Off the Sidelines

by Kirsten Gillibrand

  The last two weeks before the election were really dramatic. For the first time I had a lead over Sweeney and could see a clear path to victory. Then an important local newspaper ran a police report raising serious doubts about Sweeney’s character and credibility. This led the most prominent paper in the most Republican part of the district to retract its endorsement of Sweeney and back me. Adding to the cascade of good luck, Hillary Clinton’s birthday was a week and a half before the election, and when Bill asked her what she wanted as a gift, she said she wanted him to go campaign for me.

  This was far beyond anything I’d ever imagined. Hillary had already been so generous, attending two rallies and two fundraisers. President Clinton had been to the district on my behalf just a few weeks before. Now Hillary asked for this present, and Bill delivered. That day still seems like a dream. The Monday before the Tuesday vote, the president flew in to the Glens Falls airport, where he took the podium and said, charming as ever, “A few days ago it was my wife’s birthday. I said, ‘What do you want me to do for your birthday?’ and she said, ‘I want you to go to upstate New York and help Kirsten Gillibrand win that election.’ And then she said, ‘And while you’re up there, you might get me a vote or two if you can.’ ”

  I was bursting with gratitude and excitement—President Clinton, here again, for my campaign. The pictures from that day are hysterical. I look as amped up as a child who’s just been fed five spoonfuls of sugar and given a hundred balloons. After the president’s speech, while he signed photos and books for supporters, I chatted with him about other young Democrats and the 2008 presidential race. He took Barack Obama very seriously. I was less savvy at the time, so fond of Hillary that I told the president I was positive she was going to win.

  He smiled. The president clearly shared my adoration and respect, but he also said he thought Obama was a very good candidate.

  “But there’s no way Hillary will lose. She’s fantastic and she’s so qualified,” I said.

  The president kept smiling. I’m sure he hoped that I was right.

  On election day, when I woke up, I felt a little strange. At that point in a campaign, you’ve either done the hard work or you haven’t, and all you can do is wait for the votes and see. Theo, in a bright-red sweater, joined me at the polls that morning. As soon as I pushed back the voting-booth curtain, he shouted to a scrum of cameras, “Mommy’s going to win!”

  After that I drove home, changed into jeans, and got my hair done. Then, as a family, we meandered north. Once in Saratoga, I stopped on Broadway and bought a new outfit—a gray suit with lavender pinstripes and a purple shell. I knew it wouldn’t go well with the campaign banners, but I liked it, so I didn’t care. (It also didn’t have Theo’s breakfast on it, like most of my suits did.) At dinner, family and friends retold funny campaign stories, relived the president’s visit, and kicked around possible tricks Sweeney still might have in store.

  Finally we headed to the hotel to watch the returns. The moment we checked in, I hit a wall. I’d been campaigning almost constantly for two years. I collapsed on the bed and fell asleep. In another room, Jonathan, Ross Offinger, Bill Hyers, and Sean Gavin, my grassroots campaign expert, scoured the numbers, their energy ramping up by the hour, until the polls closed at 9:00 P.M. and results started to trickle in. The early returns from some of my toughest counties were positive, so I pulled myself together and joined Jonathan and the others as my team’s excitement began to build. The whole country was watching the election closely, as the congressional majority had a chance to switch from Republican to Democratic. The networks called our district at around 11:30 P.M., just around the same time the House was called.

  I raced down to the hotel ballroom, thanked my staff, family, friends, and supporters profusely, and then my phone started ringing nonstop. Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton. Dozens of volunteers. Donors. All my old friends. I felt just like I had during my wedding: thrilled, drained, overcome by gratitude and love.

  The next day was Theo’s third birthday, and we had a huge family celebration at my mother’s house. During the party, CNN called to invite me on one of their shows for the next morning. I wanted to say yes. I thought I should have said yes, but I felt utterly wiped out. I’d worked so hard for so long, I needed to be home with Jonathan and Theo, so I declined.

