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What Stefanik’s win could say about her next steps and her district’s identity

Rep. Elise Stefanik gives a victory speech at her election night headquarters at the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls Nov. 3, 2020. (Provided photo — Christopher Lenney, Watertown Daily Times)

CANTON — Tuesday’s victory for North Country Congresswoman Elise Stefanik over Democrat Tedra Cobb was not considered surprising to election forecasters. But it did fuel more speculation about what the future may hold for the fourth term Republican and this district’s political identity.

To help explain last night’s results, NCPR’s Julia Ritchey spoke with David Fontana, a political science professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a Plattsburgh native. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

RITCHEY: Republican incumbent Elise Stefanik won with a commanding lead. She even improved her performance from 2018. What did her embrace of President Trump teach us about this district, the 21st Congressional District, which went from Obama to Trump?

DAVID FONTANA: Well, I mean, at the minimum, it didn’t hurt her, and it possibly even helped her. It didn’t hurt her because, like you said, she improved her vote margin, at least based on the numbers we have now. She improved her vote margin against the same candidate two years later, substantially. She raised an enormous amount of money, and she was running against an opponent who also had money this time, even if a lot less money than she did.

So she clearly, fully embraced Trump in the past year or so, and she did better than she’s ever done. She won Clinton County this time, which she didn’t do last time. So clearly it didn’t hurt her. And there’s an argument that it helped her because Trump is doing better in New York state. Trump is doing really well in the North Country, and Trump is doing better in New York state than he did in 2016, at least so far.

RITCHEY: In a Twitter thread that you shared earlier with some of those observations, you speculated on what this could mean for Rep. Stefanik’s rising star nationally. Where could she go from here now that she’s won a fourth term in Congress?

FONTANA: Being a member of Congress who wants to be a significant player on the national stage, it’s really two things you have to do well. You have to make sure that your seat in the House or Senate is secure in your district or state, and you have to be an effective player nationally. I think this time at least, the evidence is pretty strong that she accomplished both. On the former … she won very easily, by a bigger margin than she did two years ago. She outperformed Trump. And so she has at least some reason to think that the district is fairly safely in her favor for a long time, at least until we know that there’s a redistricting that will really hurt her.

But I think what was more significant, and more different this time was this is the first time she was really a national figure since she was elected to the House.

I was raised in Plattsburgh and return with my family every year there to see old friends and old places. And I’ve been following her career closely, not just from knowing what she was doing in Washington from living in Washington, but because she was going to represent my former home district. And no one else really cared about what Elise Stefanik was doing until this year.

And it’s because she recruited a lot of candidates to the House who were women. They performed very well last night. So she has a credible claim to being as important to reducing the Democratic margin in the House as anybody. She stood strongly by Trump. He called her a rising star. All those things suggest that she could be a major national figure.

Now, what that means in the short term, will she want to head the campaign arm of the Republican Party of the House of Representatives so that she’ll be recruiting and supporting all candidates who run for the House in 2022 — or she could be on the ticket in 2024. Those are all questions that I think suggest how well she did nationally in the past year or so.

RITCHEY: Down the ballot from the 21st Congressional District, it was pretty much a wash for Democrats as well in the state Assembly, in some local races. Does this pour cold water on the North Country as a “purple” district?

FONTANA: Well, I do think that it’s one of the few districts in the country that we still don’t think has a strong partisan leaning. I think it slightly leans to the Republican Party. But it went for Obama twice. It elected moderate Republicans like Janet Duprey. It elected Bill Owens three times, including in 2010, the Tea Party year. So I don’t think we can say that it’s a red district.

But I think what we can say, and this is very clear from, for instance, how well Stefanik did compared to Trump. And how well some of the state candidates did compared to how Trump did in those areas as well, is that I think the specific candidates matter enormously in the North Country.

So I think the problem for the Democratic Party will continue to be to find and fund candidates who can compete with Republican candidates in the district. And I think if they do that, they’ll still be at a slight disadvantage, but I don’t think it’ll be a rout. So I think this district will remain a slightly “leans R” district, but I don’t think it’s clearly a red district. And I think it could become even a toss-up potentially, depending on what happens with the redistricting after this election.

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