political ambition
Kirsten Gillibrand moved to her upstate New York district specifically to run for Congress
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) didn't just fall into politics.
The 2020 Democrat wasn't necessarily raised in a political family, though she frequently tells campaign stops about her grandmother's influential time as a secretary for the New York state legislature. Yet Gillibrand's career rise was anything but accidental, seeing as she and her husband did "intentionally buy a house" in a congressional district Gillibrand thought she could win, The Washington Post Magazine reports.
The story of Gillibrand's first political post is ingrained in her 2020 run. As an example of her dedication to women's rights, she tells audiences that she grew up knowing "you could not get elected in Albany without the blessing of my grandmother and her lady friends,” the Post recounts. Inspired by her grandmother and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, Gillibrand then quit her job as a corporate lawyer and started working for Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). And then, "she and her handsome British venture capitalist husband" bought a house in the rural New York district even though she was told it held “more cows than Democrats," the Post continues.
In 2006, Gillibrand beat the bovine odds and won her congressional race — probably thanks to her pro-second amendment stances that she reversed upon her election to the Senate. Yet even though it may seem odd she "intentionally" bought her house to run in that district, it does border Albany, where Gillibrand grew up. Read more about her political story at The Washington Post Magazine.