Elise Stefanik Tried Everything to Please Trump. He Still Jilted Her.

The G.O.P. congresswoman who ran as a moderate but became an “ultra MAGA” Trump acolyte ultimately found herself undermined by the president and politically adrift.

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.

“My most important title is Mom,” she wrote in a long post on social media on Friday.

People close to Ms. Stefanik said she was not upset with the president, noting that the two had spoken multiple times, including in person, over the past few weeks, conversations in which they saw eye to eye about Ms. Stefanik’s decision and her future.

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.

In truth, Ms. Stefanik, first elected in 2014 as the youngest woman to serve in the House, has been burned out on Congress for years.

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.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Georgia Republican who was a true believer but dared to break publicly with the president on a variety of issues, recently experienced the inevitable falling out with him for doing so.

Trump Administration: Live Updates

• The White House chides the Smithsonian for delaying the turnover of records on programming.
• Trump picks a new leader for the Southern Command as U.S. pressure on Venezuela grows.
• The Kennedy Center, a memorial to J.F.K., is Trump’s now, too.

But Mr. Trump’s treatment of Ms. Stefanik was more surprising because no one had ever viewed her as a true believer, and she still never dared to vent frustration or disagreement with the president.

“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.

“They’re both great people,” the president said in the Oval Office earlier this month when asked whether he had a preferred candidate in the Republican primary for governor. It was a punch in the gut for Ms. Stefanik. To add insult to injury, Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, had not officially entered the race.

Still, Ms. Stefanik said nothing, choosing to channel much of her anger at Mr. Johnson.

In 2019, former Speaker Paul Ryan described Ms. Stefanik in a Time magazine spotlight as “the future of hopeful, aspirational politics in America.” For a time, it looked like his statement would hold true.

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.

She took off in February 2020, when Mr. Trump hosted the House Republican conference in the White House East Room after his acquittal in his first impeachment trial. He credited Ms. Stefanik with that victory.

“You were killing them, Elise. You were killing them,” he said, asking Ms. Stefanik, clad in a bright red dress, to stand up and be recognized. She beamed as the president and all of her colleagues applauded her. From there, she rose to serve in House leadership and underwent a vetting to serve as Mr. Trump’s vice president.

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.”

At least one ally was trying on Friday night to give Ms. Stefanik a reason to keep fighting.

“Elise needs to keep her seat and challenge Mike Johnson immediately,” Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser, said, calling her “one of our real warriors.”

Related Content