Elise Stefanik: The Cost of Selling One's Soul

Like a number of Republican members of Congress, Elise Stefanik is Ivy League educated and certainly sufficiently intelligent to know better than to jump in bed with the Felon's and the GOP's embrace of ignorance. Yet, due to seemingly blind ambition and a lack of any true moral compass, she went full MAGA and sold her soul to the Felon and his ugly regime.  Her congressional district covers much of the Adirondack Mountains region and surrounding areas in northern New York State. While conservative by New York State standards, the district is a far cry from the hollows of Appalachia (my family continues to own a summer home where I spent summers growing up in her district) where embracing ignorance is a badge of pride among many. Thus, as the Felon's approval rating has plummeted, winning reelection even in that district might have been an effort should Democrats nominate a strong candidate.  Cast aside by the Felon for a cabinet position, Stefanik decided to throw her hat in the ring for the GOP nomination to take on incumbent New York governor Democrat Kathy Hochul, a race that would have been an uphill battle for anyone so tied to MAGA.  Adding insult to injury, the Felon refused to endorse her, proving yet again that loyalty is a one-way street with the Felon.  Faced with the first polls showing Hochul nearly 20 points ahead of Stefanik, Stefanik has withdrawn from the gubernatorial race and has announced she will leave Congress in 2026. Stefanik is a cautionary lesson on the cost of selling one's soul to the Felon.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Stefanik's withdrawal from politics:

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.

To detractors, Ms. Stefanik’s shoddy treatment by the president amounted to karmic comeuppance for a Republican lawmaker who came to Congress as a Harvard-educated moderate but tacked unapologetically to the MAGA right when it suited her political purposes. They said she personified the opportunistic shape-shifting that gripped her party.

“My greatest disappointment is Elise Stefanik, who should know better,” Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, said in an interview last year, describing her as a one-time friend. “She went off the deep end.”

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.

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.

“Resilience is one of my strengths,” she said in a brief interview last April, after the president withdrew her nomination to serve as U.N. ambassador. “We have bounced back pretty quick. The reality is almost everyone prominent in American politics has a twist and turn.”

At the time, people close to her said, Ms. Stefanik was able to convince herself she had been the victim of difficult political circumstances. Mr. Trump and Mr. Johnson at the time were concerned about losing another seat in the House when the majority was already too slim to govern. Plus, Mr. Trump was privately telling her that he would reward her down the line with something much better. Her political future still looked bright.

In casting about for something else, Ms. Stefanik looked to the governor’s race. Winning a statewide race in New York was always going to be an uphill battle. But Ms. Stefanik viewed Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, as weak, and she thought she could enhance her own profile even if she only came within striking distance.

But without Mr. Trump’s endorsement, people who spoke to her said, the entire premise became ludicrous. And Mr. Trump, who famously hates to back a losing candidate, was holding out.

When the party transformed itself under Mr. Trump, Ms. Stefanik seemed to have no qualms about doing what it took to remain the face of its future. . . . . But things did not turn out exactly as planned.

Part of the strategy of her long-shot bid for governor was to make Mr. Mamdani the far-left face of the Democratic Party. On the campaign trail, she referred to him as a “jihadist,” the kind of incendiary moniker Mr. Trump favors. Given all that she had done to remain loyal to the president, Ms. Stefanik figured he would back her.

Mr. Trump did no such thing. When asked if he agreed with Ms. Stefanik that the mayor-elect was a “jihadist,” he responded: “No, I don’t. She’s out there campaigning, you know. You say things sometimes in a campaign.”

With Mr. Mamdani standing beside him, he added: “You really have to ask her about that. I met with a man who is a very rational person.”

Again, Stefanik should have known better but was blinded by ambition and a willingness to sacrifice decency.  Hopefully, her political career is dead going further into the future.