Little known facts about New York’s newest senator, Kirsten Gillibrand:

Fugitive Norman Hsu donated $25,000 to her campaigns, which is actually even more than he donated to Hillary Clinton ($23,000).

Who she supported in the 2004 Democratic primary depends upon who was speaking to at the time:

”I’m so glad you’re running–I think it’s a statement in itself,” Kirsten Gillibrand, 35, a partner at a law firm, told Ambassador [Carol] Moseley Braun at a Women’s Campaign Fund dinner this week in New York. ”I don’t think she has a chance to win,” she whispered later, admitting that she would probably pick another name in the primary. ”I’ll probably fund-raise for someone else, but I’ll still give her a check.”

Her definition of independence is . . . malleable:

Those who followed U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand’s 2006 election campaign may recall she repeatedly criticized former U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, R-Clifton Park, for voting in line with President Bush’s positions 80 percent of the time.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in April 2006, also used the 80 percent figure in proclaiming Sweeney the “Rubber Stamp of the Week.”
Fast forward one year from the 2006 general election and the tables are turned.
On Monday, Rachel McEneny, a spokeswoman for Gillibrand, D-Greenport, said voting in line with Democratic House leaders 88.7 percent of the time shows the congresswoman is independent.
When a Post-Star reporter pointed out the comparison with 2006 campaign statements, McEneny responded, “It sounds like national rhetoric on both sides of the aisle.”

Her stance in earmarks is . . . let’s just say, complicated and evolving:

Ms. Gillibrand, 40, a Democrat whose overwhelmingly Republican district runs along the Hudson Valley from New York’s suburbs to the Adirondacks, agreed to give The New York Times a rare spectator’s seat around the table as such calculations were being made as part of a yearlong look at her life as a rookie congresswoman.
Her choices were not always clear-cut. For example, should she try to obtain financial help for the Opera House in Hudson, or for the Volunteer Fire Department in Clifton Park?
The lobbying was often intensely personal. A longtime acquaintance of the congresswoman, who runs a foundation called the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, was among the legions of people who dropped by seeking support. And the process seemed to be fraught with enough political peril to keep her up at night.
“I came up with that idea at literally 3 in the morning when I couldn’t sleep,” she said to her staff at a recent meeting, after proposing a novel way to get $6.8 million in funding for renovations at the Olympic center in Lake Placid. “It made sense at 3 in the morning.”
At the heart of Ms. Gillibrand’s deliberations over earmarks is a paradox. She rode into Congress, against great odds, partly on a wave of voter revulsion with Washington ethics. Democrats did their best to stoke that revulsion, campaigning against “special-interest earmarks,” which they said Republicans would secretly insert into spending bills at the behest of allies and contributors.
Ms. Gillibrand, a lawyer, argued that the secrecy of the earmarking process had contributed to the scandals that engulfed the Hill. Now she asserts that earmarks, when dispensed fairly and openly, are an important way of addressing local needs.

After winning election by running against the “culture of corruption” in Washington, she voted to table a motion to censure Democratic House colleague Chares Rangel from Harlem over a preferential rent control deal.

She’s not all bad, of course. She has adorable children, likes offshore drilling, and voted against the $700 billion bailout. And Nancy Pelosi doesn’t like her.