Elise at 40 has reached the pinnacle of power; now what?
Dave Casey's passing will leave a void on the Glens Falls High School sports scene
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This is a belated Happy Birthday to Rep. Elise Stefanik.
She turned 40 Tuesday and while she was once the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, she is now middle-aged and a power-broker in the Republican Party. Not bad for 10 years in Congress.
Many consider 40 the halfway point in life and a milestone where you often take stock of where you've been, but more importantly, where you are going.
Elise Stefanik came into our lives 11 or 12 years ago as a Congressional candidate unlike any the North Country had ever seen.
She was not a middle-aged white male.
She was a fresh-faced young woman less than a decade out of Harvard selling herself as a moderate willing to work across the aisle and be the future of the Republican Party.
What we didn't know at the time was that the Republican Party was playing the long game. Looking at how it reshaped the Supreme Court over the past 30 years shows their patience.
Apparently, they were playing the long game with Congress, too.
The day after Stefanik graduated from Harvard in 2006, she started a job in the George W. Bush White House as a staff member of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council. She impressed people with her smarts and ambition and later worked in the office of the White House Chief of Staff.
People noticed her and she got opportunities.
She worked to prepare the Republican platform in 2012, landed a gig as a debate adviser to vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan and served as director of new media for Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's presidential exploratory committee.
The details about those early years and being a Washington insider came out gradually over time.
She was encouraged to return to upstate New York and run for Congress by old-fashioned Republicans from the Bush White House.
The fairy tale concocted by a media consultant who had worked with Mitt Romney when he was running for president was that she had returned home to work in Willsboro in the family plywood business. She had given up Washington and rubbing shoulders with the most power people in politics to deliver plywood.
Few questioned the reality she never really lived in Willsboro before, although her family owned a seasonal home on Lake Champlain.
And she had never worked in the family business before.
So when Brian Mann, a North Country Public Radio reporter at the time, showed up in Willsboro to ask about the fresh-faced young businesswoman, he was kind of surprised to see nobody knew who she was.
The truth trickled out over the next 10 years that Stefanik grew up in Albany. She went to a private school and enrolled at Harvard where she tooled around campus in a BMW. When she showed up in Willsboro 10 years later to campaign, she traded in the BMW for a pickup truck.
Optics are everything.
It was all part of the show for the voters, part of the education of what you have to do to gain power.
Stefanik was being groomed to be something the Republicans needed desperately - a young woman to be the face of the party for the future. That has more or less come to pass.
Big-money donors supported Stefanik's campaign in 2014 and she dispatched Matt Doheny in a primary.
Shortly after that victory, a political consulting firm retained by Stefanik's campaign registered or acquired two dozen Stefanik-themed web addresses hinting at a future run for the Senate or president, including the web address: stefaniikForPresiden.com.
She won the general election too to become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
She must have felt on top of the world.
She became part owner in a Capitol Hill townhouse worth $1.3 million at the time.
She won re-election in 2016 and then in 2018 while running against Democrat Tedra Cobb, her campaign paid a 17-year-old high school student nearly $1,000 to secretly film a "Teens for Tedra" event.
She had hired a teenager to do political espionage and when asked about it, she said she approved.
She also became a prolific fundraiser with big-money donors from all around the country supporting her.
When The Post-Star editorial board - I was a member at the time - asked both candidates not to lie during the 2018 campaign, Stefanik did respond and fact checks of her campaign ads found her bending the truth in unprecedented ways.
When a Stefanik supporter threatened the Glens Falls newspaper and a reporter with violence that summer, she invited him to a rally and thanked him for his support.
Along the way, Stefanik promised not to serve more than five terms. She is currently running for a sixth term.
But her most confounding metamorphosis was to become pro-Trump.
Both the New York Times and Time magazine did profiles on her dramatic change from moderate Republican to extremists Trump supporter as she abandoned the old-school Republicans who had groomed her.
Paul Ryan told associates he considers her the biggest disappointment of his political career.
In one of the national articles, she was called a "handmaiden of Trump."
Both publications did deep dives and found former friends and acquaintances who were shocked by her transformation.
“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,” Margaret Hoover, a center-right commentator who worked with Stefanik at the Bush White House and now hosts PBS’s Firing Line, told Time magazine in 2021. “It shows that she was never motivated by principles, and that’s deeply disappointing.”
By the time we turn 40, we know a few things about the world and our place in it.
Some of us grow more cynical.
Others live life more more fully while enjoying marriage and parenthood and acknowledging our advancing age.
I looked on social media Tuesday and did not see any birthday wishes or silly memes teasing Elise Stefanik about turning 40. Instead I saw the usual litany of attacks on Democrats and praise for the former president.
Even on her birthday.
I wonder what she was thinking when she blew out those 40 candles Tuesday night.
I wonder what she wished for.
Health?
Happiness?
Or maybe just the vice presidency.
