Patterson: "Kirsten Gillibrand is the best"

When an unknown corporate lawyer named Kirsten Gillibrand first ran for Congress three years ago, she commissioned a research study to identify her own personal and political vulnerabilities — lines of attack that might be pursued by wily Republican incumbent John Sweeney.

The result was a 12,700-word “self-oppo” report culled from online research and public databases. It uncovered no bombshells — but did outline a litany of possible pitfalls for a fast-rising rookie who had no idea, at the time, that she would soon be trading an obscure House back bench for the center stage of Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat.

“[A]ny attack on Gillibrand will likely focus on… her family and commitment to the region [and] her law firm work,” concluded the unnamed authors of the December 2005 document, obtained by Politico from a New York Democrat.

“Kirsten's family could cause her some political headaches. While her relatives have endured individual problems… the most likely attack she will face is that she is a product of Albany's political machine. The more voters learn about Kirsten’s family, the more they may not believe that she is a true political outsider, as she claims.”

The report flags a host of nagging, non-fatal problems. At the top of the list — Gillibrand’s work as a white-shoe lawyer representing corporations like Qwest Communications, which had been accused of financial misdeeds, followed by “headaches” stemming from her father’s lobbying work and his romantic involvement with a top aide to former Gov. George Pataki and also carpetbagger charges that might arise from her longtime residence in Manhattan.

There was even a passing mention of Gillibrand’s Montana hunting license, hinting at a Palin-esque penchant for sport shooting, and her $895,000 house in affluent Hudson, N.Y.

As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. Sweeney’s campaign imploded after the release of reports showing that state troopers had been summoned to his house to break up a domestic disturbance with his wife.

And Gillibrand cruised to victory last November, despite representing a GOP-tilting Albany-area district that could revert back to Republicans in her absence.

Nonetheless, the report takes on greater significance with its patron’s ascendance. It gives new fodder to future opponents like Long Island Rep. Carolyn McCarthy. And it provides a partial answer, at least, to the political question of the day: “Who is this Kirsten Gillibrand?”

The report paints a portrait of a 42-year-old Jaguar-driving political obsessive raised in the hothouse of state politics, educated at Dartmouth, energized by feminism and employed, from 2001 to 2006, by Boies, Schiller & Flexner, a powerful New York City corporate law firm with connections to the Clintons.