Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., on Wednesday afternoon announced that she was dropping out of the 2020 race for the White House. This announcement came ahead of an expected revelation that she would not qualify for the third round of debates, according to a Yahoo news report.
Edited by: JV Staff
“It’s important to know when it is not your time and to know how you can best serve your community and country,” Gillibrand said in a video posted to social media.
Rising to national prominence in 2009 following her appointment to the US Senate seat previously occupied by Hillary Clinton, Gillibrand angered some voters with her policy positions and gained the adulation of others.
Gillibrand’s campaign struggled from the start, according to the Yahoo News report. She lagged in the polls upon her entrance to the race in March and surpassed the donor threshold required for participation in the first two rounds of debates well after several of her Senate colleagues in the race, as well as unheralded names like Andrew Yang, according to the Yahoo News report.
Looking ahead to September’s third debate, her campaign had said she was 20,000 contributors and two qualifying polls shy of the requirements needed by the deadline. As of Wednesday morning, she was still calling on supporters via social media to help her cross the donor threshold, according to Yahoo News.
After chronicling the support that fellow candidates Senator Cory Booker Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Kamala Harris John Delaney, the former Maryland congressman have received, the New York Times in March of 2019 wrote this: “But Senator Kirsten Gillibrand? No one from New York’s 21-member congressional delegation is yet backing her bid for president. And neither is New York’s governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, or its other senator, Chuck Schumer, who as minority leader is staying neutral because numerous senators are in the race.”
Gillibrand’s lack of support in New York “is revealing of both her New York relationships and how she has constructed her national profile, often by staying far from the state’s notoriously fractious and rough-and-tumble fray,” the Times noted.
The Times isn’t the only publication to notice the tepid response to Gillibrand. Vanity Fair recently noted that, “For a U.S. senator with deep ties to Wall Street and a firm grasp of the zeitgeist, Kirsten Gillibrand is struggling to make waves in the 2020 Democratic primary. Although she made headlines by announcing an exploratory committee for the presidential election on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Gillibrand has underperformed in polls, where she hovers around 1 percent support. Equally worrisome, the junior senator from New York hasn’t received any support among the state delegates whose votes she would need at the Democratic convention.”
It’s not as if she hasn’t been trying to gin up support from her home state. In March of this year, she and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer announced $764,110 in federal funding for 13 Senior Corps Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) projects in Upstate New York. The funding, provided by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), will support 4,136 Senior Corps volunteers from organizations throughout Upstate New York. By supporting additional volunteers who provide elderly care, tutor students, and assist communities in a variety of other ways, the grants will expand and strengthen the presence of Senior Corps RSVP programming in New York.
“Senior Corps RSVP projects provide valuable services for communities throughout Upstate New York. Through these projects, seniors are able to volunteer and use their experience to give back to their community,” said Gillibrand during the announcement. “RSVP volunteers are dedicated to serving and improving their communities, and this grant will allow organizations to continue their work and promote public service.”
Gillibrand made women’s issues the cornerstone of her campaign, releasing policy plans focused on paid family leave, reproductive rights and equal pay. Prior to her candidacy, she spoke out on sexual assault on college campuses and pushed to remove hearings concerning sexual assault in the military from the chain of command. She advocated for landmark legislation such as the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, according to the Yahoo News report.
