‘Trump is the leader’: House GOP picks Rep. Stefanik as new No. 3, tightening ex-president’s grip on party
House Republicans installed upstate New York Rep. Elise Stefanik as their new third-in-command on Friday, awarding her for her absolute loyalty to former President Donald Trump as the party continues to remake itself in his image and quash any dissent ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Meeting behind closed doors in the basement of the U.S. Capitol, the Republicans voted 136-46 to make Stefanik their new conference chairwoman, a source confirmed to the Daily News, putting her in a highly visible leadership role that comes with responsibility over policy and messaging priorities.
Stefanik, a onetime moderate turned hardcore Trump loyalist, replaces Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who was removed from the No. 3 post earlier this week by Republicans fed up with her adamant rebukes of the ex-president’s lies about his 2020 election loss and incitement of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
After her confirmation, Stefanik affirmed that, unlike Cheney, she will work hand-in-hand with Trump and play along with his false insistence that President Biden’s election was fraudulent.
“Voters determine the leader of the Republican Party, and President Trump is the leader that they look to,” she told reporters, notably referring to his title in the present tense. “I support President Trump. Voters support President Trump. He is an important voice in our Republican Party, and we look forward to working with him.”
In elevating Stefanik, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other GOP brass are hoping to put internal skirmishes aside and unite in focus on flipping the House, which Democrats control by a mere six-seat margin ahead of the 2022 midterms.
But the 136-46 tally shows Republicans are far from universally happy with Stefanik, who used to be one of the most centrist members of the House GOP before refashioning herself into a Trump booster during his first impeachment.
Many of the 46 detractors cast their ballots for Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a hard-right conservative who launched a last-minute challenge against Stefanik, citing concerns about her voting record, including opposition to Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and support for keeping the U.S. in the Paris climate accord.
On his way into Friday’s meeting, Roy voiced displeasure with House GOP leaders for rushing Stefanik’s candidacy.
“There’s a lot of hunger in the conference for slowing down, thinking through this, doing the right thing, making sure that we’re advancing the right policies and the right message,” he said.
Despite his rock-ribbed conservative views, Roy, unlike Stefanik, voted to uphold Biden’s election in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, angering Trump, who to this day continues to falsely insist that he won. “He has not done a great job, and will probably be successfully primaried in his own district,” Trump said of Roy in a statement Thursday.
But Friday’s outcome never appeared to be in question, as Stefanik walked into the vote with the support of Trump, McCarthy and other powerful Republican leaders.
Trump, who in supporting Stefanik, signaled that he values personal loyalty above any policy matters, called the upstate lawmaker’s election “Big and Overwhelming.”
“The House GOP is united and the Make America Great Again movement is Strong!” he said in an emailed statement.
Internal GOP feuding is likely to continue, however.
In addition to the right-wing flank represented by Roy, Cheney is emerging as an anti-Trump martyr in the wake of being stripped of her leadership credentials.
Immediately after her ouster Wednesday, Cheney told reporters that her primary focus will be ensuring Trump “never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”
On Friday, after Stefanik’s ascension, Cheney took comfort in news that the House reached a bipartisan deal on an independent investigation into Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot.
“I hope that we’ll be able to really have the kind of investigation we need about what happened on January 6,” said Cheney, who was among the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for instigating the Jan. 6 attack.
For Stefanik, Friday’s vote marked the culmination of her abrupt political transformation.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, she was a Trump critic who called his videotaped comments on sexually assaulting women “just wrong” and often avoided calling him by name. She first supported former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s campaign, and only begrudgingly backed Trump once he won the nomination.
In Congress, she has remained one of the most bipartisan members of the GOP, voting with Trump less than 70% of the time in 2019 and 2020, according to CQ Vote Watch.
Nonetheless, Stefanik has been happy to do Trump’s dirty work in non-legislative arenas.
During Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, she became one of his most aggressive defenders against charges that he pressured Ukraine’s government to produce political dirt on then-presidential candidate Biden.
She embraced Trump’s liberal-bashing rhetoric and claimed Democrats were orchestrating a “witch hunt” against him.
She has continued on that path ever since and was among the dozens of Republicans who voted to invalidate Biden’s election victory on Jan. 6 despite a total lack of voter fraud.
With Michael McAuliff
