We must take responsibility for Stefanik
Is this really what we wanted her to do for our district?
The Front Page
Morning Update
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
By Ken Tingley
We all have to take responsibility for Elise Stefanik. She finds herself in this place of power because of us.
She survived primaries and general election challenges because we didn’t ask the right questions or hold her accountable.
We were swayed by her youth, the promise of an Ivy Leaguer who was one of us, but she really wasn’t one of us was she? She never really grew up here or lived amongst the people. She graduated from Albany Academy and took a few swims in Lake Champlain.
When I had lunch with Roy McDonald recently, he rolled his eyes when I mentioned Stefanik.
He told me about playing high school ball in Troy and a road trip to play Albany Academy. “They were the rich kids,” McDonald remembered his coach telling them. And he remembered losing to the rich kids and his coach being as angry as he had ever seen him.
Stefanik was one of the rich kids. She was never really a struggling small business owner in the Adirondacks. This was all choreographed from the beginning and we bought it hook like and sinker. She became a student of politics, not of the challenges local residents faced.
When Brian Mann of North Country Public Radio wandered around the town of Willsboro during her first run for Congress, nobody there knew who she was. We forget how the myth was created.
National media is now reporting how she flipped a Democratic district. We all know that is ridiculous. The boundaries changed on the district after the 2010 census and made it more Republican than the one Gillibrand and Murphy won. This has always been conservative territory.
Stefanik promised to reach across the aisle, took moderate positions - for a time - and even stood up to Trump - briefly - until the polling showed that was not in her best interests.
But she did become good at her job.
She regular boasts of her talent for raising vast amounts of money to further her own cause and the Republican Party. But here is the important part. It wasn’t to further conservative principles or ideas, it was to further her own political future and gain power. Stefanik is thinking decades down the road.
I was a registered Republican for years. My views and ideas have not changed. But the party has changed. The politicians have become more ruthless. It is unclear what they stand for or how they want to improve the country. National Republican leaders stand for stopping the other side instead of forwarding their own ideas.
We’ve seen it seep into the local politics. There was the email scandal in Queensbury, the Moreau board members who called the newspaper reporter “fake news” only to later realize they were caught in a lie because they had taped themselves at the board meeting.
This is bad for our country.
I’ve sat through many an editorial meeting where it was impossible to pin Stefanik down on a position or a vote. Her campaign ads were riddled with inaccuracies and sometimes outright lies.
When one of her supporters threatened violence against my former newspaper, she invited him to be at her town hall meeting. Her campaign manager thanked him for his support. And when I asked her to condemn the threats, it was ignored.
Is there any heart beating there?
Any soul?
She became the worst of all possible things - a professional politician.
Minutes after Liz Cheney was ousted from the Republican leadership Wednesday, Stefanik sent out a letter to her Republican colleagues asking them for their vote.
Blind ambition.
None of this helps any of us in this district.
Before the vote ousting her from her leadership position Wednesday, Cheney stood up on principle, facts and rule of law. You have to respect that.
“If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person, you have plenty of others to choose from. That will be their legacy," Cheney said.
"But I promise you this, after today, I will be leading the fight to restore our party and our nation to conservative principles, to defeating socialism, to defending our republic, to making the GOP worthy again of being the party of Lincoln.”
Liz Cheney did not turn into a liberal overnight.
But she sees what is happening to the Republican Party as a danger to our democracy.
We need a strong two-party system. We Republicans and a party that stands for bedrock principles It has worked pretty well for us all these years.
A day earlier, Cheney said the country was facing a “never seen before” threat.
“Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar,” she said. “I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.”
That’s what Rep. Elise Stefanik is doing.
All for power.
And we are a party to that because we voted her into office. The questions is: Will we continue to do that?
Tweet of the Day
Excellent letter and hopefully NYS can turn this around. I certainly applaud Liz Chaney for her honesty . I have no time for liars .
That’s why I commend the man (WIll Fowler?) who tried to get 2500 signatures (he did get 1400) to try to get the ARCC to prevent her participating in something with reference to them a few months ago.