Elise Stefanik in the U.S. Capitol in April.
Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik says she is dropping out of the New York governor’s race and will not run for reelection to the House after finishing her term in office.
Stefanik’s announcement comes days after Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman decided to challenge her for the Republican nomination for governor. He jumped in the race despite a phone call from President Donald Trump discouraging him from challenging Stefanik, a member of Republican House leadership and a loyal Trump ally.
“My gut tells me this is not the right political time,” Stefanik tells me. “This is not the right sort of array of things lining up — which is so difficult in New York, which is just incredibly difficult in a picture-perfect year — let alone with a primary and everything else.”
Though the six-term representative believes she would have crushed Blakeman in a primary, “we viewed it as a waste of resources,” she says, pointing to how in 2022 the Republican nominee for governor, Lee Zeldin, had to spend $7 million in a relatively uncompetitive primary that left him at a disadvantage against Governor Kathy Hochul. Stefanik allies derided Blakeman’s candidacy as quixotic and “a vanity campaign,” saying it was tantamount to a murder-suicide against Republicans that would guarantee Hochul’s reelection in November.
As congressman and former state GOP chair Nick Langworthy put it, “In New York, you’re fighting a primary for a 20 percent chance to win in a perfect scenario.” Blakeman’s challenge ensured that a perfect scenario would not come to pass.
“It’s going to be a challenging environment, much more challenging than 2022, and the idea of running to the right [in a primary] to then turn around and run to beat the Democrats is a fool’s errand,” he added.
Stefanik’s decision adds to the challenging political landscape for Republicans in New York, where there are a half-dozen competitive House races next year. Republicans will also lose a prodigious fundraiser: She had banked over $12 million to run for governor before her announcement in November, drawing from donors across the country, with more expected to come.
Family considerations were also a major factor in her decision to leave politics. “I have a 4-year-old son, and that is a priority for our family,” Stefanik says. She had considered not running for reelection in 2024 for the same reason, but she wanted to assist Trump’s return to office as a member of congressional leadership.
Until now, Stefanik, 41, was considered a rising star in Republican politics. She worked in the Bush White House, then for Paul Ryan during his vice-presidential campaign in 2012, before winning what was then a competitive district upstate at the age of 30. Modeling herself as an Establishment Republican, she voted against Trump’s signature tax-cut legislation in 2017. Then she pivoted to become one of his most vocal defenders during his first impeachment in 2019. With these credentials, Stefanik was well positioned to succeed Liz Cheney after the latter was ousted from House Republican leadership for supporting Trump’s second impeachment in 2021 over the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A Harvard graduate, Stefanik catapulted herself onto the national stage during House hearings in 2023 with pointed questioning of college presidents about antisemitism and campus protests against Israel following the Hamas-led attacks of October 7. Her performance helped her to be considered as a potential running mate for Trump the following year. She considers her biggest legacy to be the hearings that she says “reset the course of higher education and expose the moral rot on an issue that is increasingly very concerning with the rise of antisemitism.” Next year, she will publish a book criticizing Ivy League universities.
Though she didn’t wind up as vice-president, Trump nominated her to be United Nations ambassador, which was the beginning of an unfortunate series of events for Stefanik. In preparation for the position, she gave up her leadership post and a coveted spot on the House Intelligence Committee. Her confirmation in the Republican-led Senate was virtually assured, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, worried about his thin and increasingly unmanageable majority, pushed Trump to drop the nomination to avoid a special election and risk a Democratic win in a safe Republican district. Trump pulled Stefanik, and she was forced to fight to regain both a leadership position and her committee assignments. The fiasco poisoned her relationship with Johnson, whom she has since openly derided as ineffective and dishonest.
As a result, Stefanik set her eyes on Albany, and at first it seemed like a competitive race. Hochul powered through a tough election for her first full term in 2022, and Trump did far better in New York in 2024 than he did in either of his first two presidential campaigns. Stefanik soon locked up much of the state Republican apparatus behind her, including members of the House delegation, 58 of the 62 county party chairs, and the party’s statewide chairman.
“It was pretty straightforward, whether it was Blakeman or somebody else. It didn’t really matter; we would win that primary,” Stefanik says. “Our theory of the case is that, in a challenging state like New York, you need to have a clean shot. And that was not the case,” she says.
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