Schumer and Gillibrand Win Senate Races in New York

NEW YORK – Democratic Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand won elections Tuesday, racking up wide margins against their little-known Republican opponents.

From the start of the campaign, there had been little doubt that Schumer would win another term, with polls showing him ahead of his GOP rival Jay Townsend by huge numbers, 61 percent to 21 percent in a late October survey.

But Gillibrand's victory over Republican Joseph J. DioGuardi was more remarkable. Just a year ago she was seen as vulnerable, an appointed senator with little name recognition. Before her appointment by Gov. David Paterson to Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat, she had been a congresswoman, representing an upstate district with a conservative bent. Democrats in liberal New York City were skeptical of her credentials. But in time she fended off potential Democratic and Republican opponents, raised millions of dollars and secured the backing of President Obama and other major political figures.

Schumer, who was seeking his third consecutive six-year term, won reelection on Tuesday by a landslide over Townsend, a market research and communications consultant who was given little chance of winning against the veteran Brooklyn lawmaker. Soon after the polls closed at 9 p.m., Schumer and Gillibrand were declared winners by the New York Times and Associated Press.

Schumer, 60, the vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference, stands in line along with Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin to become Senate Democratic leader if Harry Reid of Nevada loses re-election. Schumer would become the first Jewish senator to serve as majority or minority leader.

A major figure on Capitol Hill, Schumer was instrumental in helping Democrats win the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate in 2008 and is considered a prodigious fund-raiser and campaigner. He has won every election since going to the U.S. House in 1980. He was reelected eight times before he ran for the Senate in 1998 and won.

Schumer and Gillibrand's victories Tuesday were notable in a midterm election cycle that's billed as a GOP year, even in Democrat-leaning New York. Democratic incumbents were upended across the nation.

Gillibrand, defying the skeptics, ran a round-the-clock campaign against her Republican opponent, DioGuardi, 70, a former congressman who is better known as the father of ex-American Idol judge and songwriter Kara DioGuardi. Three days before Election Day, Gillibrand was running ahead of DioGuardi 2-1 in the polls.

By late Tuesday evening, she had cruised to victory.

At 43, workaholic Gillibrand is a strong campaigner and fundraiser. When she was in the U.S. House, she worked until the day before she gave birth to her first son, Theodore, and to the day before her second, Henry.

Earlier this year, while batting away potential rivals for her job, she went on a strict diet and exercise regimen to lose pregnancy weight. She dropped 40 pounds, thinned down to a size 4/6 from a size 16, and so jazzed Harry Reid that he called her the Senate's "hottest member." Now she's got a spread in Vogue, and her own seat in the Senate.