Gillibrand poised to elevate Washington stature

A couple of months ago, one of the guests of On Point, our mid-morning national talk-show, mentioned Kirsten Gillibrand as one woman who might make a possible future presidential candidate.

It struck me at the time as a stretch.

Gillibrand’s resume at the time was still pretty fragile:

A one-and-a-half term congresswoman from upstate New York, filling out Hillary Clinton’s term in the US Senate.

It’s still premature to talk about presidential aspirations, to be sure.

But Gillibrand’s handling of Harold Ford Jr. and her peculiar political adeptness suggest that there’s a lot more to come.

Let me recap a little. When Gillibrand ran against (the now incarcerated) John Sweeney in 2006, she led a smart, ruthless, focused campaign.

Sweeney imploded, but Gillibrand had put herself in a position to capitalize, and maybe even nudge him over the edge of the cliff.

Then she ran against Essex County’s Sandy Treadwell, who seemed like the perfect moderate, decent Republican to take back a traditional GOP seat.

She ran circles around him.

Then, after being picked by Governor David Paterson to fill Hillary Clinton’s seat, Gillibrand faced a firestorm of criticism from downstate Democrats and journalists.

At the event where Paterson picked her, I heard some of my reporter colleagues from Albany and Manhattan essentially writing her epitaph.

But one after another, Gillibrand convinced Big City Democrats not to challenge her in this year’s primary.

And then she carefully, meticulously boxed out Ford. Put simply, she made him look like an idiot.

At present, she’s running essentially unopposed and unless things change dramatically, Gillibrand will win a full term in the Senate.

The next steps could be even more interesting. Like Clinton, Gillibrand has played the apprentice, junior senator role carefully.

She’s stepped out front on one or two issues — backing gays in the military, for example — but only in areas that shore up her political position.

I’m guessing that, if she wins in November, we’ll see a much higher profile over the next six years.