Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand insists she’s “constantly” trying to clamp down on her self-admitted penchant for “colorful language,” though she does find it effective in Congress.
“I have young kids, so I try very hard not to swear at home,” the New York Democrat told ITK at a Monday night release party for Off the Sidelines,” her female empowerment book.
“I’m constantly trying to be very good the last several years of my life,” Gillibrand said of putting the kibosh on cuss words.
{mosads}But that doesn’t preclude the lawmaker from dishing out some expletives when she’s on the job. In an interview this week with HuffPost Live, Gillibrand dropped an f-bomb when recounting a conversation she had with a labor leader who had criticized her appearance. “I wasn’t in a place where I could tell him to go f–k himself,” she said on the show.
“I do sometimes use colorful language at work, which for whatever reason, seems to express it better,” the mother of two told us.
When ITK asked a nearby staffer for confirmation, he quickly nodded a “Yes” regarding Gillibrand’s comment, as both laughed.
There were no profane slips overheard at Monday’s soiree, as a VIP crowd mixed and mingled at the book party hosted by Constance Milstein and J.C. de La Haye St. Hilaire at the couple’s Georgetown home.
Alluding to congressional ethics rules, Gillibrand told the crowd, “This is the only fun party I’m allowed to have on this whole book tour. This is it.” She added: “Book tours are different if you’re an elected official. It’s hard to have parties.”
Regarding the headline-making revelation from her book that an “older male colleague” called her “porky,” Gillibrand, 47, told ITK she hasn’t heard from that lawmaker or others anonymously quoted as having made inappropriate remarks about her looks.
“No, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t even recognize themselves,” she said. “These are people who say things they just shouldn’t say and don’t realize they shouldn’t say it.”
The junior New York senator has refused to name names regarding the weight comments. When we pressed her on whether she would ever identify her colleagues, she declined to say, telling us, “I don’t think it’s important to the debate, because it’s never about the one specific insult by the one specific person.”
Gillibrand stressed the importance of the bond shared by her female colleagues in the Senate.
“It’s true, the women of the Senate spend time to get to know each other. … It makes a huge difference because then, we cheer each other on,” she said.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was among the partygoers who came to cheer Gillibrand on at the book party. Other guests included: Michigan House candidate Debbie Dingell (D), NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell, media consultant Tammy Haddad, former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, former Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter, lawyer Jack Quinn and his wife Susanna, investor Mark Ein, The Hill’s Sheila Casey and retired Gen. George Casey, lawyer Bob Barnett and CBS’s Rita Braver, lawyer John Coale, consultant Kelley McCormick, and former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes.