NEW YORK (WABC) — New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, a top ally of President Donald Trump’s on Capitol Hill, announced she is running for governor to challenge Gov. Kathy Hochul next year.
Stefanik made the announcement in a video her campaign posted on YouTube early Friday morning.
She released a statement saying:
“Kathy Hochul is the Worst Governor in America. Under Kathy Hochul’s failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery prices crushing hardworking families. Hochul has created a crime crisis with failed bail reform and her support of Defund the Police candidates. And when New Yorkers were looking for leadership the most, Kathy Hochul bent the knee to the raging Defund the Police Tax Hiking Antisemite Communist who will destroy New York.I am running for Governor to bring a new generation of leadership to Albany to make New York affordable and safe for families all across our great state. Our campaign will unify Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to Fire Kathy Hochul once and for all to Save New York.”
She could face a spirited primary from Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who said Wednesday he was also considering a run after winning reelection.
The announcement comes days after Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor, and is expected to be a target of Stefanik as she attempts to tie him to Hochul.
Stefanik, who was briefly nominated for a position as UN ambassador by President Trump earlier this year, has called Mamdani a “communist,” among other attacks, and blasted Democrats “radical” agenda in Albany.
The upstate New York congresswoman, a one-time staffer for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign who helped Paul Ryan prepare for his vice-presidential debate, gained prominence in the MAGA movement during the first Trump administration, as a vocal defender of the president on the House Intelligence Committee during Democrats’ first impeachment inquiry in 2019.
New York last elected a Republican governor in 2002, when George Pataki won a third term in office.
ABC News contributed to this report.
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