Kirsten Gillibrand was struggling with a line in her speech.
The New York senator was in the car and making changes to remarks she’d give at the Women’s March in Des Moines during her first trip to Iowa last January as a still-undeclared presidential candidate. But when her male campaign manager jumped in with a suggestion, Gillibrand stopped him.
“I want to hear from the ladies in the car,” Lara Henderson remembers Gillibrand saying as she turned to face the women in vehicle.
“At that moment, I knew I was going to work for this woman,” Henderson said. “It was so incredible.”
Shortly after, Henderson signed on to direct Gillibrand’s now-ended Iowa caucus campaign, helping to lead one of the most unabashedly feminist, woman-centric presidential campaigns in history.