Elise Stefanik

(born 1984)

“It has become crystal clear to me that I am a unique voice among my colleagues that I serve with.”

Years in political office: 2015–present

Position: member of the US House of Representatives from New York, 2015–present

Party affiliation: Republican

Hometown: Albany, New York

Top causes: veteran health care, rural health care, and supporting Republican women running for office

Life Story

Elise Stefanik’s family owns Premium Plywood Products, a successful company where she worked in sales, marketing, and delivery up until her first run for the US Congress in 2014. Her dad was a former forklift operator, and the family took a big chance when it created its own business. “They really put everything we had in terms of finances and they took the ultimate risk,” Stefanik remembers of her parents.

From fourth to twelfth grade, Stefanik attended the Albany Academy for Girls, a college preparatory institution where she had a reputation for being sweet and supportive of her classmates. In sixth grade she was elected secretary of the student council. In one of her most memorable policy victories, she convinced the school to allow kids to purchase from vending machines during lunch. She was also a theater kid, starring as Gretel in The Sound of Music and as Peter Pan in various productions. Stefanik balanced her time in the spotlight with playing on the lacrosse team.

Her involvement in electoral politics wasn’t restricted to school government for long. In eighth grade she started taking a bus to volunteer at the campaign office of Rick Lazio, a Republican running for the US Senate who would eventually be defeated by Hillary Clinton (page 22). Stefanik made homemade signs for Lazio’s candidacy. She went on to study at Harvard University, becoming involved with Harvard’s Institute of Politics. One memorable experience included hosting the campus visit of Ted Sorensen, who had been President John F. Kennedy’s speechwriter and adviser.

After graduating, she got a job as a domestic policy council staff assistant for President George W. Bush and later worked for the president’s second deputy chief of staff. She fondly remembers her parents’ first trip to Washington, DC, during this period, when Stefanik had the honor of introducing them to Bush in the Oval Office. Later, she hit the campaign trail, helping Congressperson Paul Ryan of Wisconsin prepare for debates during his unsuccessful candidacy for vice president in 2012.

After she served on one last Republican campaign—as policy director for Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty’s brief 2011 presidential bid—and worked for a pair of conservative think tanks, Stefanik decided it was time to focus on her own candidacy. She moved to upstate New York’s Essex County, two hours from where she’d grown up. There, she could not only challenge Bill Owens, the two-term incumbent Democratic member of the House of Representatives, but also go back to work for her family’s business.

In a surprising move, Owens dropped out of the race, leaving the field open to Stefanik and a roster of Republican and Democratic challengers. The young politician hit the road, determined to cover her enormous district. Essex County stretches from just north of Albany to the Canadian border, making it the second-largest district on the East Coast. Stefanik reportedly ran up 100,000 miles (160,934 km) on her F-150 truck during the campaign, driving vast distances to meet with even the smallest groups of voters.

Initially, she had little help from her party on her campaign—the National Republican Congressional Committee declined to support her in the primary election. But Stefanik’s experience in the party earned her some key endorsements from Ryan and his 2012 running mate, Mitt Romney. After winning the primary, she beat her opponent in the general election by twenty-two points and started her term in the US Congress in 2015.

What’s on Her Agenda

When Stefanik became the first woman to serve as chair of recruitment for the National Republican Congressional Committee, she made it clear that her priority was getting more Republican women into office. Republican leaders criticized her decision to offer early backing to female candidates in political primaries, but she remained adamant in her initiative. Still, only one of the one hundred women who ran as a Republican for the House of Representatives in the midterm elections was elected in 2018. The rout left only thirteen Republican women in the House, the lowest number since 1994.

The defeat may have left Stefanik even more motivated to create future change. “Take a look around,” she told a room of mainly white men at a Republican forum a few days after the 2018 election. “This is not reflective of the American public.”

Stefanik is proud of her reputation for working across the aisle and likes to remind reporters that she holds “one of the top 10 percent most bipartisan records in this House and one of the most independent records.” She has dissented publicly on some of her party’s policies, breaking with most of her fellow Republicans when it comes to matters such as LGBTQ and refugee rights. In Congress she has led the legislative charge on bipartisan issues, such as health care in rural areas and support for the country’s war veterans.

In the run-up to her own 2020 election campaign, Stefanik emerged as one of her party’s top defenders of Trump. During the intense House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings over allegations that Trump had inappropriately used foreign policy decisions to forward his personal political agenda, Stefanik was prominently positioned. “We’re not here to talk about tweets,” she said, chastising a witness who focused on the president’s social media presence. “We’re here to talk about impeachable offenses.”

At one point, Stefanik attempted to question a witness on fellow Republican House member Devin Nunes’s allotted time, thereby violating the chamber’s procedure. The committee’s Democratic chairperson interrupted her, informing her she was violating the rules. “You are gagging the young lady from New York,” responded Nunes, a line that echoed across media coverage of the hearings. The remark launched Stefanik into her largest press moment yet and gave her a new reputation as one of Trump’s most supportive team players.

Awesome Achievements

• In 2015 she was then the youngest person, at the age of thirty, ever elected to the US Congress.
• Stefanik was the sole Republican woman on the House Intelligence Committee during the high-profile Trump impeachment hearings.
• During her high school years, Stefanik developed an astronomy course for fourth graders that her school integrated into the official curriculum.
• She was the first member of her immediate family to go to college.

Quotables

“I think overall it’s good to have as many female role models as possible, regardless of what your political ideology is.”

“There’s a number of Democratic organizations that invest very early in women candidates. Republicans just haven’t developed as built out of an ecosystem, and we’re trying to change that. I’m trying to change that.”

“Women bring a unique perspective. I think having more at the table makes us more effective policymakers.”