We’ve learned a lot about Stefanik
Two more events coming up to learn about “The Last American Newspaper”
By Ken Tingley
If you live in the 21st Congressional District and ever voted for Elise Stefanik, you’ve been had.
You’ve been sold a bill of goods.
You’ve already put a down payment down on swamp land in Florida and a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Both the New York Times and the Washington Post did deep dives into the ambition, career and abrupt change in her ideology over the past two years and the results are not flattering.
One story was called “The impenetrable armor of Elise Stefanik.” The second “The Invention of Elise Stefanik.”
Those of you who don’t trust the media, that believe the Post and Times - two of the best newspapers in the country - engage in political hit pieces and bias in their news reporting won’t believe the reporting. What’s worse, you probably won’t read any of it.
Their reporting reflects what I have seen and experienced while covering Stefanik over the past eight years.
I only wish the two reporters had done a better job of pushing back on falsehoods from her aides about the reporting from local newspapers.
Stefanik gave Washington Post writer Rudy Cramer 40 minutes of her time for an interview. She declined to be interviewed at all by the New York Times.
Perhaps, the greatest revelation about Stefanik is something I have been saying for years. After multiple editorial board interviews, I still don’t know what she stands for. I still don’t know who she is.
“Indeed, over dozens of interviews, former aides, advisers and friends going back to Ms. Stefanik’s Harvard days struggled to identify any of her deeply held political beliefs at all,” Nicholas Confessore wrote in the Times. “Most recalled, instead, her generic loyalty to the Republican Party, her intense competitiveness and her unerring ability to absorb what she thought people around her wanted and to reflect it back to them.”
She tells you what you want to hear.
You’ve been warned.
What both stories ultimately reveal are small details, perhaps inconsequential, but still revealing about who she is as a person and what drives her to succeed. It delivers a more complete profile of the congresswoman we have elected to five terms.
There are worse transgressions. She has not stolen money or taken bribes and at least her resume is accurate.
But her representation of the 21st Congressional District has been more a performance than a commitment.
Have we been bamboozled? That seems to be the case.
If you believe the devil is in the details, they show the evil in her ambition. Consider some of the things the two national newspapers found out about our congresswoman that you probably did not know:
- Paul Ryan, once a mentor to Stefanik, now considers her to be the biggest disappointment of his political career.
- Her mock trial advisor at Albany Academy characterized her courtroom performance in high school as, “She was a born actor.”
- At Harvard, she tooled around campus in a sporty BMW and was fascinated about the glamor of politics.
- She applied to law school, but none of her applications were accepted.
- When first running for Congress in the 21st Congressional District, she told friends she would play down her liberal views on abortion rights and gay rights. She ditched the BMW in favor of a F-150 pickup truck.
- Not long after the 2014 Republican primary, a political consulting firm retained by Stefanik registered the domain name “StefanikForPreseident.com” and two dozen other Stefanik-themed website names to cover any future possibilities.
- When the Post asked her about personal social media posts that showed her human side in a positive light, Stefanik had them deleted.
- She set aside her optimism about the potential of politics and adopted Trump’s social media persona as a hardened partisan warrior.
- Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat who served with her on the House intelligence committee, said she took the Russian investigations very seriously for a long time before abandoning interest.
- She began participating with a Time magazine journalist about a book on millennial politicians, but when the author fact-checked some of her answers, Stefanik demanded to talk to her publisher. The authors believed Stefanik no longer wanted to be in a book casting her as a moderate Republican trying to change the party.
- Her transformation to backing Trump was transactionally premeditated to gain her more influence and power.
- In the run up to the 2020 presidential election she offered Pete Buttigieg advice through a friend she knew on his campaign. She asked the friend if Buttigieg might consider her for a cabinet job if he won the presidency.
- Stefanik discovered that supporting Trump could be extremely lucrative for her. Out of the $4 million she raised through Trump PAC called “WinRed,” just 4 percent of the donations came from within her district
- As the 2020 election approached, Stefanik deleted two tweets praising Dr. Anthony Fauci. In 2021, she tweeted “Fire Fauci.”
- Stefanik’s voting score by the conservative Heritage Action was 24 percent at the end of 2018. She is currently at 86 percent.
