Annie Karni, with a quick and decent summation of Elise Stefanik's meteoric rise and just as sudden fall after her stunning announcement that she was leaving politics when her term ends, and abandoning her quixotic New York Gubernatorial run.
Source: New York Times
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.
Nowhere was that undermining more evident than when Trump invited the New York mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, to the White House.
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.”
And with that, Stefanik's much-needed boogeyman disappeared. A few weeks later, Trump would fail to endorse her or Bruce Blakeman for the Republican nomination, and that was that, for all intents and purposes.
I think this sums up the sort of week Elise Stefanik was having as well as anything.
Stefanik gave this long, rambling slop about wanting to spend more time with her family.
While spending precious time with my family this Christmas season, I have made the decision to suspend my campaign for Governor and will not seek re-election to Congress. I did not come to this decision lightly for our family.
I am truly humbled and grateful for the historic and…— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) December 19, 2025