What is unusual here is that Elise Stefanik is not that much different at 40 than when she first ran at 30. The ambitions are the same, but the route different.
She doesn't seem to have evolved at all as a person.
If anything she more ambitious, more vicious and calculating than the young woman who graduated Harvard. She has gotten good at it.
When I turned 40, I was just finishing what I now see as my first act as a sports editor. My second act as the editor of the newspaper was still ahead of me. I still had a lot to learn.
We both became parents for the first time at about the same age. Her little boy turns three in August. Parenthood changed me, gave me patience and perspective on what was important in the world and a desire to balance my personal and professional lives.
The woman we met running for Congress 10 years ago has the same ambitions, the same mentality as today, just more-so.
All she has known since leaving college is political war. You can’t help but wonder if she is suffering from PTSD.
The fairy tale she told a decade ago was not true.
Neither is what she says now.
The voters bought it then and are buying it now.
It worked.
She is successful.
She is powerful.
At 40, she has reached the pinnacle of power. I suspect she looked in the mirror Tuesday night, smiled and realized there is so much more ahead of her and she seems to be willing to deliver the hate and animosity it takes to get where she wants to go.
Maybe, that seems unfair. Maybe she will actually soften with age.
Maybe she will learn from her past experiences.
Maybe she will gain wisdom.
You know, life begins at 40.
That frightens me.
Face of Glens Falls
For as long as I've been going to Glens Falls sporting events - going all the way back to 1988 - the one constant was Dave Casey.
Whether it was the Adirondack Red Wings, a Glens Falls football game or a Glens Falls basketball game, Dave was always there.
He was the head athletic trainer for the Adirondack Red Wings beginning in 1979, taught physical education at St. Mary's and Abraham Wing and was head baseball coach at Glens Falls. But more often than not, you could find him on the sidelines or in the stands at Glens Falls sporting events.
In recent years, I regularly saw him on the sidelines or up in the balcony at Glens Falls basketball games.
Dave passed away this week at the age of 76.
It's hard to imagine a Glens Falls game without him.
Bed tax monies up
The Warren County treasurer reported this past week occupancy tax revenues have increased 29.37 percent so far this year. What's driving the increased is 62 percent increase in receipts from short-term rentals like Airbnb.
That tells you a lot about the housing market in a tourist area.
Train donation
The donations for the Chapman Museum's 1900 trolley diorama of downtown Glens Falls is off to a great start.
We had one donation for $200 on Monday morning and the Upstate Model Railroaders club donated $50 from their open house on Sunday.
We still need $1200 to purchase materials needed to build a diorama with a working trolley line.
To donate to the project, click on the Chapman Museum link below. Make sure you stipulate the donation is for the trolley diorama project.
Girard in summer league
Joe Girard III has been signed by the NBA's Toronto Raptors to participate in their two-week long summer league evaluation in Las Vegas.
NBA teams gather in Las Vegas in July and each play five games to better evaluate recent college graduates and free agents they might want to sign for training camp.
Girard, the all-time leading scorer in Glens Falls history and a star player at Syracuse and Clemson, told The Post-Star he has no plans beyond that.
Chapman events
The Chapman Museum walking tours continue Friday at 11 a.m.
I took the "Downtown Glens Falls Tour" earlier this summer and our hour tour stretched into an hour and a half. It was a great group and we shared a lot of information.
Friday's tour explores the major historical events and figures that shaped Glens Falls, from the signing of the original land patent to becoming one of the most prosperous cities in New York.
Participants can park at the Chapman Museum in the lot behind the Museum off Bacon Street. Tours are $15 per person - $10 for Chapman members. Registration encouraged by calling 518 793-2826.
The Chapman's first ever "Summer Blast" - dinner and fireworks over Lake George and the Fort William Henry Carriage House - is scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 1. Cost is $125. It is a great cause and you get fireworks, parking and dinner.
Get your tickets today.
Covering the news
The Supreme Court decision that presidents are above the law sent shock waves through the country Monday.
It was obviously the most important story of the day. Yet, on The Five at 5:30 p.m., Fox News was talking about President Biden's terrible debate performance four days after it happened. I watched for a few minutes and there was no mention of the controversial Supreme Court decision.
One way that news outlets can show bias is by their selection of news topics. MSNBC can't go five minutes without a segment on Trump's legal troubles. Yet, when Biden tanked in the debate, the network spent hours addressing it.
More than once, Fox News has ignored covering issues that reflect poorly on former President Trump. That seemed to be the case on Monday.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
Your deep dive into her background tells the story. Elise is as cold, calculating and cruel as the man she worships.
Elise Stefanik has mastered that famous Dick Cheney lip sneer. Reminds me of that famous cartoon character Snidley Whiplash. Dick Cheney and daughter, Liz. stood up to protect the constitution. Elise Stefanik stood up to protect Trump.