(The Center Square) — Rep. Elise Stefanik launched her long-anticipated candidacy for New York governor Friday in a bid to reclaim the state’s top elected post for Republicans for the first time in a generation.
Stefanik, five term congresswoman and key ally of President Donald Trump, launched her gubernatorial campaign with a video posted on social media and blasted incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul as “the worst governor in America.”
“Under her failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery bills. When New Yorkers were looking for leadership from our Governor, she bent the knee to the raging Defund the Police, Tax Hiking Communist causing catastrophe for New York families,” Stefanik wrote.
“I am running for Governor to make New York affordable and safe FOR ALL,” she added. “Democrats, Republicans, and Independents will unify to save our state.”
Stefanik, who represents New York’s 21st Congressional District, made history in 2014 when she won her first legislative race at age 30 as the youngest woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She has been reelected to the upstate congressional seat five times.
She was tapped by Trump early in his second term to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, but the president withdrew her nomination shortly after she appeared before a Senate committee confirmation hearing. Trump said he didn’t want Republicans to lose her congressional seat, with the GOP holding a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.
Stefanik has revved up her criticism of Hochul in recent months in anticipation of launching her gubernatorial bid, criticizing her tax and spend policies and seeking to tie her to Democratic socialist and New York City mayor elect Zohran Mamdani’s controversial platform. Her campaign launch video features clips of Mamdani supporters chanting “tax the rich” as Hochul spoke during a recent rally.
“With everything on the line, we need someone who will deliver results and make New York affordable and safe for families and small businesses,” a narrator says in the video clip. “Elise Stefanik will clean up Kathy Hochul’s catastrophe and restore New York’s greatness.”
Hochul, who is expected to seek another four-year term, responded to Stefanik’s candidacy in an early morning social media post that included a video from her campaign that accused the GOP congresswoman of putting her support of Trump above her fellow New Yorkers.
“Elise Stefanik is running to deliver New York for Donald Trump and raise your costs. Not on my watch,” Hochul said. “My message to Trump’s “top ally” — bring it on.”
The state’s Democratic Party also panned Stefanik’s candidacy, calling her “a rubber stamp in Washington for Trump’s deeply unpopular agenda that is raising costs, gutting health care, and defunding New York schools, hospitals, and police.”
“Voters in New York and across the country rejected Trump and his enablers earlier this week, and Stefanik will face the same fate when she launches her campaign to put Trump ahead of New Yorkers,” the party said in a statement.
A Siena College poll in September showed Hochul leading Stefanik 52% to 27% in a hypothetical matchup between the two women.
