Elise Stefanik drops out of N.Y. governor’s race, will leave Congress

EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / REUTERS / JAN. 21

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) testifies before a Senate committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in January.

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Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a conservative Republican with close ties to President Donald Trump, abruptly announced today that she was suspending her campaign for governor and would give up her seat in Congress next year.

The decision amounted to a stunning turn in fortune for one of Republicans’ biggest stars and upended one of the nation’s top governor’s races.

Stefanik, 41, was a Harvard-educated phenom when she took office a decade ago, becoming the youngest woman to serve in the House in its history. Over the years she transformed herself from a moderate Republican into a full MAGA warrior, and shot up through House leadership ranks.

Now, she will join a growing list of Republican lawmakers headed to the exits of the Capitol as they openly bristle under the leadership of Speaker Mike Johnson. She is the second high-profile ally of Trump to call it quits in about a month, following Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who is leaving office in January.

In New York, Stefanik was widely viewed as the front-runner for the Republican nomination for governor when she entered the race in November. A Fox News regular with an aggressive style and a national fundraising machine, she lined up state party leaders behind her as she relentlessly attacked Democrats.

But her hopes of running unopposed in a primary were dashed in recent weeks when Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, joined the contest and began to compete for Trump’s blessing.

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Allies said Stefanik, who represents New York’s North Country, had always believed she would have a steep uphill fight to defeat Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans and have held the governor’s mansion for two decades.

Surveys showed her far behind Hochul in a head-to-head contest, with a recent poll by Siena University showing her trailing by 19 points.

Blakeman’s entrance into the race, though, raised the prospect of a potentially costly and damaging intraparty fight. An ally familiar with Stefanik’s thinking said she was not interested in running a “suicide mission” next year and blamed Blakeman and his supporters in Nassau County Republican circles for squandering the party’s shot at beating Hochul.

The decision to quit the governor’s race and leave her seat in Congress after a decade was the latest turn in Stefanik’s political trajectory.

Her loyalty to Trump — which involved defending him during his first of two impeachment inquiries and amplifying his lies about the 2020 election — appeared to pay off after he won back the White House in 2024. Trump nominated her to be ambassador to the United Nations, a Cabinet-level post.

But Trump rescinded the invitation in March, fearing Republicans would go on to lose her House seat if a special election were held. Stefanik returned to the House in frustration, and has openly clashed with Johnson in the months since.

Trump, who holds huge sway over Republican primary voters, had initially encouraged Stefanik to run for governor. Yet with Blakeman in the race, he pointedly declined last week to take sides.

“Elise is fantastic and Bruce is,” the president told reporters at the White House. “They’re two fantastic people, and I always hate it when two very good friends of mine are running, and I hope there’s not a lot of damage done.”

Trump had by then already partly undermined Stefanik’s messaging strategy, when he met last month with Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City.

Stefanik had spent weeks trying to tie Hochul to the young democratic socialist, who she falsely claimed supported Islamic jihad, to try to paint the governor as extreme.

But as he sat next to Mamdani in the Oval Office, Trump instead lavished him with compliments and declared him a reasonable governing partner.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company

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