TROY — Over the past seven months, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, has stood in opposition to the administration appointees of President Donald Trump more times than any of her colleagues in the 100-member U.S. Senate.

That distinction has raised New York’s junior senator’s profile in what some national pundits now call the “hell no congressional caucus,” a group of senators and House members known for speaking out against Trump’s agenda and performance.

Asked about her eagerness to take on Trump in her public statements, Gillibrand, following a rousing “town hall” event at Hudson Valley Community College, explained she simply calls them as she sees them.

“For the ones I voted against,” Gillibrand began, referring to her opposition to Trump’s appointees, “they either weren’t qualified or their views were really antithetical to my values. For example, Scott Pruitt (now the director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) when he was the attorney general for his state (Oklahoma), he sued the EPA over a dozen times, all on behalf of polluters, never on behalf of human health. I didn’t think he was qualified or (would) do a good job.”

She said she had similar reservations about newly minted Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. “She has spent no time working on public school education,” Gillibrand said. “She is already trying to unwind Title 9 protections for men and women on college campuses who were victims of sexual abuse.”

Gillibrand has also voted against some of Trump’s less-controversial picks. For instance, she was one of only 12 Democrats to oppose William Francis Hagerty IV, now serving as U.S. ambassador to Japan. And when the Senate voted, 92-5, to confirm Christopher Wray as the new FBI director on July 31, Gillibrand was again in the quartet that parted company with Trump.

“For most of the people he has put forward, they don’t have the right experience, or their values are so different from New Yorkers’ that they didn’t earn my vote,” Gillibrand said in the interview.

In Troy, the 50-year-old graduate of Dartmouth College and UCLA School of Law was in familiar territory. As a teenager, she had attended the nearby Emma Willard School, an exclusive private academy. Her maternal grandmother, the late Polly Noonan, was a long-time Democratic activist and witty political operative in the state Legislature and confidante of Erastus Corning, the Albany mayor who was a cog in one of the nation’s most enduring political machines.

Gillibrand is preparing for a re-election effort in 2018. It will be her third Senate run since she was appointed to her current job in 2009 by then Gov. David Paterson.

Her rhetoric and responses to audience questions in Troy suggested that her platform will be casting herself as a fighter for a single-payer health care system — what she labeled “Medicare for all” — as well as a defender of strong environmental regulations and pension protections.

She argued that “Medicare for all” is attainable if enough citizens demand it from public officials.

“You have to realize that members of Congress are 20 years behind the rest of America on their best day,” Gillibrand said, igniting a bursts of applause. “Americans believe that health care should be a right, not a privilege.”

She also drew hoots and clapping when she responded to a woman who suggested that Trump needs a mental health examination. Gillibrand described herself as deeply concerned by the president’s “attacks” on members of the judiciary, the press and environmental regulations, as well as those advocating for a vigorous investigation into alleged involvement by Russia in last year’s presidential election.

“If President Trump tries to fire (special counsel) Robert Mueller, I think there will be a constitutional crisis and there will be immediate accountability,” Gillibrand said. While Trump has denounced the probe as a “witch hunt,” he told reporters at his New Jersey golf club on Aug. 10 that “I’m not dismissing anybody.”

Republicans have had difficulty making any major dents in Gillibrand’s popularity, as she won both of her Senate outings by convincing margins in a state where Democrats hold a significant voter enrollment advantage.

A July 26 poll from Siena College found that 25 percent of New York voters have an unfavorable opinion of her, while 43 percent have a favorable view of the senator, down slightly from the 46 percent favorable rating she attained in a February snapshot of voter opinion.

Perhaps Gillibrand’s greatest vulnerability, the Siena poll suggested, is that approximately one third of voters have formed no opinion of her, suggesting she remains relatively unknown to a significant slice of the electorate.

Meanwhile, Trump “is not well-liked in New York at all,” said Siena pollster Steve Greenberg, citing polling data.

“It certainly doesn’t hurt Senator Gillibrand politically” in New York to take on the president with the frequency that she does, Greenberg said.

One of Gillibrand’s strengths — her ability to adapt to the shifting winds of politics — also doubles as one of her greatest weaknesses, said William O’Reilly, a veteran New York Republican campaign strategist.

“She is a chameleon much like Hillary Clinton (whom Gillibrand replaced in the New York Senate seat),” O’Reilly observed. “She will always double down on the winds of the day. She is going left now because everyone is beating up Trump. When she was in Congress, she said she kept a gun under her bed. Now she is for single-payer.”

New York has not had a Republican win a statewide office since then-Gov. George Pataki won a third term in 2002, a fact of life for the GOP as it scours about for a candidate who can run competitively against Gillibrand.

For the audience in Troy, Gillibrand portrayed herself as someone who can work in a bipartisan way to achieve solutions.

She also embraced some of the public’s frustration with former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act that many congressional Republicans want to repeal and replace.

“The reality is that for a lot of people who work hard every day, Obamacare is still too expensive,” she said. She added that much more work needs to be done to bring prescription drug prices under control.

As for getting along with her GOP counterparts in Washington, Gillibrand had the crowd with her again when she responded to an audience member who commented on the importance of bipartisanship.

“The other night I made dinner for Ted Cruz (the Texas GOP senator who competed unsuccessfully with Trump last year for their party’s presidential nod) and his lovely wife and their children,” Gillibrand said. That line got her the most laughs of the evening.

Joe Mahoney covers the New York Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jmahoney@cnhi.com