she’s raised more than $8 million dollars in the year since Governor Paterson anointed her<\/a>.<\/p>\nWe’ve observed from the start that the Senator would be more formidable than her downstate critics claimed.<\/p>\n
Her trail is littered with politicians who underestimated her, a trait she shares with Hillary Rodham Clinton and George W. Bush. <\/p>\n
That bodes well for her political future.<\/p>\n
But as a journalist and a voter, I’m sorry that her ideas and agenda won’t be tested during a full-throated, aggressive political campaign.<\/p>\n
The reality is, most New Yorkers still have no real idea who Kirsten Gillibrand is.<\/p>\n
We who live in the North Country and the 20th congressional district know her better than most in the Empire state.<\/p>\n
But her political identity has changed sharply over the last year, shifting to the left and focusing on new issues — notably the effort to allow gays to serve openly in the military.<\/p>\n
Given that reality, it would be far better for the Senator to face a strong and well-funded challenger.<\/p>\n
We need someone who can force her to articulate and defend her vision for New York state’s future, and her plan for making that happen in the Senate.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the GOP and its former heavyweights seem incapable of mustering that kind of energy. <\/p>\n
It’s more evidence that we are suffering from the lack of a true two-party system. <\/p>\n
My hope is that Senator Gillibrand will still use the coming months and the campaign such as it is to give us a much clearer picture of what voters can expect over the next six years.<\/p>\n
We’d like to see her interacting with voters in as many unscripted, open settings as possible.<\/p>\n
If the Republicans can’t challenge her, then perhaps the people she represents will have a chance to express their hopes, ideas, and doubts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Corrected: New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand looks less and less vulnerable these days, and more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}