Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is leading Democrats' push to retake Senate, and says success is possible

WASHINGTON — The New Yorker leading the Democratic Party’s uphill fight to retake the U.S. Senate says she is building strategies partly on how the party flipped three of her state’s congressional seats blue in 2024, including one on Long Island.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who heads the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm, also said in an interview with Newsday that there are realistic paths now for her party to win back the chamber it lost in 2024 this fall, despite previous doubts.

The political climate has started to shift toward Democrats, Gillibrand asserted, because President Donald Trump "has put forth policies that have deeply hurt Americans." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York's other senator, has been saying the same.

But Republicans and some non-partisan political are skeptical of this new, rosier outlook. They note that Democrats still face a difficult combination of needing a net a gain of at least four seats to retake the Senate this fall, while also protecting seats they have.

"The main challenges are mathematical: Democrats need to flip four seats, and they have just two top-tier opportunities in Maine and North Carolina, after which they have to flip seats in states Trump won by double digits," said Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor at the non-partisan Inside Elections.

Joanna Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, responded that "After four years of Democrat failure," Republicans who now control the Senate "are fulfilling their promise of safer communities, more money in voters’ pockets, and more opportunities for working families."

Either way, some independent political analysts say that Gillibrand — in a personal political sense — may be playing with house money.

"If the Senate Dems shoot craps this fall, she will pay no price," veteran New York Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said. "There’s no blowback because they aren’t expected to win.

"But if they win back the Senate," he added, "she will be among the most popular in Washington."

Success in House

The one-time Democratic presidential primary candidate reelected to her Senate seat in 2024 to a third term — the same year Trump was reelected — actively sought the job as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Many Democrats have been predicting it will take two election cycles, until 2028, for the party to have a real shot at recapturing the majority it lost in 2024.

But Gillibrand, in the interview, gave no indication she isn’t playing to win — and win now. The senator says that making fundraising a good chunk of her work — being in New York City two or three weekends a month, is part of that.

She also talked about organization and strategy, including her focus on incorporating elements of what worked in her party’s New York successes in 2024 in flipping three congressional seats.

One of those flips occurred in Nassau County, where Democrat Laura Gillen defeated GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito in New York’s 4th Congressional District.

Much credit for those victories has gone to the coordinated campaign initiative Gillibrand led with Gov. Kathy Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries that linked party organizations and emphasized outreach to voters.

"We organized those races, we were present in those districts, and we won five out of seven, outperforming the whole country," Gillibrand said. "That’s what we’re trying to do at the DSCC."

"She truly was one of the heroes in the campaign," said Robert Zimmerman, a Democratic National Committeeman from Great Neck. As for her new role as DSCC chair, he said, "She is very driven. Very determined. And she understands the mechanics of what the job involves. She’s very good at this role."

'Huge backlash'

Like Schumer, Gillibrand places some of her optimism for this fall to candidate recruiting successes, with Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina, former Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio and former Rep. Mary Peltola, running in Alaska.

Gillibrand said in the interview that along with Maine, "I think that gives us four really very possible and even probable races where we can flip," adding, "We have expanded the map to other states where we have very strong candidates."

She said this comes as "President Donald Trump has created a huge backlash against the Republican Party and himself."

Gillibrand ticked off what she says is a shaky economy, and how Trump "has overreached" on everything from cuts to health to imposing tariffs. Gillibrand also talked about the "thuggish" immigration enforcement moves that have led to disruptions of local communities, and Trump’s "ambitions to invade three or four places."

"So that’s the kind of instability that voters generally really dislike," she said.

She said that elections won nationally by Democrats last fall, including in some red states, showed if the party’s candidates focus on issue that voters care about, "voters will reward them."