- Last March, Stefanik alerted upstate reporters she had secured $205,000 for job training in Warren County, but in Washington, she claimed she could not support “Speaker Pelosi’s bill” funding that money.
- Republican lawmakers, their staff and lobbyists say that Stefanik has a reputation for being diligent in advancing the party’s message but also transactional in amassing chits of support to climb up the ladder.
- And finally, those within former President Trump’s inner circle said that while the president has applauded her defense of him, he did not trust her.
Neither should we.
The profiles expose a professional politician with unlimited ambition who has little interest in helping the people of her district unless it also furthers her own career.
She should find another line of work.
Mark your calendars
I will speaking at a luncheon for the Adirondack chapter of the American Association of University Women at Glens Falls Country Club on Saturday, Jan. 14 at noon. The public is invited and I will be signing books afterward. You can RSVP to Connie Bosse at aauw.adirondackny@gmail.com by Jan. 11. Lunch is $20.
I will also be speaking at the Kingsbury-Fort Edward Senior Center on 78 Oak Street in Hudson Falls on Tuesday, January 10 at 11 a.m.
Latest review
Another very humbling review on “The Last American Newspaper.” Here is the latest:
“A must read. This book puts you “in the thick of it” and affords the reader a better understanding of how the important news stories, local events and news photographs that comprise a small town local newspaper can come together. And in reading the book you come to a better understanding of the importance of local investigative journalism and it’s role in fulfilling the expectations of a well informed citizenry. There is no happy ending here because local print media is in a slow, agonizing death spiral. But the book provides greater insight into how it all worked and how important it all remains. A worthwhile book to read.”
- Michael Muller
Still available at Ace Hardware in Queensbury, McKernon Gallery in Hudson Falls, Chapman Museum in Glens Falls, Warren County Historical Society in Queensbury, Battenkill Books in Cambridge and Northshire Books in Saratoga.
“There are worse transgressions. She has not stolen money or taken bribes and at least her resume is accurate.”
This is only as true as we can see, and we have to look past a lot of dishonesty to even come to that conclusion.
About five years ago stiffy stopped posting her taxes, and those that were online were deleted. In a span of that time she went from being worth $200,000 to around $2 million.
Did she do something nefarious, like start investing in all the military contracts that she was voting for? Who knows, as the congress works -- if she did it probably should be illegal, but isn’t.
Or if ups gives her money and she responses with a product placement on her social media.. or she votes against bills that help the USPS. Sure it has the dna of criminal, but still not exactly illegal.
We know she sleeps with the gun lobby -- literally
***[In my mind these are examples of stealing money and accepting bribes.]****
Yesterday I watched the #kevinmccarthy vote, better known as the #HakeemJeffries election. It was interesting to see stefanik with mccarthy and gym jordan..
Two republicans who if you look into their history of deception, you would not be surprised to see stiffy, thick as thieves (not an intentional fat joke). Just as “ #surpriseNOTsurprised ” each time the camera as on eLIEs, she lacked all emotions.
She is the quiet neighbor that never invites you over, or has a good answer why you hear a circular saw running at midnight.
At this point we know the political persona of stefanik was not conceived, but contrived.
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I would like to vote in the poll, but there isn't a choice of
" stefanik's evil has become more transparent "
I clicked gotten more conservative on the poll, as did everyone. I actually feel as though I might be more conservative in many ways than Elise Stefanik is. Extremism is not conservatism. Those members holding McCarthy hostage are not conservatives.
I wanted to see Matt Castelli elected. Not surprisingly. I think the district would have been honored to have him as a rep. The second best outcome is having Stefanik go back for the humiliation she’s going to endure. We’re an hour away from, most likely, McCarthy’s feeble attempt at becoming Speaker. ES is part of that leadership and it certainly reflects on her as well. Anyone that thinks she might slink her way into is wrong. Both sides trust her less than they do McCarthy. She’s without a country. Neither the moderates nor the zealots trust her. Confessore pointed that out about the Trump people at the end of his piece.
I don’t see how the GOP finds its way from where it is back to normalcy. Pretty sure I can’t see ES as being part of that process. There’s a song Pete Seeger used to sing about Vietnam called “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” That reminds me of where Republicans are.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on