  The next morning, while drinking my tea, I turned on the TV to see what I’d missed, and there was Gabby Giffords. This was the first time I’d really watched her—her warm smile, her smart, compassionate eyes. Like me, she’d won a Red to Blue race and was heading to Washington to be a freshman in Congress. I couldn’t wait to meet her. We seemed to have so much in common already, though obviously she was tougher than I was. I was home on the couch in my sweatpants, and she was before the cameras, hopeful, tireless, and poised.

  Chapter 4

  The Best Lobbyist I Ever Met Was a Twelve-Year-Old Girl

  The election results meant that the Democrats had taken over the House, and that meant that Nancy Pelosi was now speaker, and as speaker, she changed the rules. Congress would now meet five days a week, as opposed to three, and that meant my family plans needed to change. Instead of the family staying put in Hudson and me commuting to Washington Tuesday mornings and home Thursday nights, we would all move. I was only slightly rattled by this. I wanted to be with my family full-time. Plus, I thrive on chaos. Enormous changes at the last minute don’t bother me much. But Jonathan is different. He likes order and a long-term plan. And he didn’t have a job in D.C. During the election, we’d both assumed that, win or lose, our family life would remain fairly unaltered. My mother would pitch in with Theo when I was traveling, and it wouldn’t be a big deal. But these changes were a big deal—a very big deal. This was lousy news for Jonathan. He had a great job in venture capital in New York. Who wants to be pulled from his life on short notice to follow someone else’s dream?

  Two other factors made that first week more unnerving. First, as soon as I arrived in Washington, I started getting lobbied about whom I would support for Democratic majority leader. Nancy Pelosi was the speaker; that was set. But John Murtha, a congressman from Pennsylvania, and Steny Hoyer, a congressman from Maryland, both wanted to be her number two.

  Steny Hoyer had campaigned for me in my district. Rahm had called him last minute to see if he could fly to New York State on Sunday to stump for a new candidate. Steny had tried to decline politely, saying, “I’d love to, but I really have to check my schedule.”

  Rahm said, “I already spoke to your scheduler! Great—you’re free Sunday.” So Steny had flown up.

  He won the hearts of Albany and many votes on my behalf, and as he was leaving he’d asked a favor. “If you win, Kirsten, which I know you’re going to do, will you support me for majority leader?”

  “Absolutely!” I’d said. “I promise I’ll support you!”

  Now here I was in my hotel room, my first week in Washington, surrounded by mugs, bottles of wine, books, and chocolates, gifts from both the pro-Murtha and pro-Hoyer camps. I was screwed. Nancy Pelosi supported Murtha. That meant, on my first day of work, I was going to have to walk into her office and refuse to vote with her. This was like telling a new boss on the first day of work that you don’t agree with the company’s business plan.

  Sure enough, Nancy called me into her office, which is manned by a security detail and myriad staff members, and told me how much she’d like me to support Murtha. I said, “Madam Speaker, I respect you so much. I’m going to vote for you for speaker. I think you’re wonderful. But I support Steny.”

  The consternation that flashed on her face! I realized I needed to acquire some better political skills fast. But I’ve never regretted my support of Steny, ever.

  The second thing that happened that first week was even darker and more stressful. I was sitting in the House chambers, expecting an orientation meeting that would include basics such as how the congressional computer system works and where the bathroom is. Instead, I found myse
lf listening to a senior congressman’s heart-to-heart about what he’d learned from his decades in Washington. At the time, I was already feeling a little blue. Jonathan and Theo were with my father in the Virgin Islands, on a trip my father planned before the election, as none of us realized that if I won I’d need to be in D.C. this week. The night before, I had stood around a cocktail party, talking to no one. So far, Congress was lonely. Now this older congressman was saying, “Most members of Congress’s marriages end in divorce. Most members of Congress—their children do not even speak to them, or they hate them.” The room grew very quiet. “You are the only one who can protect your family here, and that means putting them first when you schedule your time. You’re going to have to stand in front of your twenty-two-year-old scheduler, whose job it is to schedule every minute of your day, and protect your family. Nobody else will. You don’t want to look up years from now and find your family is gone.” To this day, that was the single most important piece of advice I have been given about serving in Congress.

