New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, an ally of President Donald Trump and a member of House Republican leadership, is running for governor of the Empire State.
“I am running for Governor to bring a new generation of leadership to Albany to make New York affordable and safe for families all across our great state. Our campaign will unify Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to Fire Kathy Hochul once and for all to Save New York,” Stefanik said in a statement.
Stefanik’s long-awaited announcement comes just days after New York voters elected Democrat Zohran Mamdani mayor of the nation’s largest city. Mamdani had the backing of Hochul, the state’s Democratic governor, whom Stefanik has spent months criticizing over her support for the self-proclaimed democratic socialist.
Stefanik, in her statement, referred to the mayor-elect as a “Defund the Police Tax Hiking Antisemite Communist.” A launch video accompanying the announcement said, “Elise Stefanik will make New York affordable and safe.”
Stefanik, who represents the 21st District in New York’s North Country, has undergone something of a political transformation since she was first elected to Congress in 2014. When she first entered the House, she was considered a centrist voice and a new face of the GOP. She has since come to embrace Trump, recasting herself in his conservative populist mold. In 2019, during the president’s first impeachment trial, Stefanik emerged as one of his most vocal defenders.
In 2021, Stefanik ascended to what was then House Republicans’ No. 3 leadership position as conference chairwoman, after her colleagues voted to oust Trump critic Liz Cheney from the role.
After Trump won the 2024 election, he announced Stefanik as his pick to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In anticipation of her getting confirmed, Stefanik stepped down from her House leadership role and in January her nomination won approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by voice vote. But a Senate floor vote was not immediately forthcoming, and in March, Trump withdrew Stefanik’s nomination, saying Republicans needed to hold her House seat. She later rejoined the chamber’s leadership team as chairwoman of House Republican Leadership.
Hochul, a former upstate congresswoman herself, responded to Stefanik’s announcement by dubbing her “Donald Trump’s number one cheerleader in Congress.”
“While Stefanik puts Trump first and New York last, Governor Hochul is lowering costs, cutting middle-class taxes, and fighting for the New Yorkers Stefanik abandoned,” the governor said in a statement.
Hochul, who became governor in 2021 after Andrew Cuomo resigned, won a first full term the following year against another House lawmaker — Republican Lee Zeldin. Her 6-point win, though, was closer than expected in deep-blue New York, and Trump’s overperformance in counties across the state last year has raised optimism among Republicans, who haven’t won a statewide race in New York since 2002.
Hochul faces a primary challenge next year from her lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado.
On the Republican side, Rep. Mike Lawler, who represents a Lower Hudson Valley district north of New York City, had been also considering a run for governor but said in July that he would seek reelection to the House instead. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who scored a decisive reelection victory Tuesday, told the New York Post he’s still weighing a gubernatorial run.
But Ed Cox, the chair of the New York Republican Party, said Stefanik would not face opposition within the party.
“There will not be a Republican primary and a year from now, Elise will lead our team to victory over Kathy Hochul, end one-party Democrat rule, and make New York affordable again,” he said in a statement.
A longtime member of the Education and the Workforce Committee, Stefanik has in recent years focused on the rise of antisemitism on college campuses, making headlines for her exchanges with prominent university presidents during hearings as Republicans questioned the leaders over their alleged liberal views.
Last month, she announced she is set to come out with a new book in April about “the failures of American higher education and the reckoning facing universities,” according to a release from the publisher Simon & Schuster.
Stefanik’s decision to run for governor will again open up her deep-red 21st District, which she won last year by 24 points.
Democrat Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer who was briefly the Democratic nominee in the aborted special election to complete Stefanik’s term when she was Trump’s U.N. ambassador pick, is running again. He had $2.1 million in his campaign account at the end of September.
Still, Republicans will be heavily favored to hold the 21st District, given that Trump carried it by 21 points last fall.
Niels Lesniewski and Andrew Menezes contributed to this report.
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