Bye Elise

See you in the funny papers

21st congressional district, New York, via Wikipedia,

Some gossip, mostly from a caller from New York’s 21st congressional district, on the radio WNYC Brian Lehrer, unable to link at the moment), about Rep. Elise Stefanik: that she’s never liked the district, the state’s largest geographically and most sparsely populated and of course poorest, if only because it’s too cold, not too mention plagued by awful unemployment and alcohol and drug abuse. She’s not even from there but from Albany; she’s a carpetbagger, claiming residence on the basis of what upstaters call a “camp”, or summer place, owned by her parents. She hasn’t done a town hall for six years, and in what the local press categorized as a “rare visit” for a ceremonial function in August, to Plattsburgh, the booing stopped her from addressing a crowd consisting mostly of anti-Trumpers:

“Well, Elise has not shown up in our district for months and months,” said protester Mavis Agnew. “She won’t hold a town hall, she won’t take questions. She’s never in her office. People show up at her office constantly, door’s closed. Her representatives, her employees won’t talk to her... So this was her first appearance, the first opportunity we had to let her know we’re unhappy.”

She got a more positive response in February, but that was what was advertised as her farewell tour, when she was expecting to leave the House for a stint as US ambassador. Then, when Trump ordered her to stay in Congress instead to protect his razor-thin majority, a visit to Saranac Lake celebrating a federal grant for the firehouse (in an appropriation signed by President Biden) was received with “mixed emotions“.

The other thing is, the district isn’t inevitably Republican; it was held by Democrat Bill Owens, defeating a GOP torn by culture war issues, from 2009 through 2015, and voted for Obama twice, along with Schumer and Gillibrand (whose 20th congressional district overlapped a good deal with where the 21st is today).

Her dropping out of the governor’s race is pretty easy to understand: she was certain to win the Republican primary, but very likely to lose the general election, and certain to lose, at least as long as Trump refused to endorse her, which he did for his own Trumpy reasons; perhaps he was mad at her for even considering giving up the congressional seat, like she valued herself more than him. You can see how that would be hard for him to take. Whatever happens to her next, she’s certainly an instance of the Trump Curse. I’m sure she’d love a job in Washington, but I really feel she’s headed for being relatively alive on the proverbial Farm Upstate.