Stefanik

I don’t want to write about the clusterfuck at the White House yesterday, so let’s take a look at another trainwreck: Elise Stefanik and her political future.

First, this:

“Stunning”? How about we save that word for something truly surprising. Then there’s this:

That poster is blood in the water in political form.

It was but a few short months ago when Rep. Stefanik was measuring the drapes in the UN Ambassador’s residence, preparing herself for a few years in that sinecure, followed by years on the wingnut welfare circuit. Sadly, her king withdrew her nomination to keep the thin House majority, and also because she didn’t really rate in his book. (Do you think Trump gives a shit about the UN in general, and our Ambassador there in particular?)

Now she’s in a bit of a pickle, politically. She can run for re-election in her NY-21 seat, which is R+10 and went 60/40 for Trump in 2024. She’d probably win, but her UN Ambassador debacle destroyed her House seniority. She faces the possibility of a really tough campaign against a decently financed challenger (Blake Gendebein, who raised $3.3 mil and has $1.6 mil on hand). She ended 2024 with $8 mil cash on hand, so she can cover her North Country district with billboards, ads and so forth. But everyone knows she wanted up and out, and that’s a stink that’s hard to get rid of. Plus, if you can’t show your face in your district, it’s a problem, no matter how much money you have.

Stefanik could always run for Governor. That’s generally a losing game for a Republican. There was a recent Siena poll that showed her a mere 14 points behind Kathy Hochul, but 49% of respondents thought she’d be bad for NY. What that poll measured was Hochul’s weakness, not Stefanik’s strength. In what will be an anti-Trump election, she’s got too much Trump stink on her to do anything but lose, badly, in a statewide contest.

Another possibility: if Kathy Hochul decides to try to redistrict, which is unlikely because she’s a weak, bad politician, who knows what Stefanik’s district looks like. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of juice from any redistricting squeeze in North and Central New York. All the redistricting that could get us more NY Democrats in the House is going to happen in the downstate area, where some smart gerrymanders could yield a few more Democrats. If you look at the map below, Stefanik’s district (red circle) is R+10. The purple arrows show districts where Democrats hold office: NY-20, Tonko’s, is D+8. NY-19 is D+1 and NY-22 is D+4. NY-24 (red arrow) is R+11. So perhaps a few of Tonko’s Democrats could be pushed into Stefanik’s district, and more Republicans could be packed into Claudia Tenney’s NY-24. But there’s really no way to gerrymander Stefanik out of a seat.

So, she probably has a House seat after a pretty ugly campaign, if she wants it. Then she can be a second-term rep, seniority-wise. It’s not a pretty picture for some of those who sold their soul to Trump, but nobody is more deserving of a fall from grace than Elise Marie Stefanik.