Kirsten Gillibrand is my Congresswoman. And it seems that she is poised to become my next Senator from New York, which will no doubt make many progressives nervous, if you look at her on paper alone.
But those scorecards don't tell the whole story, and when you look at those scorecards and how she fares on the Democratic Purity Testing Scale, you would do well to remember one very important thing:
Kirsten Gillibrand is a Democrat representing a Conservative Republican district.
It's a district that she has won twice. The first time she won it with a bit of a nudge of Republican Frat Boy extraodinaire, John Sweeney. But the second time she won it, she was the number one target of the NRCC, she ran against a self-funder who spent $7 million of his own money, against the $5 million she raised, and though he ran one of the slickest and most D.C.-type top level consultant expensive campaigns I have seen, she still beat him.
She beat him comfortably.
Below the fold I will tell you what I know about her, how I know it, and how this committed Democrat beat back two different Republicans in a conservative Republican district.
Read More