Part of the problem, according to Fels, is a lack of clarity about what ambition means. Historically, she argues, “Women have confused it with narcissism, with people who simply want to promote themselves at any cost. But really, what ambition is about is getting appropriate recognition for your skills.” Fels gravitated toward the study of ambition because she felt that her own ambition was socially unacceptable, even as a child. “When I was about seven, I had a notebook at school, and I would write poems and stories and illustrate them,” she told an interviewer. “And I had this acronym that was like magic, like a secret pact with myself. I didn’t even tell my sisters its meaning. It was IWBF—I Will Be Famous.” Ultimately, our tangled views of ambition come down to word choice. Just as many women reject the word “feminist” but believe in opportunity and equality for all, many women reject the word “ambition” but believe in trying to achieve difficult goals.
I knew that convincing Governor Paterson I was the right person for the job would require belief in my own ambitions. It would also require stamina and a strong support network, as whoever filled Hillary’s spot would have to run and win a special election less than two years later. The candidate would then have to turn around and run again for a general election two years after that in order to keep the Senate seat.
So when I interviewed with the governor, I told him, yes, I could handle the responsibilities of senator and I could also run two strong, back-to-back statewide campaigns. My support system was solid and national—I could raise the necessary funds. My second congressional campaign had been one of the most grueling and expensive in the country. The Republicans were determined to win back my seat, and my opponent was very wealthy and could fund the entire campaign. He spent $7 million; I raised and spent $5 million—and to raise $5 million for an upstate New York district is not easy or common. Few candidates have the desire or discipline to make dozens of calls every day, week after week, month after month. Frankly, it’s a lot like learning Mandarin, which I did in college: endless hours at a desk. Difficult, intense, often tedious, and necessary.
I made just three other points to Governor Paterson: One, as a woman and a mother, I might see challenges and opportunities differently from the other contenders, but I could be a voice for all New Yorkers. Two, having been born and raised in upstate New York, and having lived in New York City for over a decade, I could represent the entire state. I knew the struggles facing farmers, manufacturers, and small businesses, and I knew I could do a good job. And three, I could run a winning campaign.
As I stood up to leave, the governor warmly shook my hand. “You know, through this process, I’ve heard the nastiest things about you! And you have reflected none of that. It makes me like you even more.” Apparently, others had spent their interviews slamming possible opponents. After the interview, I quietly left Albany, as I didn’t want to build up anyone’s hopes, including mine. The only person who knew I was in town that day, besides my chief of staff, was my mom.
On Thursday, January 22, I started receiving calls from the governor’s team, asking for follow-up information and details about where I stood on various issues. By the end of the day, I was told that a decision had not been made but that I needed to be in Albany the next day to stand behind the nominee, whoever that might be. I was excited I was still being considered and I figured it was probably down to just two. So I flew home, telling my family that I thought I had a good chance but that nothing was official yet.
At the Albany airport, a battalion of reporters greeted me, asking, “Why are you here? Are you going to be the new senator from New York?”
I tried to play it cool. “I don’t know whether a decision has been made. I was asked to come to stand behind whoever was chosen, and so I’m here,” I said. Inside, my mind was racing. I’d started letting myself think, “This just might happen. You never know. It could be me.”
My chief of staff, Jess, and I spent the evening at my brother, Doug, and sister-in-law Liz’s house. Doug cooked a pot of homemade chicken soup, which was exactly what I needed. I paced back and forth across their kitchen in my light-blue polar-bear pajamas. Every hour or so, a state leader and ally of the governor would phone to ascertain my views on another issue: gay rights, immigration reform, gun violence, and healthcare. At 2:30 A.M., Governor Paterson called. “Congratulations, Kirsten,” he said, cutting to the crux. “You’re the senator from New York.”
