<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump attends a bill signing ceremony with members of the 1980 U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey team and North Country\u00a0Rep Elise\u00a0Stefanik on\u00a0Dec. 12, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo\/Jacquelyn Martin)<\/p>\n
Jacquelyn Martin\/Associated Press<\/p>\n
ALBANY\u00a0\u2014 When Republican Lee\u00a0Zeldin ran for governor in 2022, Joe Biden was one of his best assets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s approval rating just\u00a0before the election sat at about 43%<\/a>, with many voters angry at the Democratic president\u2019s handling of inflation, the border and more. As he faced off against Gov. Kathy Hochul, an incumbent, Zeldin was able to capitalize on Biden\u2019s unpopularity and hang it around Hochul\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n He still lost, of course, but the 6% margin was closer than many expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n Heading into next year\u2019s governor\u2019s race, Republicans will have no such advantage.\u00a0<\/p>\n As I write this, Donald Trump\u2019s job approval is at 43.6% nationally, according to the Real Clear Politics average, and he\u2019s all the more unpopular in New York. Even if Trump\u2019s approval rating holds steady or rises, the new presumed Republican candidate, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, won\u2019t have the advantage\u00a0Zeldin enjoyed, making his task that much harder.<\/p>\n Make the Times Union a Preferred Source on Google to see more of our journalism when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n In a way, that\u2019s part of the normal ebb and flow of politics. It\u2019s usually tough for the party that holds the White House to succeed in midterm elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n But Trump makes overcoming that even harder because, as shown by his dealings with U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, the president is an especially difficult ally.\u00a0<\/p>\n As you are certainly aware by now, Stefanik dropped out of the governor\u2019s race<\/a> on Friday, telling me in an interview<\/a> that day that the time was not\u00a0right politically. She also said that she will not seek reelection to Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the hours after, much of the\u00a0reaction focused on Trump,\u00a0with the New York Times, for example, claiming in a headline that the president \u201cjilted\u201d Stefanik, even though she \u201chad tried everything to please\u201d him. Yeah, that headline is written differently if Stefanik is a male candidate, methinks, and the analysis overstates the role Trump\u2019s personal relationship with\u00a0Stefanik played in her decision.<\/p>\n Sure, Trump never endorsed\u00a0Stefanik\u00a0\u2014 and yet he quickly endorsed Blakeman once she\u00a0got out, a move that will likely keep U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler from entering the race. In other words, Trump granted Blakeman a favor he had never given\u00a0Stefanik, which seems more than a little disloyal given her steadfast loyalty to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Yet a source close to Stefanik says she never explicitly asked for Trump\u2019s endorsement. Meanwhile, several news outlets have reported that Trump urged Blakeman not to run\u00a0\u2014 Blakeman\u2019s camp disputes the claim\u00a0\u2014 and that the president was likely to endorse\u00a0Stefanik once she\u2019d secured the party\u2019s official nomination in the upcoming convention.\u00a0<\/p>\n So why did Stefanik drop out?<\/p>\n Stefanik, 41, determined that winning the\u00a0race was a near impossibility and that, unlike Blakeman, who is 70, she had too much to lose.<\/p>\n While I should be clear that\u00a0Stefanik did not blame Trump when we spoke, it is obvious that any Republican nominee will go\u00a0into the race having to answer questions about the economic impact of tariffs, unjust deportations and, just for good measure, the latest bit of presidential lunacy on Truth Social.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n I mean, sure, Biden was unpopular, but he wasn\u2019t offering up horrific opinions<\/a> on the murder of popular movie directors.<\/p>\n Good luck with that, Mr.\u00a0Blakeman.<\/p>\n It is probably more surprising that Stefanik is leaving Congress. Remember, though, that she lost her leadership position when Trump nominated her to be U.S. Ambassador<\/a> to the United Nations and then withdrew it<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 another example of his disloyalty to loyalty.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the family stuff. I know it\u2019s easy to be cynical when politicians cite their families as reasons for some decision or another, and often it really is baloney. Given what I read in my inbox, I also understand that Stefanik inspires more cynicism than most politicians, a fact for which she\u2019s hardly blameless.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Stefanik\u2019s young child is now attending school, and I do believe she genuinely wants a job that allows her to return home most nights. From a parenting perspective, dividing her time between Washington and the sprawling 21st Congressional District is not easy.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is, of course, entirely possible that Trump saves the day for Stefanik with a choice job before her congressional term ends next year. It is also possible that Stefanik\u2019s time away from elected office proves short and that she runs for another job soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the headache of running for governor of New York as a Republican while Donald Trump is president? Well, that\u2019s Blakeman\u2019s chore now.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump attends a bill signing ceremony with members of the 1980 U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[33237,844,9,11,10,12522,1165],"class_list":["post-79178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-column-churchill","tag-latestnews","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-opiniontu","tag-state-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}