Kirsten Gillibrand releases tax returns as a challenge to Trump and other Democrats

Sen­a­tor Kirsten Gilli­brand of New York has pub­lished twelve years of her tax returns as part of her cam­paign to become the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee for Pres­i­dent. The returns, which can be found through a link to her Sen­ate web page, are a direct chal­lenge to her rival Democ­rats and to the President.

Gilli­brand has become the first nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent to release her tax returns for 2018, say­ing to CNN’s Alisyn Camero­ta that “it allows peo­ple to know you’re work­ing for them and nobody else.”

She closed a video on her cam­paign web­site by ask­ing vot­ers to join her in call­ing on all the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nees to fol­low her example.

Eliz­a­beth War­ren has already released ten years of her tax returns as part of an anti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign she took part in last year, before offi­cial­ly decid­ing to run for pres­i­dent (though she has not yet released her 2018 returns).

Bernie Sanders has been chal­lenged on the issue, and he has promised to release ten years of returns, but has yet to ful­fill that promise or pro­vide a timetable for it. At a CNN town hall, he said: “It just was a mechan­i­cal issue. We don’t have accoun­tants at home. My wife does most of it and we will get that stuff out.”

Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nees have been releas­ing their tax returns to the pub­lic since the 1970s, but the issue took on spe­cial rel­e­vance in 2016 when Don­ald Trump shirked tra­di­tion and refused to release his returns. Even in the White House, he has refused to release any­thing, lead­ing to ram­pant spec­u­la­tion about the pos­si­bly cor­rupt (let’s face it, almost cer­tain­ly cor­rupt) nature of his finan­cial dealings.

Gillibrand’s move is part of a broad­er cam­paign strat­e­gy to become the anti-Trump can­di­date. Last week­end, she spoke to sup­port­ers in New York in front of the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Hotel, lam­bast­ing the build­ing as “a shrine to greed, divi­sion and van­i­ty” and the pres­i­dent for “tear­ing apart the moral fab­ric of our country.”

Gilli­brand has strug­gled to stand out among the crowd­ed field of Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­tenders, only man­ag­ing around 1% in polls.

One way that low­er-pro­file can­di­dates can stand out in a field that includes big-hit­ters like Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden (the cur­rent fron­trun­ners in the race accord­ing to polling) is to churn out social media hits. Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke have both ben­e­fit­ed from speech­es and town halls tak­ing off online.

One reli­able way to make an impact is to antag­o­nize Trump, who has a habit of post­ing vit­ri­olic tweets against those he per­ceives as polit­i­cal ene­mies, and – much like Richard Nixon’s “ene­mies list” – being includ­ed has become some­thing of an hon­or for the President’s opponents.

Accord­ing to Dan Sena, for­mer chair of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, Trump tweets served as “rock­et fuel” for many of the most suc­cess­ful can­di­dates in last year’s midterm elections.

Gilli­brand is per­fect­ly posi­tioned to raise Trump’s hackles.

As the junior Sen­a­tor from New York, she rep­re­sents Trump’s home­town – the epi­cen­ter of the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion and loca­tion of numer­ous Trump build­ings. Using Trump build­ings as a back­drop, the Sen­a­tor has con­trast­ed the President’s “cow­ardice” against her own cam­paign slo­gan, “Brave Wins.”

Gillibrand’s slo­gan is par­tic­u­lar­ly apt, because she was an ear­ly sup­port­er of the #MeToo move­ment, and turned heads by call­ing for Al Franken’s res­ig­na­tion, even when oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­ers held back.

If she suc­ceeds in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­maries, she will undoubt­ed­ly use her sup­port from #MeToo to annoy and chal­lenge Trump, who has been accused dozens of times of sex­u­al mis­con­duct and abuse.