I was elated and overwhelmed. I hugged Jess, Doug, and Liz and shouted something senatorial like, “Holy shit, can you believe it?!” Then I did what I always do at times of great stress: I took a deep breath and kicked into autopilot. My mind fixated on the next ten things I needed to do. Top of the list: Call Jonathan. I was giddy and asked him to come with the kids to Albany on the next flight from D.C. Next I called my parents. Then I started to figure out what to say in my speech the next day.
In the morning, fueled by adrenaline, I put on my nicest black suit, did my best blow-dry and makeup, and headed to the Capitol to meet my family, who had gathered there. (Jonathan thoughtfully waited until after the ceremony to tell me that their trip was a near disaster and they’d barely made their early-morning plane at Dulles.) My mom had already made sure the kids’ clothes were presentable and Henry, then eight months, was fed. He just needed a quick diaper change, which we did on the governor’s conference table. Two minutes later, Henry was much happier. In fact, he slept from the minute the ceremony started. More concerning was Theo. He wasn’t feeling well and seemed to be running a fever. In his groggy state, he asked if he could stay by my side during the speech.
“Of course. Just sit right there next to the podium and rest,” I said, deciding I needed to risk it.
Theo promised to be good, and he was. The only major glitch of the appointment ceremony was my too-long speech. Afterward, on my way to our car, I called the pediatrician to make an appointment for Theo. No party or champagne for the Gillibrands that day, just a doctor’s visit and antibiotics.
The whole first six months on the job were like drinking from a fire hose. Outside my home district, few of my nearly twenty million new constituents knew me or liked me, and my job was to win their trust. I needed to keep my head down, my spirits up, and work hard, reaching out to people and listening to their concerns so I could understand them and work on their behalf.
Given that I’d been appointed and not elected, I hadn’t had the chance to define myself, which my opponents and detractors started doing for me, often in harshly negative ways. I got called a parakeet with no original thoughts, a cipher, and Chuck Schumer’s puppet. The New York Observer published a cartoon depicting me as gun-loving Annie Oakley. (My rural congressional district included a lot of hunters, and I support their rights.) El Diario, an influential New York City Hispanic newspaper, ran an unflattering picture of me, along with the headline ANTI-INMIGRANTE. I was nicknamed Tracy Flick, the aggressive, comical, and somewhat unhinged blond high school student played by Reese Witherspoon in the movie Election. I’d liked the film well enough, but this was not a compliment. It was a put-down to me and other ambitious women, meant to keep us in our place. Yes, I’m competitive. I fight for what I believe in, and I drive hard toward my goals. Does that make me ruthless or crazed? No.
Jonathan was my hero, always trying to bolster my spirits. “Ignore them. They don’t know you,” he’d tell me. But he hated it. As he had during my first campaign, he asked to stop receiving our daily email of press mentions. He couldn’t handle it.
I tried to accept where we were and work to turn the situation around. I was new at my job, and I needed to address my inexperience and weaknesses head-on. My two most glaring issues were my House records on gun violence and immigration. Previously, I had only looked at these issues through the lens of my small, rural upstate district, which didn’t suffer greatly from gun violence or families battling a broken immigration system to stay together. But these issues mattered intensely to parts of New York State.
Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, an outstanding leader in the Hispanic community, was skeptical of me and openly shared her opinion that I was a poor choice to fill Hillary’s Senate seat, because of my limited knowledge of immigration issues. So the day after I was appointed, I visited Nydia at her home in Brooklyn. I made it clear that I wanted her guidance in understanding what immigrant communities were going through, and over time and many frank conversations, we built a trust and rapport. By six months into my term we’d found solid footing. This meant a tremendous amount to me, and the photo from her endorsement of my 2010 Senate campaign still hangs in my office. Nydia also encouraged me to meet Sonia Sotomayor, and that resulted in Senator Schumer and me recommending her to President Obama to sit on the Supreme Court.
My then A rating from the NRA was another sticking point for critics. Until this point, I had never represented areas with prevalent gun and gang violence, and on the day I was sworn in to the Senate, the New York Daily News ran an article calling for me to meet with the family and friends of seventeen-year-old Nyasia Pryear-Yard.
