Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) announced her campaign to run for president in 2020, becoming the second Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) member and the third female lawmaker currently on the Hill to announce a bid.
Gillibrand, who joined the Senate in 2009, has long been considered a potential Democratic candidate for president and on Tuesday evening revealed she had launched an exploratory committee to run for U.S. president in 2020.
In the 115th Congress, she served as ranking member of the SASC subcommittee on personnel, and also served as a member of the cybersecurity subcommittee. She will remain on SASC for the 116th Congress, although subcommittee assignments have not yet been released.
In 2013, she introduced the Military Justice Improvement Act, meant to move the decision to prosecute sexual assault cases in the U.S. military outside of the chain of command and into the hands of independent and trained military prosecutors.
Gillibrand was re-elected to the Senate in the 2018 midterms, and received a little over $19,000 from defense-related industry employees and $54,000 in political action campaign (PAC) funds for the cycle. Since first running for her seat, she has received $398,847 in total from defense contractors: over $79,000 from individual donors and $319,400 in PAC funding.
Fellow SASC member Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has also created an exploratory committee for the 2020 race (Defense Daily, Jan. 3), and combat veteran Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who served on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) in the 115th Congress recently revealed on CNN that she plans to make a formal announcement to run for president in the coming days (Defense Daily, Jan. 14). The full HASC membership roster for the new Congress has not yet be released.