POTSDAM, N.Y. — Elise Stefanik is betting big on 2024.
The leading House Republican says she convinced her party to flood key swing districts in New York with $100 million in campaign cash. She joined Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the Hamptons for a previously unreported fundraiser with deep-pocketed donors and lawmakers. And she shared a sprawling digital database of contributors with the state GOP.
Nearly a year after Republicans flipped three battleground House seats in the Hudson Valley and on Long Island, Stefanik insists she has a plan that will allow the party to hold off a Democratic offensive. Control of Congress may depend on her success — not to mention her political future.
And Stefanik knows it.
“I’ve been underestimated from the beginning,” she said in an interview Wednesday at a dairy farm in her Upstate New York district, not far from the Canadian border. “That’s been a trend my entire time in Congress.”
She’s pledging to “make sure” her Republican colleagues in New York have the resources needed to win. A Stefanik adviser, granted anonymity to discuss the private plans, put it more bluntly: “It’s a guerilla warfare mentality.”
Stefanik, 39, has quickly emerged as a leading political power broker within the party, both in Washington and at home. She’s a devoted ally of former President Donald Trump, and she’s made her northern New York district, which runs through the Adirondacks, a lock for the GOP.
It has given her the independence and the gravitas to help Republicans across the state. Campaign offices have opened more than a year before the first votes are cast and are being seeded with Republican staffers in the Hudson Valley, Central New York and on Long Island — areas both parties must do well in if they hope to win the House majority.
She has also edged away from embattled GOP Rep. George Santos, now under federal indictment, after she supported him last year, saying she will leave the future of that district up to Long Island Republicans. That’s a shift for her from last year, when she used her influence to try to sway several Republican primaries, only to see some of her favored candidates lose.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) speaks with constituents at a dairy farm in Potsdam, N.Y. on Aug., 23, 2023.
