Cracks emerge in Stefanik’s GOP power base
North Country officials assess her unwavering backing of Trump
It was 2013 and Barack Obama had been sworn in for a second term as president, temporarily dashing the political hopes of Elise Stefanik, who had served as U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s debate coach in his unsuccessful bid for the vice presidency.
Seeking another path forward, Stefanik, then 28, settled in Willsboro in Essex County, where, from her parents’ summer home, she quietly launched her bid to topple U.S. Rep. Bill Owens, D-plattsburgh.
Owens announced his retirement in January 2014, and Stefanik cruised to victory that November as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
Now, in the aftermath of the storming of the U.S. Capitol that left five dead, her earliest local backers — the local politicians who carried her petitions and dialed her into the party apparatus across the sprawling Adirondacks — acknowledge that Stefanik’s unbending support of President Donald J. Trump puts her at
odds with local committee members who are wrestling with which direction the party should take after Trump leaves office this week.
“It’s cast a shadow of wonderment,” said Win Belanger, a longtime political operative and early Stefanik backer, about the congresswoman’s vote to object to the election results in Pennsylvania — one of four state tallies that drew objections from her — when Congress voted to certify Presidentelect Joseph Biden’s victory hours after Trump supporters invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6. “People are wondering why she did that. She has to be asked that, and she needs to answer that.”
Belanger said he still supports Stefanik, who he called the district’s “second best-ever” representative behind Rep.
John Mchugh, a moderate
Republican who Obama tapped in 2009 as his secretary for the Army.
But Belanger said he no longer supports Trump following the rash of violence (“If he ever raises his head again, I won’t be by his side or wearing his hat”) and local Republicans will have to focus on repairing the damage done to the party.
Stefanik has to walk a fine line in the local GOP committee to keep Trump voters happy, he said — and would surely have been asked to leave had she voted Wednesday for his second impeachment. Although she did not speak during the floor debate, she released a statement blasting the process as a “partisan ploy with no basis in the Constitution.”
Interviews with a halfdozen local GOP officials, including those who laid the groundwork for her successful 2014 bid for Congress, indicated that while they’ve distanced themselves from the outgoing president and aren’t keen on Stefanik’s support of invalidating election results, they’re not ready to abandon her.
Yet several think she has been knocked off track.
Crown Point Supervisor Charles Harrington said he was “surprised” by Stefanik’s pivot to Trumpism.
“I don’t feel she has the pulse of the North Country, but I may be incorrect,” Harrington said. “I would think if she wants to follow through with being a congresswoman,
“
I don’t feel she has the pulse of the North Country, but I may be incorrect, I would think if she wants to follow through with being a congresswoman, she needs to make some changes immediately.” — Charles Harrington, Crown Point Supervisor
she needs to make some changes immediately.”
Longtime Moriah Supervisor Tom Scozzafava was silent for several moments when asked what he thought of Stefanik’s embrace of Trump.
The lawmaker is simply representing her conservative constituency, he said.
Like others, he indicated the muted criticism from local elected officials is a sign of the power federal lawmakers wield over funding allocations in the Adirondack Park,
where development is tightly regulated.
“You’ve got to be extremely careful in this business not to burn bridges,” Scozzafava said. “Localities are so dependent on the state and federal government, and vice versa, you have to keep those relationships.”
Essex County Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman Jim Monty said Stefanik enjoys broad support.
“It’s one of those silentmajority-type deals,” Monty said.
Other prominent early Stefanik backers who have been enthusiastic in their support of her, including Essex County Board of Supervisors Chairman Shaun Gillilland and Ray Scollin, both former regional chairs for the state GOP, declined comment.
Former Essex County Republican Committee Chairman Ron Jackson, another prominent early supporter, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Essex County Republican Committee Chair John Gereau downplayed any potential fissures emerging in the committee and said support for Stefanik remains strong among voters and county GOP officials.
“I’d like to make it very clear that Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has a large network of supporters here in upstate New York who fully stand behind her right to question voting irregularities in this country and stand up for our constitutional rights,” Gereau said in a statement.
But, he added: “I really have not had enough conversation with elected Republicans to speak on their behalf.”
Stefanik handily won re-election last November, beating Democratic challenger Tedra Cobb, who initially challenged her in 2018, by nearly 18 percentage points.
And while Stefanik swept all 12 counties in the district, her support was more wobbly in Essex County, where the margin of victory was her smallest
in the district.
After losing the county in 2018, Stefanik bested Cobb in November by just 569 votes out of 19,119 cast, according to official results from the state Board of Elections.
Monty was one of the few local high-ranking GOP officials to offer full-throated support to the lawmaker.
“I support Elise 110 percent in what she’s doing — to a point,” Monty said last week. “We have eight days left in his presidency. I’m not a Trump supporter, nor am I a Biden supporter.”
Stefanik has faced some blowback since the insurrection at the Capitol, including from her alma mater, Harvard University, which kicked her off the advisory board of its Kennedy School Institute of Politics after the school’s dean determined she made public assertions about voter fraud and the 2020 presidential election that have “no basis in evidence.”
Harvey Schantz, a political science professor at SUNY Plattsburgh, doesn’t think the controversy will hurt her locally.
Schantz pointed to a Jan. 11 Quinnipiac University poll that revealed 70 percent of GOP voters nationwide believe that congressional Republicans who objected to certifying the votes were “protecting democracy.”
“The high-profile votes on the electoral challenges and presidential impeachment present potential
pitfalls for Republican incumbents running in 2022,” Schantz said. “But for those coming from a red constituency, the safest path to another term was to support the Republican position in order to satisfy the party base.”
Schantz also pointed at the lawmaker’s increasing sparring with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo as a sign Stefanik has a sense of increased power from her now-national perch.
Stefanik’s career trajectory has always followed two paths, said Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs: astute and methodical political operative and ideological warrior.
“I think those two are at a crossroads right now,” Reeher said. “What will be the reckoning for her? It depends on what Trump does from here on out, and what she does from here on out.”
Stefanik declined to be interviewed, but her office offered a bipartisan list of over 60 Essex County officials who endorsed her ahead of the 2020 election.
“County GOP committees across the district have been receiving an outpouring of support for Congresswoman Stefanik, especially over the last week,” said Alex degrasse, a consultant for the Stefanik campaign. “Congresswoman Stefanik earned more votes than any congressional candidate in the history of the North
Country. She remains committed to continuing to deliver bipartisan results to the hard-working families of Essex County.”
For Stefanik, continuing to latch herself to Trump may be the best way to retain support from his supporters for re-election in 2022, said Tim Weaver, associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, and her planned appearance with Vice President Mike Pence at Fort Drum on Sunday sends a strong signal.
But longer-term impacts following the violent siege and attempt to overturn the election are still emerging, including an increasing number of corporations announcing they will no longer donate to candidates who challenged the election results.
“The party’s been brought to a massive dilemma that the party has been trying to avoid during the Trump presidency,” Weaver said. “Trump has made the Republican Party essentially his party.”
I think those two are at a crossroads right now. What will be the reckoning for her? It depends on what Trump does from here on out, and what she does from here on out.” — Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University