New York Rep. Elise Stefanik introduced a run for governor Friday, because the Republican seeks to leverage her elevated profile as a vocal supporter of the Jewish group to a task in larger workplace.
She goals to problem the Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul, who angered many Jews in New York along with her endorsement of New York Metropolis’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, regardless of his observe report of Israel criticism.
In an announcement video for Stefanik’s gubernatorial run, a narrator notes that she “fought woke madness in our faculties,” as a headline referring to her campus antisemitism hearings fills the display screen.
Stefanik, who just isn’t Jewish, has been one of many loudest voices on Capitol Hill condemning antisemitism because the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas assaults and conflict in Gaza. Her relentless questioning of college presidents concerning the campus local weather for Jews was credited with resulting in the resignations of the highest posts at Harvard, the College of Pennsylvania and others.
Many invites to handle Jewish teams adopted, together with the Anti-Defamation League and Yeshiva College (which awarded her the Trendy Orthodox faculty’s highest honor over the objections of many college). Her newfound allyships got here regardless of Stefanik’s previous platforming of the antisemitic “Nice Substitute” concept, and different troublesome facets of her historical past that rejected liberal Jews.
Stefanik, who seeks to turn into the primary Republican since George Pataki to maneuver into the governor’s mansion in Albany, appears more likely to make antisemitism a primary flank of her marketing campaign. Her video assaults Hochul for the governor’s Mamdani endorsement, saying Hochul “cozied as much as a defund-the-police, tax mountain climbing, antisemitic Communist.” Hochul is dealing with a main problem from her prime lieutenant, who had endorsed Mamdani a lot earlier within the election cycle and who’s married to a Jewish filmmaker.
Among the many Republican endorsements of Stefanik’s marketing campaign the candidate retweeted Friday morning have been Leo Terrell, who heads an antisemitism process power inside the Trump administration, and New York Metropolis Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, who’s Jewish and vocally pro-Israel.
“Elise Stefanik will clear up our school campuses from the rot they’ve turn into and can confront antisemitism head on!” Vernikov wrote.
A staunch ally of President Donald Trump, Stefanik had been in line to turn into his ambassador to the United Nations, the place she had promised to be a vocal defender of Israel. Her nomination was withdrawn in an effort to hold her within the Home to assist defend the chamber’s slim GOP majority, however Stefanik has been eyeing a much bigger platform ever since.
Her announcement comes because the GOP is dealing with an inside civil conflict over right-wing antisemitism, with pundit Tucker Carlson, the top of the Heritage Basis, and Vice President J.D. Vance among the many figures taking criticism for embracing or failing to sentence antisemitic viewpoints. Stefanik was absent from this yr’s Republican Jewish Coalition summit, the place varied audio system denounced antisemitism on the precise.
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