  So I set to work building an office consistent with my values. I knew from the start that I needed to find a way to schedule myself that would keep my young family intact. I also knew I wanted transparency. To me that meant posting my earmark requests, official daily meetings, and personal financial disclosures online. Anybody could Google anything these days. Why should the inner workings of my office not be available for constituents to see?

  My chief of staff, Jess Fassler, thought this was crazy and would invite needless criticism and attack. “Of course you can’t do that,” he said. “Nobody does that!”

  “Of course I can,” I said. “If I can’t defend taking a meeting, I shouldn’t be taking that meeting.”

  So I created my Sunlight Report and posted my official daily meetings on the Web at the end of each day, so voters could see with whom I was meeting and know who had my ear. My colleagues didn’t like this much. One teased me on the House floor. “We’re having a conversation now. Is that a meeting? Are you going to post it on your website?” I understood the provocation but forged ahead because it was the right thing to do. The New York Times called my efforts “a quiet touch of revolution,” and within two years Speaker Pelosi mandated that everyone had to post their earmark requests online.

  Around this time, I realized that almost everything I thought I knew about being a congressperson was wrong. I thought the job would be wonky, that I’d spend the bulk of my time studying foreign policy and researching ideas for achieving energy independence. I presumed that to succeed I’d need encyclopedic knowledge of all the bills on the floor, that I’d win debates with data. But I quickly learned that representing people is much more about empathy and knowing what they’re going through. The job is to listen and care. Only then do the laws, facts, and figures begin to matter.

  I decided against doing only typical town-hall events and instead tried to seek out people who wouldn’t normally approach a politician. This meant standing around grocery stores, coffee shops, and farm stands. In early 2008, I planned a Congress on Your Corner at a garden center in Glens Falls, a town in the northern corner of my district. Among the potting soil, flowers, and trees, I just started talking. “Hi, everybody. I’m Kirsten Gillibrand. I’m your new congresswoman and just wanted to know what’s on your mind—what’s bothering you, what you’re worried about.”

  About twenty-five people gathered around, and together we talked about their issues. Some were worried about the economy, others about Iraq. A few wanted more accountability in Washington in general. I addressed their concerns as best I could: “Here’s where we stand on Iraq”; “I know the economy’s tough”; “Yes, Washington’s broken.” When the crowd started to dissipate, two women in their mid-thirties stepped forward.

  Both looked nervous. One had tears in her eyes. The more emotional woman spoke up first. “Mrs. Gillibrand, I just got a bill from the government for twenty-five dollars because I receive child support.” She scanned my face for a reaction. “Twenty-five dollars might not seem like a lot of money to you, but to me it is. It’s money for lunches for my three boys for a week.” Her voice grew more forceful as she talked. “I don’t know why the state is billing me. You have to do something about this. I can’t afford it and I don’t think it’s fair.”

  I didn’t know quite how to react at first. This sounded terrible, but I wasn’t sure what I could do about it. “That sounds awful,” I finally said. “Let me find out what’s going on. I promise I will get back to you.”

  It wasn’t enough. These women weren’t satisfied and rightly so. This mother had trusted me with her story. She had told me what she cared and worried about. I felt her anger, even empathized with it, but I hadn’t done anything about it. I asked the woman to write down her name on a scrap of paper I found in my purse. I needed to find a way to help her and help others like her. That was my job as her representative, right?

  This woman and her boys were the first thing I told Jonathan about when I saw him that night—and that $25 bill and those lunches are still in my mind. The first bill I introduced when I entered the Senate was to stop states from charging recipients of child support for the overhead (that’s what the $25 bill had been for). What higher priority should we have as a country than feeding our children?

