Do our values match Elise Stefanik’s values?
The Front Page
Morning Update
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
By Ken Tingley
So now we know who is to blame.
Now we know who started this madness, who pointed Elise Stefanik down the road of lies and political ambition and made us accessories to it all.
It was John Bridgeland.
Dana Milbank, a columnist for the Washington Post, talked to Bridgeland for his column this weekend about what he thought of the bright Harvard student at the time, and what he thinks about her now.
Bridgeland left a senior position in George W. Bush’s White House in 2004 to join the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Elise Stefanik was assigned to him as a student fellow and facilitator for his seminar.
“She was so excited because I was one of the few Republicans (at the school’s Institute of Politics,” Bridgeland told Milbank.
He was immediately impressed by her smarts, but even more so for her commitment to community service. He was so impressed he asked her to do a project with him selling Harvard students on voluntary opportunities such as the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps.
“I thought the world of her,” Bridgeland told Milbank.
When she graduated, Bridgeland personally appealed to President Bush’s Chief of Staff Josh Bolton to hire her.
He did.
She worked at various roles in the Bush White House, then was an adviser to vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan - remember him - during the 2012 presidential campaign. That gained her valuable national connections in the Republican Party.
It was Bridgeland who also later encouraged her to run for Congress in 2014 as a moderate.
That was important at the time because the district’s previous congressman was Democrat Bill Owens. Before that, Democrats Scott Murphy and Kirsten Gillibrand had been successful in the 20th Congresstional District - along with Republican Chris Gibson - that included Glens Falls and many local communities.
The district seemed to be more purple than deep red for a time.
“I was so incredibly happy and proud,” Bridgeland said of Stefanik’s election. “I viewed her as the bright light of her generation of leaders. She was crossing the aisle. She was focused on problem solving. She had the highest character.”
She had potential, I remember thinking at the time, but I also remember her being extremely cautious in what she said, and too often parroting GOP talking points instead of laying her own beliefs.
I never was really sure what that was.
After winning in 2014, she praised her opponents in her victory speech.
“No matter their party, our democratic process is strengthened by those individuals willing to put forth their ideas,” she said that night. That would not happen today.
She pushed to make the Republican Party more diverse by attracting more women to run. She became a prominent member of the moderate Tuesday Group, a caucus of center-right Republicans. She continually emphasized her commitment to being bipartisan and her voted record mirrored that.
Time magazine quoted one former aide as saying she was “every Democrat’s favorite Republican.”
And then, “this switch went off” Bridgeland told Milbank.
And he wrote this:
“But perhaps nobody’s fall from promise, and integrity, has been as spectacular as the 37-year-old Stefanik’s.”
This is where we have to take a lot of the blame.
We have elected her three times.
This is where we have bought into the Washington politics instead of following our own values as Stefanik has bought into countless conspiracy theories, become a national Republican fundraising star, not because of any particular policy, but because of her allegiance to a former president.
“I was shattered. I was really heartbroken,” Bridgeland told Milbank after seeing her lies about the election. “I was just so shocked she would go down such a dark path. No power, no position is worth the complete loss of integrity. It was just completely alarming to me to watch this transformation. I got a lot of notes saying, ‘What happened to her?’ ”
Alumni of Harvard’s Institute of Politics petitioned to have Stefanik removed from its advisory committee.
Bridgeland signed it.
“I had to,” he said, “because Constitution first.”
“Elise could have been the face of a new generation of Republicans that could represent a real big-tent party that could build beyond the base, that could lay the foundation for a coalition that could win elections nationally,” said Margaret Hoover, a center-right commentator who worked with Stefanik in the Bush White House, to Time magazine a year ago. “It shows she was never motivated by principles, and that’s disappointing.”
For those of us who elected her, it should be more than disappointing. We have to take responsibility for the mistakes we have made in electing someone without principles.
Ask any local Republican leader if they are afraid of Stefanik, of her power, of what she might be able to do to them in their own local election, and then watch them pause before they answer.
That will tell you a lot.
She has used us. She has used all of them and now she owns them.
Milbank asked Bridgeland why?
“Quest for power,” Bridgeland said. “But power without principle is a pretty dark place to go. She wanted to climb the Republican ranks and she has, but … she’s climbed the ladder on the back of lies about the election that are undermining trust in elections, putting people’s lives at risk.”
That is our congressional representative.
That is what we have done.
When she first ran for office in 2014, she told The Post-Star editorial board she believed in term limits and would not serve longer than five terms.
I suspect that is no longer the case unless the voters decide otherwise.
Crandall event
Thanks go out to Crandall Library librarian Kathy Naftaly for hosting Tuesday’s night discussion about life, newspapers and the future of journalism between Will Doolittle and myself.
It was a great discussion that went on for nearly 90 minutes.
What I heard more than anything was that people still love their newspaper and want to support it.
It was great to see Mike Goot of The Post-Star and former Post-Star feature writer Meg Hagerty at the event.
To answer the question in the headline: No, her values don’t match mine. I’m sure that wouldn’t bother her, tho. She’s no doubt back to demonizing immigrants and liberals today, even after the massacre in Texas. It’s small consolation that Bridgeland is probably even more despised by Stefanik and her ilk. He’s a RINO, now defined as being disloyal to Trumpism.
As of a few weeks ago, I’ve lived in Northern NY, in various locales, for 65 years. It’s always been heavily Republican. I’m used to that. Or was. Next year I hope to get my house sold. I abhor the idea of moving because I want to live among my own political tribe. I can’t continue to live in an area where over 60% of the populace are willing to cast votes for people as immoral and unprincipled as Trump and Stefanik, tho.
Just to nitpick, she’s been elected 4 times. Not by “we,” tho. She ran her first two campaigns on taking away my health insurance and replacing it with magic beans. I naturally didn’t vote in favor of that. She beat Aaron Woolf, Mike Derrick and Tedra Cobb (twice). I do want to thank you for affirming my memory of her saying she would only serve 5 terms. As you point out, that’s likely no longer operative.
Her district needs to wake up and vote her out!