Gillibrand Defeats DioGuardi

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. (official U.S. Senate portrait)
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Gillibrand Defeats DioGuardi in U.S. Senate Special Election in New York
N.Y.'s junior senator will face another race
Updated: Tuesday, 02 Nov 2010, 9:22 PM CDT
Published : Tuesday, 02 Nov 2010, 9:22 PM CDT

By NEWSCORE


NEWSCORE - Almost two years after being appointed to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacated New York Senate seat, Kirsten Gillibrand won the job outright Tuesday, defeating Republican Joe DioGuardi in a special election.
Fox News projected Gillibrand the winner when polls closed at 9pm ET.
The win by Gillibrand, a 43-year-old mother of two, was expected.
She had consistently led DioGuardi, an accountant and former two-term congressman from Westchester County, by significant margins in the polls and had a 10-to-1 cash advantage, reporting $3.5 million in cash at the end of September compared with his $350,000.
Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate seat by Gov. David Paterson when Hillary Clinton became President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State in January 2009.
Gillibrand had previously been twice elected to the House of Representatives, representing New York’s 20th district.
A graduate of Dartmouth and UCLA School of Law, she also worked as a corporate lawyer – at one point representing the world’s largest cigarette company, Philip Morris, as well as handling pro-bono cases -- and as special counsel at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Bill Clinton administration.
Gillibrand, often described as a centrist Democrat, voted in favor of Obama’s health care legislation in the Senate and has been a strong advocate of ending the US military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy.
She was named number 3 in The Hill magazine’s 2010 list of the “Most Beautiful People in Congress,” and was recently profiled in Vogue magazine, prompting New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to say she looked “stunning.”
"We in the Senate refer to Senator Gillibrand as the hottest member," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) reportedly told an audience at a New York City fundraiser held in his honor by Bloomberg.
Her special election victory means that she will serve out the remaining two years of Clinton’s term as the state’s junior senator -- alongside the Empire State’s senior senator, Democrat Chuck Schumer -- before having to run for re-election in 2012.