We should ask Stefanik not to lie - again
Bringing back the firing squad in South Carolina
The Front Page
Morning Update
Saturday, May 8, 2021
By Ken Tingley
In July 2018, The Post-Star editorial board asked congressional candidates Elise Stefanik and Tedra Cobb not to lie during the upcoming congressional campaign.
It seemed like a great idea.
We hoped voters would hear a debate of ideas and a vision for the future instead of a mud-slinging slugfest centered around the candidate with the most money.
By the end of the week, Cobb agreed to the pledge and submitted a letter to the editor telling voters why. The editorial board never heard from Rep. Elise Stefanik. And her lies continued in social media posts and television ads.
Regular fact checks from newspapers throughout her district confirmed her campaign was playing fast and loose with the fact. Local voters re-elected her anyway.
A month after asking her not to lie, we learned Rep. Stefanik had paid a high school senior from Clifton Park nearly $1,000 to secretly tape a video of Cobb during a “Teens for Tedra” event as a private residence. The editorial board called it “unseemly.”
During a meeting with the editorial board, Rep. Stefanik not only defended the action, but admitted the young man was an intern with her campaign.
So it should come as no surprise this week that in her lust for more political power, she has continued to embrace a number of lies dividing the country.
Consider the recent past:
- She voted to object to the Pennsylvania Electoral College results just hours after Trump supporters and overrun the Capitol. In her floor speech, she put forward baseless conspiracies about the election that there was widespread fraud in multiple states.
- She signed onto a House GOP amicus brief for the state of Texas’ lawsuit to throw out millions of votes and overturn President Biden’s legend.
- In interview this week, she continued to raise questions about the 2020 presidential election without any proof.
It appears to be her trademark.
None of this should surprise any of us here in the North Country. From the moment she claimed to be a resident of Essex County - her parents had a summer home in Willsboro - to her failure to condemn lying in 2018, to employing a teenager to spy on her opponent, the congresswoman has been traveling down a path a political servant to further her owns ends, not yours.
In 2019, she had six middle-aged liberal protesters - I am being kind here - arrested and prosecuted when they demanded to speak with her on the phone from Washington.
When one of her supporters threatened the local newspaper with violence, I sent an email to her communications director asking her to denounce the man and the violence.
Her campaign invited the man and his group of Trump supporters to her town hall meeting later in the week. She did not respond to my email, nor did she address the concerns of the 50 men and women being threatened at The Post-Star.
A couple years after the spying escapade in 2018, the Warren County GOP adopted ethics guidelines that forbid its candidates from spying. That fall, the Warren County GOP endorsed Rep. Stefanik despite that track record.
Her track record of first endorsing the little lies, and now the big lies should be a concern to all of us. We the people seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong. We all need to look in the mirror and ask what we stand for.
Sadly, we already know what the congresswoman stands for.
Good news and bad news
Because of a shortage of the necessary drugs for lethal injection, the state of South Carolina is considering offering up death row inmates a choice - the electric chair or a firing squad.
I don’t want to make a pros and cons list on that one.
Headline of the day
“The decline and fall of Elise Stefanik”
- Ruth Marcus column in The Washington Post.
Lying about anyone who opposes her is Rep. Stefanik's stock in trade. So, if she cannot evade or ignore what you've written, she'll label you, The Post-Star, and anyone who supports your statements as a liar, or a socialist, or a leftie, or a commie, or as un-American, or whatever comes to her lip. The evidence is in her move to replace Liz Cheney, someone whom I thought I could never cheer on. But I did cheer for Cheney, because I admired Rep. Cheney's guts in speaking the truth against Trump's "Big Lie." Elise Stefanik is about to bury Liz Cheney with the same "Big Lie." Perhaps if NY 21 were redistricted to ensure more of a balance in urban and rural populations, there might be a more equitable race for Congress. I am thinking NY 21 could include part of Albany County, where Elise Stefanik was born. Now that would open up the race to fireworks!
Great article! Stefanik has never cared about NY21. She is all about herself!! Power hungry! Thanks for reminding us what Stefanik is!