She stepped onto the political stage in 1996 as the consummate citizen legislator and Washington outsider, after being thrust into the national spotlight when her husband was killed and her only son seriously wounded in a gunman's rampage on a Long Island Rail Road train in 1993. But since her first days in office, this former nurse from Mineola has grown into a comfortably entrenched incumbent. She has retained the Everywoman manner that helped her sail to re-election twice, but she also has learned the nuanced art of political negotiation.