Nyasia was an honors student from Nazareth Regional High School in Brooklyn, who’d recently been killed by a stray bullet from an illegal gun at a teen dance club. Her community was still in shock and mourning her death. Press reports said parents felt so scared and terrorized that many refused to let their own children outside at night, even to empty the garbage.
So, two weeks later, I visited the Nazareth students, who made a sign for me to read as I entered their school: IF THERE IS A BETTER SOLUTION, FIND IT. Nyasia’s parents urged me to make their daughter’s life mean something, to use their pain to prevent other children from dying. I gave them my word that I would fight, and I meant it. I committed myself to doing whatever I could to end gun violence in this country. My decision wasn’t a calculated evolution, as some speculated, and it wasn’t a political consideration. It was my clear answer to the intensity of Nyasia’s parents’ pain and the collective misery of her community. There was no other possible course.
I spoke with Ray Kelly, then New York City’s police commissioner. He explained that eight out of ten guns used in crimes in New York City were trafficked from out of state and that 90 percent of those weapons were illegal. I met with New Yorkers Against Gun Violence and the Brady Campaign and heard their painful stories. I met with Representative Carolyn McCarthy, who ran for Congress after losing her husband to a shooting on the Long Island Railroad; she had worked tirelessly for years combating gun violence. Each meeting, and all the violent deaths retold, fueled my anger. That year I wrote and introduced my first bill on gun reform: legislation that would for the first time make gun trafficking a federal crime and give law enforcement the teeth required to shut down the so-called Iron Pipeline of trafficked weapons.
When the Senate refused to pass meaningful gun reform after the Sandy Hook tragedy, I was devastated, along with much of the nation. All those children and their teachers, every one somebody’s beloved son or daughter—and my colleagues couldn’t do anything. To be a part of that was infuriating. Congress couldn’t even pass simple commonsense reforms: to stop gun trafficking, require background checks, ban assault weapons, and limit the size of magazine clips. I wrote a bill, built bipartisan support for it, and was filibustered by two votes. Every time there is a school shooting, or a child is killed anywhere, I feel gutted and enraged. We need to keep fighting and speaking out until we create change. How can we stay silent when children continue to be shot? The more Americans that speak up and hold their representatives accountable, the closer we get to a safer and stronger nation. We must keep fighting—for Nyasia, for the students at Sandy Hook, for all of us.
I knew from the moment I changed Henry’s diaper on Governor Paterson’s conference room table that I was never going to be a typical senator, so I never tried to be. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway.” Voters began reaching out to me with their concerns in unconventional ways, so I reached right back across the same channels. I started working with women’s magazines and mommy blogs, communicating through traditionally female means, talking not as a senator would to a voter but the way one mom would talk to another. This was unusual, but who cares? I was determined to be my own person—I strongly believe your individuality is your strength. As much as I admired Hillary, I knew I wasn’t walking in her precise footsteps. She had to travel a harder road, leading a generation that didn’t take women’s rights for granted, as my generation did. Hillary and her peers made securing women’s rights the fight of their lives. My generation has a responsibility to take the power and freedom they fought for and make the world a better, safer place.
Chapter 7
Now We’re Yours
Along with Hillary’s desk, I inherited some of her legislative agenda, including the task of passing a 9/11 healthcare bill.
If you’re a normal person, you’re probably thinking, “What’s the problem? That sounds fine! What could be more galvanizing to the nation, and more clearly important to the Senate, than taking care of the brave first responders who got sick from helping others in the wake of a terrorist attack?”
But Washington is a strange place and, as we all know, things that should be easy can quickly become difficult. Hillary had been shepherding the 9/11 healthcare bill in the Senate. The House had held about twenty hearings on the subject. But still—zero progress. The bill had languished for nearly three years without a vote.
