It’s a shame that upstate Congresswoman Elise Stefanik will not be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the fault goes to the man who nominated her, President Trump.
His erratic policies of slashing and trashing, with mass federal firings and on and off and on tariff threats have soured even many Republican voters and there’s a chance that Stefanik’s solidly GOP district would have been won by a Democrat in a special election, putting at risk the party’s control of the very narrowly divided House of Representatives.
The fear is real. This past Tuesday, in a special election for a vacant state Senate seat in the Amish country of Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate won. This is the first time Lancaster County has had a Democrat in the state Senate since 1889.
Next Tuesday, there will be two special elections for empty U.S. House seats in Florida. One seat was vacated by Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security advisor and ill-fated organizer of the Signal group chat that included journalist Jeff Goldberg. The other district used to be held by the disreputable Matt Gaetz.
Both are normally heavily GOP areas, but for the Waltz seat the Democrat raised $9.3 million at the same time the Republican collected $600,000 and polls are tightening. For the Gaetz seat, the Democrat raised $6.3 million while the Republican yielded $1.1 million.
Speaker Mike Johnson now has the barest majority of only 218 members, which includes Stefanik. If he loses one or both of the Florida seats, control of the whole place might be up for grabs.
Having taken on fumbling Ivy League university presidents and claimed several scalps, Stefanik was ready to take on the anti-American and anti-Israel dictators and tyrants on the East Side, making excellent use of her sharp debating skills.
But she won’t be following the legacy of Pat Moynihan. Instead of the spacious apartment occupying all of the 37th floor of 50 UN Plaza at 46th St., she’s remaining a House member. (The pad is huge and the views are outstanding; we’ve been to the 38th floor, which is owned by the British government).
She would have been good at the UN and she can still do good in the House where there is important work to do. She should join every other member of the bipartisan New York delegation and sponsor the bill to fully fund the WTC Health Program. Johnson backs it and he and Trump both owe her.
And Stefanik should again take the lead in fighting Amtrak’s terrible plan to cut upstate service because the railroad stupidly wants to close the East River tubes. Here again, she took a big one for Trump and he can repay her by making the feckless (and now leadership) Amtrak abandon their East River closure nonsense.
Stefanik was the first person Trump named to his cabinet, on Nov. 10. Her Senate confirmation hearing was held less than 24 hours after Trump was inaugurated and she sailed thorough. But there was never a floor vote set as every other cabinet nominee who followed her was approved by the Senate.
The Republicans moved her Senate vote into April to follow the two special elections in Florida. Now the UN thing is off. And it happened fast. Stefanik was even celebrating Women’s History Month at the White House on Wednesday with several of Trump’s female cabinet members, hours before her new job was cancelled.