Susan Molinari to Challenge Kirsten Gillibrand?

The White House has effectively rebuffed all Democratic challenges to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, save for the exception of Jonathan Tasini and (possibly) Harold Ford Jr. And having lost Rudolph Giuliani as a contender, the GOP is now down to (maybe) Pete King.

Or are they? The Staten Island Advance says Susan Molinari, former city councilmember and U.S. congresswoman, and daughter of former Staten Island borough president Guy Molinari, is "mulling" a run at Gillibrand.

Molinari says both her father and Giuliani (at whose firm, Giuliani & Bracewell, she is a pirncipal) have encouraged her to run, and though it's still "very early in a conversation I'm having with myself," she promises to declare one way or the other "sooner rather than later."

Molinari quit the House to work as a journalist for CBS in 1997, and has not run for anything since, though she remains active in GOP politics. She supported Giuliani for President in 2008, and is shown explaining how great that campaign is going in Florida, where Giuliani wound up getting 13 percent of the vote, in the video above.

Molinari currently lives in Virginia.