  And what could be a more stupid way to go about implementing the program than to charge the bureaucratic costs to the very people who need the money? I still battle the constant cutting of food stamps, and every time I hear a story about a mother unable to make lunch, or breakfast, or dinner for her children, I want to explode with rage. How, in this country, the wealthiest country in the world, can we allow children to go hungry? This year’s cuts to the food-stamps program would have erased $90 from the monthly budget of three hundred thousand New York families if our governor had not intervened. It truly disturbs me how little some leaders care. Few lobby for food stamps, because the people who need them aren’t in positions of power. The logic is sad and twisted.

  Please believe me: Your story matters. Keep telling it until it falls on the right ears. Once, a veteran who lost a limb in Vietnam told me, “When I strap on my leg, I strap on my patriotism. Why isn’t the VA supporting me?” Those two sentences moved my office to work until we got him $60,000 in benefits and back pay. This story also opened my eyes to the backlog of veterans’ claims caused by the chronic underfunding of the Veterans Administration.

  I also hear stories from mayors, church leaders, activists, philanthropists, and community leaders about all kinds of suffering we must address. “Our food bank sees more families and more children than ever before, but less food is coming in, because of the tough economy. Could you help?” Or, “My church runs an after-school program for at-risk youth, and we’re running out of funding. Can you get us federal money to stay open?” When people raise their voices, they give leaders opportunities to truly help and serve.

  As I settled in to my new job, my constituents’ voices defined my agenda. Good ideas don’t come from Washington. They come from individuals willing to share their experiences and needs. About a year into my term, I met with a woman named Kate Miller whose son, Cody, had recently committed suicide. She sat in my office, on my blue couch, with all her dignity, sadness, and rage, and told me how her son had taken medicine for allergies that she believed left him so severely depressed that he took his own life.

  My mind flashed to Theo. I tried to comfort Kate and I thanked her for her bravery in telling me her story, but mostly I just cried with her and absorbed some of her pain. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to lose a son to suicide. I could only inch myself a few steps down the horrible road before my brain started to rebel. But I felt the full measure of Kate’s need to make her loss mean something, for Cody’s life and death to produce a shred of good in the world.

  Kate wanted help with a campaign to force the FDA to put clearer labels on drugs that can cause depression, specifically drugs that can cause depression in child
ren. I was on board, 100 percent. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” Maya Angelou has been quoted as saying. That’s certainly true for me.

  Women kept coming—mothers trying to solve problems for their children, parents trying to prevent others from suffering the same loss. Sometimes I met the children themselves, and, let me tell you, there is no more powerful lobbyist in the world than a twelve-year-old girl. Early one Saturday morning at a bagel shop, after my scheduler had put off the request for months, I met a group of mothers with daughters who had type 1 diabetes. The girls didn’t say much. They didn’t have to—just the basic facts told me a story of pain and courage. They wore their insulin monitors under their school clothes, their soccer uniforms, even their prom dresses. They refused to be afraid or sidelined by a disease. Their mothers gave the details.

  “My daughter has to get injections in her thigh every few hours.”

  “Every time I let my sixteen-year-old daughter go out for a night with her friends, I just pray she’ll remember to check her blood sugar levels when it gets late.”

  You can drop a dozen binders full of white papers on my desk, and the stack won’t be as effective as a single human being willing to speak honestly about her life. Of course I knew about type 1 diabetes before that day, but my knowledge was unemotional and abstract. Now I see specific faces when I think of type 1 diabetes. Faces make people respond.

  Sometimes it’s just a matter of daring to speak and letting the world do the rest of the work. Imagine an infant in a drop-side crib dying while sleeping, because he can’t breathe. Now imagine that baby’s parents telling you about losing that baby. When they demand action, you want to deliver. I met a roomful of parents who’d lost an infant. They stood with photos of their dead children. Some held other children’s hands. How could you have an ounce of empathy, hear such a story, and not be moved to act? The very afternoon I met those parents, we started working to change crib-safety regulations. Drop-side cribs were banned within nine months.