Yet I was optimistic. Anything’s possible, right? On one of my first days in the Senate, Jess, my chief of staff, sat me down. He wanted me to define what kind of senator I wanted to be. I had a very clear answer already in my head. “I want to be a voice for the voiceless. I want to take on lost causes and issues with no champion.” My mission might sound corny, but I was absolutely earnest. To this day I repeat those words all the time: “Be a voice for the voiceless.” That’s honestly what I want to do with my energy and time here. The 9/11 healthcare bill was right in my wheelhouse.
So I gathered my legislative staff and together we began strategizing about how to push the 9/11 healthcare bill through. I positioned my desk at an angle to the walls of my office, to make the room feel more friendly, but I was on a quest. I wanted to get this done.
After that first strategy meeting broke up, Jess walked into his adjoining office, then leaned his head back through our shared door. “You know there’s no way to pass a 9/11 healthcare bill, right?” he said to me. “I mean, we can do all the things we’ve just agreed to do, but you’re not actually going to win.”
“What do you mean?!” I said. “We can’t start fighting with the assumption we’re going to fail. We have to believe we will succeed. I believe we will succeed. You really think that there’s no way to pass it?”
Jess said, “Well, yeah.”
The problem, he explained, was a lack of sympathy. Yes, the nation had come together in grief and patriotism in the wake of 9/11, but few on Capitol Hill wanted to help New Yorkers. People in the Senate viewed New York as a wealthy state (never mind the fact that New York has poverty levels similar to most other states’). They also viewed the bill as an entitlement program for New Yorkers, disregarding the reality that 9/11 first responders came from every state in the country. Each year, more men and women who’d worked and lived at Ground Zero were becoming ill and dying from toxins they’d inhaled. Yet the bill still didn’t have enough support.
So, true to form, I flipped into operation mode and wrote a 10-point list.
1. Draft a bill.
2. Formally introduce the bill to the Senate.
3. Ask for a hearing on the bill.
4. Hold the hearing.
5. Build co-sponsors, including Republicans.
6. Build momentum to garner support.
7. Coordinate with the House members to make sure the changes I made to my bill from theirs are acceptable.
8. Find a way to pay for the proposed re
form.
9. Find Republicans who will help build more support.
10. Hold the vote.
To further back down the naysayers, I ordered six copies of the self-help book The Secret and distributed them to my staffers, who, as I expected, responded by laughing at me and rolling their eyes. Almost everybody who worked in my office was young; some had staffed my first congressional campaign. My management philosophy has always been to build and train a good team from within, then trust your people. I always look for smart, hardworking, honest individuals and then give them freedom to do their jobs. But my legislative director, Brooke Jamison, is a pessimist by nature, and I wanted her, and everyone else in the office, to see the power of positive thinking. If we were going to be effective champions of lost causes, we needed, at the very least, to believe in ourselves. So at the risk of looking ridiculous (and let me assure you, I did. What kind of loony boss makes her staff read an intellectually suspect New Age-y self-help book?), I made everyone read The Secret and discuss it with me. The book is out there at times. It includes an example of wanting a new car and advises the reader to imagine sitting in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel, as if that will make the car materialize. But for me, optimism is essential. When I’m depressed and pissed off on the road, missing my kids and feeling like a loser, I try to flip my mood by asking my staff to tell me three things that they feel grateful for in their lives, and I always share my own. I also make myself positive-thinking reminders. During my 2010 election, for instance, I set a grandiose fundraising goal for the first quarter: $3 million. I knew this wasn’t entirely realistic, but I believed it was crucial for my credibility in Washington. To keep my thoughts positive I changed my computer password to 3M1stQ. (You can laugh, but it worked.) A positive mindset sets a tone for my office. To this day, whenever I or one of my staffers starts spiraling into negative thinking, somebody will say “See the car!” or “Put your hands on the steering wheel!” It’s a joke, but also important. Those phrases are our code for “Picture success.”
Off the Sidelines Page 11