Ex-centrist rises on embrace of Trump

Elise Stefanik began her Washington career as a moderate, but has changed tack and surged in influence to likely become the most powerful Republican woman in Congress – a trajectory she owes entirely to her defence of Donald Trump.

Stefanik, just 36 and in Congress for six years, is aiming to oust conservative Liz Cheney as House Republican conference chair, a dramatic change that concedes the extraordinary shift that is shaping the party’s future around the defeated president.

Political scion Cheney, daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, is on the verge of being punished for refusing to buy into what she calls Trump’s “Big Lie” that election fraud caused his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden.

Cheney’s adherence to election truth appears to be apostasy in Trump’s remade Republican Party, and its members are expected to vote her out of her leadership post.

Their argument: the party requires solidarity rather than Cheney’s public denunciations of Trump as it seeks to win back the House and Senate majorities in next year’s midterm elections.

Stefanik, a Harvard graduate representing an upstate New York district, has stressed party unity and her loyalty to Trump as she campaigns for the powerful role.

Aside from being a woman, she can connect with voters on the US East Coast, demographics with which Republicans have traditionally struggled. Trump himself has endorsed her for the post. “I’m committed to being a voice and sending a clear message that we are one team, and that means working with the [former] president,” Stefanik told Steve Bannon, a former White House aide, on his radio show.

Stefanik recently launched a media blitz, lashing China for its role in the coronavirus pandemic, echoing Trump’s “America First” platform and attacking Biden and his fellow “socialist” Democrats.