Updated 2:06 p.m. ET, 3/26/2014
(CNN) - Hillary Clinton's successor in the Senate, Kirsten Gillibrand, isn't taking no for an answer.
The New York Democrat said on Tuesday that she's not running for president in 2016 but will "make sure" Clinton does.
[twitter-follow screen_name='politicalticker'][twitter-follow screen_name='danadavidsen']
She offered a full-throated appeal for the former secretary of state to launch a second bid for the White House.
Gillibrand told a Politico’s Women Rule event in Washington that Clinton should run a "forthright campaign about who she is."
"I think if she just runs on who she is and where she comes from and what she's about and let people get to know her, her true essence, she will win," she said.
An overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination should she run, Clinton is seen as an automatic frontrunner.
Clinton has not said whether she’ll mount a candidacy.
Gillibrand was tapped to succeed Clinton in the Senate in 2009 when President Barack Obama tapped her to be America’s top diplomat.
Gillibrand won a special election in 2010 to fill out Clinton’s term and then was reelected two years later.
Asked if Clinton would be confronted with sexism should she enter the 2016 contest, Gillibrand said it's "hard to say" and that our electorate hasn't moved beyond gender, though women are perceived as "more authentic, more honest" and "more able to relate" than men.
Women in the Senate are nothing like the devious female characters in the political drama "House of Cards,” she said when asked about the popular Netflix series.
"My colleagues are much nicer," Gillibrand said. "Most of the women in the series are portrayed as quite cold and calculating but my experience is I adore the female colleagues I have in the Senate."
Gillibrand has waged a high-profile fight over the past year against fellow Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill's competing proposal for military assault reform.
While Gillibrand's bill came up five votes short, the Senate voted overwhelmingly earlier this month to pass McCaskill's measure, which also overhauled how sexual assault cases are handled, but did not remove military commanders from deciding whether most serious allegations of wrongdoing by their subordinates should be prosecuted.
Gillibrand said it's not hard to grasp the idea that another woman didn't back her proposal.
"Women are not a monolith. We agree on many things and we disagree on many things but what I do know is all of us come to the table with good will and good intentions to get things done," she said.
As Congress was locked in the battle on how to reform on how the Defense Department handles sexual assault, Gillibrand was not happy with how two high-profile military sex assault cases played out in the military justice system.
A former Navy football player was acquitted and charges were dropped against an Army general, who was convicted of lesser charges. He avoided jail.
Gillibrand said she was disgusted.
"The system is broken. It is fundamentally flawed.," she added. "The reality is that the victims have no faith that they will see justice in his process."