ALBANY — Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is critical to the state Republican Party’s goals this year and next; she’s working to fundraise for candidates this year, is helping to coordinate state level party officials with the Trump administration and is likely to lead the party’s ticket as their nominee for governor next year.

As the state Republicans held their bi-annual organizational meeting in an airport hotel on the outskirts of Albany Wednesday, Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, came up again and again.

Officials lauded her recent donation of $500,000 to GOP candidates or party committees in all 62 counties of the state, and her ongoing work to keep people on the ground up to date with Trump administration efforts and national Republican priorities. And state GOP Chair Ed Cox, elected to another two-year term at the helm of the state committee, said Stefanik is ‘absolutely’ running to be the next governor of New York.

The Congresswoman hasn’t formally announced a campaign. She has said she would wait to announce her decision after election day this year. On Wednesday, Cox said that was a strategy recommended by the last Republican governor of New York, George Pataki.

“She got very good advice from former Governor Pataki, that was ‘don’t cloud the local elections, let the local elections go ahead and declare after that,'” Cox said while speaking with reporters after the party meeting concluded. “She’s followed that. She is working very hard now, as if she is running, but she doesn’t want to get mixed up in the local elections.”

Stefanik has a long history with the former governor, who now lives in Essex County within her Congressional district. Stefanik campaigned for Pataki growing up, and has maintained a connection with him through the arc of her career.

Cox said he was sure there would be no primary challenge to Stefanik for the nomination, which he said will help to protect her from having to fight for conservative voters and take positions potentially unpopular in the general election.

“The primary, you say things in the primary that don’t really work well in the general,” he said, noting that a difficult, four-way primary challenge for the GOP nomination in 2022 likely hurt the eventual nominee’s chances of overall success.

That year, the GOP selected then-Congresswoman Lee Zeldin as their candidate against Gov. Kathy Hochul for her first full term. Zeldin was challenged by three other Republicans, including a former GOP nominee and the son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Even after a hard-fought primary, Zeldin managed to close the gap and came within 7 percentage points of Hochul in the general election that year.

Without a primary, Cox said he anticipates that Stefanik will find even more support among the New York electorate. He wrote off recent poll results that found Stefanik had lost ground against Hochul among the voters, including with conservatives.

“I think the momentum is not actually going in the way you stated it was,” he said, responding to a reporter’s questions about the drop in support recorded by the latest Siena College Research Institute poll. “It’s going in Elise’s direction … She is a great campaigner, she has pulled herself up by her bootstraps from just getting started in a Congressional district, getting elected there and seeing what works in that district.”

Cox said the Stefanik approach, by which she has managed to cement firm support for herself and the Republican Party in a district that was previously seen as a toss-up between the two parties, has worked and will work as the party works to flip New York state itself.

Stefanik has played a long game in building support and a political machine across the 21st Congressional District. She’s been involved in recruiting candidates for local office for years, and has focused on building a bench of local allies across the political parties.

In her bids for reelection, Stefanik is regularly endorsed by scores of local Republican, Democratic and independent officials. She devotes a portion of her fundraising efforts each year to local candidates and local party committees, and often endorses the ultimate victor in local elections.

Those efforts are now being replicated across the state, and Republican officials on Wednesday made sure to stress that they’re working with Stefanik’s campaign team for statewide efforts this year.

Cox said Stefanik observed that her district was populated with conservatives and “Trump Democrats,” and as she tacked closer to the President saw her support among the voters increase.

Cox said he doesn’t believe Stefanik’s close alliance with Trump will be a liability in a statewide race, even though the President is majorly unpopular among New Yorkers.

“She is now addressing the base,” Cox said, “I think it’s a tremendous help to her there. She is a policy wonk… I think she will be able to respond in a very broad way to all of the issues that might be raised here in New York, and be very effective in doing that going forward.”

The Republicans have big goals for 2026, however. All state legislature seats are up for election, as well as the governor, state attorney general and state comptroller. The Republican Party wants to flip as many seats as possible, and on Wednesday officials talked of ending unified Democratic control in Albany.

“Our most important mission is to elect, and we will elect, a Republican governor next year to take back our state of one party Democrat, Albany rule,” Cox said in his speech to party officials. “We will elect a Republican attorney general … and a Republican comptroller to help restore fiscal sanity to Albany.”

Cox said the Republican goal is to elect Republican mayors in the major cities as well, including New York City, and backed Curtis Sliwa in the city’s mayoral election.

And it’s all in service of the Trump mission, Cox said.

“It’s uniquely our job and our duty to keep the House in Republican hands so President Trump can continue to deliver for the American people,” Cox said. “Friends, the stakes could not be higher, but neither could our spirits.”