US President-elect Donald Trump has chosen New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations.
The position of UN ambassador is often seen as a proving ground for rising stars of the party in power. The news will come as little surprise to those who have tracked Stefanik’s ascension through GOP ranks over the past decade, serving most recently as chair of the House Republican Conference.
Known for her prosecutorial style of questioning in House hearings, most memorably when questioning the heads of elite colleges about allegations of antisemitism on their campuses, she is likely to produce made-for-TV moments at the UN Security Council.
She was first elected in 2014, making her the youngest woman ever to win a seat in Congress at the time. A once-proud moderate, she has become a Trump acolyte—even joining the attempt to try and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In 2022, I profiled Stefanik in search of answers as to what her rise and political evolution could tell us about how the Republican Party has changed since Trump was first elected. Her future role as UN ambassador further cements her role in the party’s future.
Elise Stefanik is most likely to succeed
by Amy Mackinnon, published on September 22, 2022
In late October 2016, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik took to a debate stage in upstate New York, seeking a second term to represent her district in the US House of Representatives. It was just two weeks before an election that would horrify and electrify the country, and the presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was an unavoidable topic.
At 30 years old, Stefanik had been the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress in 2014. At a time when the party sought to reach a younger and more diverse pool of voters, she was hailed as the future of the Republican Party. Stefanik had spent much of the October 2016 debate asserting her independence as a candidate, and she cited her bipartisan record in Congress and appeared unfazed when asked about Trump—his offensive remarks about women and, perhaps most significantly, his unfounded allegation that the upcoming vote would be rigged against him.
“I disagree with Mr. Trump on this issue,” Stefanik said. “I have full faith and confidence in the outcome of the election in this district and across the country, and I urge candidates across this country to accept the outcome.”
That was then. This is now.
Over the course of the next several years, Stefanik evolved from a proud moderate to a devout acolyte of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” platform. In this way, the representative for New York’s 21st Congressional District has proved a bellwether for the Republican Party.
Her political evolution may not have been unique, but Stefanik’s change in tone and position has been the subject of fascination and bewilderment among former friends and colleagues, including some who championed her early rise. “It’s like the prom queen gone bad,” said a former Democratic congressional aide who knew the congresswoman and who requested anonymity to speak candidly. Stefanik’s office did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or comment for this piece.
Hours after Trump’s supporters rampaged through the halls of Congress on 6 January 2021, Stefanik cemented her loyalty to the outgoing president when she voted to overturn the results of the presidential election. She has continued to amplify unsubstantiated claims of voting irregularities and, with Trump’s endorsement, succeeded in ousting conservative grandee Liz Cheney as House Republican Conference chair in May 2021, becoming the third-most-senior member of the party in the chamber.
With the midterm elections less than six weeks away, Stefanik’s political evolution offers a lens into the powerful forces that have shaped the Republican Party. Her ascent through the ranks raises the question of whether there is any future for conservative politicians who try to resist its riptide. Why did she do it? And what does Stefanik’s transformation tell us about the future of the Republican Party—and, with it, the viability of American democracy?
There are two ways you can slice Elise Stefanik’s biography. The first, the version that features in her stump speeches, is that of an outsider, someone born and raised in upstate New York who was the first in her immediate family to go to college, whose parents built their family-owned plywood business from scratch.
In the second version of the story, the one that helped to pave a path to a job at the White House at the age of 22, Stefanik went to a prestigious college preparatory school, the Albany Academy for Girls, and then on to Harvard University.
Friends from Stefanik’s college years remember her as an ambitious student who cared deeply for her friends and partied as hard as she studied. “She’s the one who goes all in on karaoke,” said a college friend.
Much of Stefanik’s undergraduate life centred around the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, which seeks to prepare students for careers in public service. “I think she genuinely was extremely proud to be part of it,” said Morgan Grice, Stefanik’s college roommate. In 2004, she ran on a ticket with David Kaden—a Democrat who later went on to work in the White House under President Barack Obama—and was elected vice president of the institute.
After graduating, Stefanik served on the institute’s senior advisory board until she was removed early last year for her vote to overturn the election. Her response to the board’s decision was pure Trump, a mishmash of right-wing talking points. “The Ivory Tower’s march toward a monoculture of like-minded, intolerant liberal views demonstrates the sneering disdain for everyday Americans and will instil a culture of fear for students who will understand that a conservative viewpoint will not be tolerated and will be silenced,” she said in a statement.
Stefanik is part of a curious cohort of Trump devotees—along with Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; and others—who graduated from Ivy League universities but have spent much of their careers railing against the elite institutions from whence they came. In later years, Stefanik would joke that she went to Harvard, a Republican and a Yankee fan, and graduated as a Republican and a Yankee fan. “It was saying that she came (into Harvard) with her principles intact and left with them intact,” said Geoffrey Kabaservice, vice president of political studies at the Niskanen Center think tank.
When Stefanik graduated, a teaching fellow at the Institute of Politics who had recently left the George W. Bush administration helped secure her a job at the White House. Once in Washington, Stefanik settled into a job on Bush’s domestic policy council and an apartment in the leafy neighbourhood of Woodley Park.
During the 2012 election cycle, Stefanik worked on the presidential campaign of former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, an old-school Catholic conservative, and helped lead debate preparation for vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. After Mitt Romney and the Republicans lost out on the White House to the incumbent, Obama, party chairman Reince Priebus ordered what came to be known as the “autopsy.” It was a root-and-branch review of the party’s campaign strategy and messaging after losing the popular vote in five of the six most recent presidential races. Stefanik served as a kind of managing editor of the report, juggling its various contributions.
