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A willingness to challenge authority with cogent
argument has served Krueger well, particularly
since her election to the New York State Senate
(26th District). The Senate for her is a venue for
insurgency. “There’s not that much compromising
to be done,” she said, adding that it is more a
question of helping “to educate my fellow legislators
in both parties to think through issues in a way
that they haven’t before.”
Krueger first ran for office in 2000, running as a
“sacrificial lamb” against 32-year incumbent Roy
Goodman. She didn’t let that intimidate her. Instead
she turned to “heavy, heavy field operations” to
get her message across. She met with constituents
at the subway, in the grocery, at schools, and in restaurants, and spent what time she wasn’t
out and about in the district fundraising.
She says she learned “how important it is
to actually just talk to people about what
their concerns are and to listen to them
and to be honest with them.” While campaigning,
she was shocked to find out just
how many people immediately assumed
she was a liar or crook. “It’s disturbing,
with a capital D, how many people believe
that elected officials just either tell them
what they want to hear or lie to their face.”
Krueger never shied away from telling the
residents of the 26th District, one of the
wealthier constituencies in the United
States, that she was seeking office after
working for 20 years as an advocate for
low-income Americans.
After graduation, Krueger had moved to
Cleveland, Ohio, where she spent two
years working for one of the nation’s first
food banks. Following a move to New
York, she was enlisted as the founding
director of the New York City Food Bank in
1983. From there she became associate
director of the Community Food Resource
Center, where she worked for 15 years
before running for office. She openly
acknowledged this background in her
campaign, telling voters it had given her
decades of experience finding solutions to
complex issues.
It didn’t win her the 2000 election—she
won at the polls by 300 votes but lost by 193
votes or .001 percent after a recount—but
in 2002 she earned her place in Albany.
She enjoys “fighting the bad guys” and
working for such a diverse constituency.
“My problem has been getting dragged
into too many important and interesting
things and how to sometimes say, ‘No,
you can’t bite it all off and do it all at the
same time.’”
Jenn Q. Goddu
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