Gillibrand makes Charles City campaign stop, vows to heal divide created by Trump

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told potential Charles City voters Saturday that the nation needs a leader with courage.

“I will reach into the red places, the blue places and the purple places. I will bring people together,” she said. “I will heal the divide that President Trump has created, and I will get things done on behalf of the American people.”

The New York senator is one of more than 20 Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for president. She made a campaign stop at Jim Davis’s office in downtown Charles City Saturday, making her case and then fielding questions on a wide variety of issues.

“I’ve never been this concerned about our democracy before now,” Gillibrand said.

Gillibrand, age 52, officially declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination on March 17. She has served as the junior senator from New York since 2009, and was a member of the U.S. House from 2007-09. She represented New York’s 20th congressional district in upstate New York. Following U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s appointment as secretary of state in 2009, Gillibrand was selected to fill the seat vacated by Clinton.

Gillibrand won a special election to keep the seat, and was re-elected to full terms in 2012 and 2018. Born and raised in upstate New York, Gillibrand graduated from Dartmouth and from UCLA law school.

“This president has changed the character of the country. He’s someone who demonizes the vulnerable, who demeans the weak,” Gillibrand said. “He does all this because he wants you to believe he’s strong, but he’s not. Our president is a coward.”

She said she is the person who could heal a divided nation, and pointed to her record in Washington as evidence of that.

“I get stuff done in Washington. As a freshman senator, I carried the first gay-rights legislation to repeal ‘don’t ask don’t tell,’” she said. “Why would you turn your back on people who want to serve this country, based only on who they love?”

She said the legislation faced opposition not only from Republicans, but also members of her own party, who told her it was an inconvenient time to pass gay-rights legislation.

“When is civil rights ever convenient?” Gillibrand asked. “You do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

She also talked about her efforts representing 9-11 first-responders in New York.

“They were told the air was clean, so they worked on Ground Zero, first looking for survivors and then looking for remains,”Gillibrand said. “They did that for weeks and months and then started to die of horrible diseases and cancers. I brought those first-responders to Washington and knocked on every Senator’s door.”

She said she also took them to Roger Ailes at Fox News, and won his support.

“When we finally passed the bill we passed it unanimously,” Gillibrand said. “I know how to get things done. I passed 18 bills in the last Congress, with a Republican majority and a Republican in the White House.”

Those gathered questioned Gillibrand about agriculture policies and renewable fuels, climate change, health care, immigration and several other issues.

Gillibrand said that health care “should be a right and not a privilege.” She said that a Medicare-for-all solution is the quickest way to get there.

“I really believe that if we move to single payer over the next five years, we will have less expensive medicine, more preventive care, and we’ll be able to change outcomes,” she said, and she added that she would make sure reimbursement rates would reflect costs.

On ag issues, Gillibrand said she wants to protect small farmers and provide them more capital.

“I believe that agriculture is a national security issue,” she said. “I want to make sure that we support our farmers so that we always produce our food here. The law encourages consolidation and outsourcing, and that’s not where we want to end up.”

Regarding climate change, she favors a green new deal. She suggested a worldwide competition to find solutions for climate change, and said she would make it a cornerstone of her presidency.

When questioned about immigration policy, Gillibrand said she would find bipartisan support on comprehensive reform, with a pathway to citizenship.

“I would also stop doing what President Trump is doing at our border,” she said. “I would not be separating children from their families, I would not be locking them up in for-profit prisons.”

She saved her fiercest rhetoric for Trump.

“President Trump has created so much division and so much hatred, dividing us along religious lines, racial lines, and any social and economic line he can find,” Gillibrand said. “It’s really separated us, it’s made us fearful — fearful of our neighbors, fearful of people who don’t look like us, fearful of people of different religions. He’s creating an enormous breach, and he’s tearing apart the fabric of our soul as a people.”

She said the nation is at a crossroads, and the people need a voice in the White House.

“This is a moment when we all have to recognize what we are going to do to have our voices heard,” Gillibrand said. “What are we going to do to fight back? What are we going to do to make a difference? What are we going to do to reclaim this democracy?”