 PM +00:00
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SouthernLeveller
From Gillibrand’s website: She DID attend a Catholic parochial school Albany’s Academy of Holy Names before she transferred to Emma Willard School.
Also, she clerked for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
Items in her Senate career for which she doesn’t get enough credit:
- Wrote the STOCK act which made it illegal for members of Congress to benefit financially from inside information.
- Obtained permanent health care and compensation for the 9/11 first responders who got ill because of toxins released.
- Her transformation on gun laws is evidenced by her bi-partisan bill to make gun trafficking across state lines a federal crime.