Stefanik Drops Out of Governor’s Race, Leaving Congress
Everybody knows you never go full MAGA.
Nicholas Fandos reporting for the NYT (“Elise Stefanik Drops Out of N.Y. Governor’s Race and Will Leave Congress“):
Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a top Republican with close ties to President Trump, abruptly suspended her campaign for governor on Friday and announced that she would give up her seat in Congress next year.
The decision was a stunning turnabout for one of the Republican Party’s most ambitious stars, and it upended what was set to be a high-wattage governor’s race.
In a statement posted on social media, Ms. Stefanik framed her motivation as a mix of political pragmatism and family priorities. But allies privately acknowledged that years of intraparty fighting and a series of embarrassing disappointments at the hands of Mr. Trump had taken a toll.
[…]
Ms. Stefanik, 41, was a Harvard-educated phenom when she took office a decade ago, becoming the youngest woman to serve in the history of the House up to that point. But over the years, she went to extraordinary and sometimes brazen lengths to transform herself from a moderate Republican in the mold of George W. Bush into a full MAGA warrior.
Embracing Mr. Trump helped propel her into a national figure, beloved by many conservatives and loathed by Democrats. She shot up through congressional leadership ranks, briefly becoming the highest-ranking woman in the House, and nearly became ambassador to the United Nations.
But she also suffered a series of painful setbacks and humiliations that demonstrated the limits of her approach. The president pulled back her U.N. nomination this spring, fearful of losing her House seat in a special election. And after she entered the race for governor expecting to have his support, it was surprisingly withheld.
Now, Ms. Stefanik will join a growing list of Republican lawmakers headed to the exits of the Capitol as they openly bristle under the leadership of Speaker Mike Johnson. She is the second high-profile Republican who had been close to Mr. Trump to call it quits in about a month, following Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who is leaving office in January.
[…]
The congresswoman was widely viewed as the front-runner for the Republican nomination for governor when she entered the race in November. A Fox News regular with an aggressive style and a national fund-raising machine, she lined up state party leaders behind her as she relentlessly attacked Democrats.
But her hopes of running unopposed in a primary were dashed in recent weeks when Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, joined the contest and began to compete for Mr. Trump’s blessing.
Allies said Ms. Stefanik, who represents a safely Republican district in New York’s North Country, had always believed she would have a steep uphill fight to defeat Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans and have held the governor’s mansion for two decades.
Surveys showed her far behind Ms. Hochul in a head-to-head contest, with a recent poll by Siena University showing her trailing by 19 points.
[…]
An ally familiar with Ms. Stefanik’s thinking was more blunt, saying that she was not interested in running a “suicide mission” against Ms. Hochul.
The person, who was not authorized to speak publicly, blamed Mr. Blakeman and his supporters in Nassau County Republican circles for squandering the party’s shot at beating Ms. Hochul.
Whatever the wisdom of tacking to the MAGA side in advancing her career as a Republican politician, it was fatal to any ambitions of a New York governorship. Hochul isn’t super popular and a charismatic, young, moderate Republican might have stood a chance. But a MAGA firebrand? No way.
Fandos’ colleague Annie Karnie (“Elise Stefanik Tried Everything to Please Trump. He Still Jilted Her.“) adds:
Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, was willing to be the team player with the stiff upper lip.
But everyone has their limits.
After a series of public humiliations delivered to her by President Trump — his yanking of her nomination to serve as U.N. ambassador; his Oval Office love fest with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, during which the president undercut her; and the coup de grâce of his refusal to endorse her in the Republican primary for governor — Ms. Stefanik on Friday afternoon announced she’d had enough.
She was done with the governor’s race, for which she had raised more than $12 million from donors who may now be frustrated with her decision to pull out. And done with Congress altogether: She said she would not seek re-election next year.
Now, at war with Speaker Mike Johnson, privately livid at Mr. Trump and deeply frustrated with her job in Congress, it is not clear whether Ms. Stefanik even has any interest in finishing her term, although people close to her said she planned to stay until the end of her term.
[…]
Her tumble from grace crystallized the limits of MAGA loyalty and the risks of building a political identity around Mr. Trump, who can turbocharge or torpedo a career — sometimes both. Once one of the president’s most stalwart defenders, Ms. Stefanik, who referred to herself as “ultra MAGA” and styled herself after Mr. Trump, ultimately found herself undermined by him and politically adrift.
In truth, Ms. Stefanik, first elected in 2014 as the youngest woman to serve in the House, has been burned out on Congress for years.
Instead of seeking to rise in the House, Ms. Stefanik set her sights on serving in a second Trump administration. When every other member of House Republican leadership ran for speaker in 2023, she sat it out. Instead, she looked in the mirror and saw a cabinet secretary looking back.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Georgia Republican who was a true believer but dared to break publicly with the president on a variety of issues, recently experienced the inevitable falling out with him for doing so.
But Mr. Trump’s treatment of Ms. Stefanik was more surprising because no one had ever viewed her as a true believer, and she still never dared to vent frustration or disagreement with the president.
It’s a shame when trading your integrity for political advancement doesn’t pan out. A real shame.
********************@
Cynthia Lummis is also leaving the Senate. Good riddance, but whoever replaces her won’t be any better. Harriet Hageman is thinking about running for her seat, which is kinda odd, I assumed she’d run for Governor.
Of course Trump dumped her, he can’t have her as part of his virtual harem. See: Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Karoline Leavitt, Kelly Loeffler, Tulsi Gabbard, Monica Crowley, Alina Habba. You need to have a lot of long hair and not be old or overweight or unattractive or even have short hair. Any woman Trump can’t fantasize about fucking is nothing at all to him. MTG didn’t get it, neither did Elise Stefanik. Linda McMahon gets a pass because she’s a billionaire.
I wonder if the penny finally dropped for the ignored and sidelined Susie Wiles, so stuck a knife in the old pig’s back. How any woman can support this POS is a mystery.
ETA: @Jax: Harriet Hageman? Trump won’t lift a finger for her.
Now what was that about leopards and faces?
One of the things that polisci notes about politicians is that they frequently have very short time horizons, and therefore make poor medium-to-long term decisions. This is often noted in terms of policy choices. But it is also relevant to career choices. Members of Congress are primarily motivated by re-election. It makes them susceptible to making short term strategetic choices based on the politics of the moment. People like Stefanik tried to ride the Trump wave by cleaving to short-term thinking. It illustrates not only their rank-order preference for winning office over real policy/ideological goals, but also how those calculations can go awry just as the short term melts into the medium.
One of the things that I think the last decade should be teaching us is how little “core beliefs” (or whatever term you would like to use) are real and important to most people. Instead, voters, politicians, pundits, and the like are far more flexible to the moment, if it helps their personal propsects or their team.
I refer you to the O’Brien-Smith Principle: you assert power over others by making them suffer.
You don’t want people to obey because they agree with you, or because they like you, or because they think you’re right, or even because they owe you. That’s loyalty, not power. You want them to obey because of their fear of what you’ll do to them if they don’t.
And even if they prove obedient and reliable, you must hurt them over and over and have them stay compliant. how else will you know you dominate them? How else will they know it?
@Michael Reynolds:
Well, Elise seems to have shoulder-length hair. Does that not count?
@CSK:
Only if she looks like Ivana, Marla, Melania or Ivanka.
@Michael Reynolds:
But of course. Silly me.
@Michael Reynolds:
I see your:
I raise you:
Laura Loomer