We pull into the parking lot of the museum, which is in an old clapboard farmhouse that looks like it hasn’t been touched for 100 years. It is hot and buggy, and there is a sizable gathering standing around in the backyard. At a dais set up in the grass with a small white awning pitched over it for shade, Gillibrand gives a short but surprisingly moving speech, one that feels like the bare bones of a stump speech. She talks about why national paid family leave matters, because without it the “workforce is stuck in the Mad Men era. I have a great bill that makes it affordable. Two dollars a day.” She pushes affordable day care and health care, and then she gets to the one thing that clearly matters to her the most: more women running for office. “Just imagine what it would be like if we had 50 percent of women in Congress? Imagine if we had a woman president.” A mordant chuckle ripples through the crowd, still smarting from Hillary’s excruciating loss. “Things would change, I promise you. There would be different issues raised, different solutions offered. And we wouldn’t still be fighting for access to contraception; we wouldn’t still be fighting for equal pay for equal work. These things would be done, foregone conclusions. Our economies and communities are suffering because we don’t have enough diversity in Congress. I think there is an urgency to this. But I’m very hopeful. Something’s changing. Frankly, we are the suffragists of our generation.”

Coline Jenkins, a descendant of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, steps up to speak about the coming anniversary of women’s right to vote, as that strange ever-present August hum of insects vibrates the air. “You are exercising your right to vote, to hold office in your own name,” she says to Gillibrand. “I’m very proud of you.” Looking a little choked up, Gillibrand says, “I’m proud to be your senator,” and Jenkins says, “I want you to be my president,” and the crowd erupts in laughter and cheers.

Our road show continues—three more counties to go—and at some point I realize that I haven’t asked Gillibrand about her faith. The question takes her back to the days she worked at a big corporate-law firm in Manhattan, feeling deeply unfulfilled. “I felt that I didn’t have a strong enough purpose. At the end of the day, every lawsuit was about money, so in my view, not for the greater good. I had grown up in Catholic school, got plenty of religious education throughout my life, but I hadn’t really homed in on it until then, until I was personally and emotionally lost, a young single woman in New York City. I started going to church and doing a lot of charitable work. And the more I realized what my faith was about, it made me really want to leave the big law firm and focus on public service. It also gave me a purpose that I hadn’t really clarified: that life is not about making money, life is not about self-aggrandizement, life is not about accruing things and power. It’s about being a good wife, a good mother, finding ways to help others who need your help. We all are called to something. I kept feeling like, This is my calling. I really have to serve others. I really have to use my intelligence, my education, my ability to be tough, to be aggressive, to speak out to take on the military or Donald Trump”—she starts to laugh—“or whomever I happen to be taking on at the moment, I have the strength to do that. And I’m not afraid. I am not afraid.”

Which is another way of saying that she’s at peace with losing—she’s not risk averse, which is a rare quality in Washington. “I take calculated risks,” she clarifies. “I measure. I assess risk very intensely. And then I make a judgment. When you play tennis as a kid, you’re going to win sometimes and lose sometimes, and you learn how to behave well under both circumstances. Such a great life lesson because if you’re not afraid of losing, you’ll take a risk—like running for office.” Pause. “Even though it’s a two-to-one Republican district.” Pause. “Even though I might get battered and bruised.” Pause. “I’ll run even if no one thinks I can win except for my mother.”

Sittings Editor: Tonne Goodman.Hair: Dimitri Ferrer; Makeup: Alice Lane; Tailor: Lucy Falke.Set design: Mary Howard.