Trump ally Stefanik launches bid for NY governor, blasts Mamdami as ‘antisemitic communist’

JTA — US Representative Elise Stefanik announced a run for New York governor Friday, as the Republican seeks to leverage her elevated profile as a vocal supporter of the American Jewish community to a role in higher office.

She aims to challenge the Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul, who angered many Jews in New York with her endorsement of New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, despite his track record of Israel criticism.

In an announcement video for Stefanik’s gubernatorial run, a narrator notes that she “fought woke insanity in our schools,” as a headline referring to her campus antisemitism hearings fills the screen.

Stefanik, who is not Jewish, has been one of the loudest voices on Capitol Hill condemning antisemitism since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and war in Gaza. Her relentless questioning of university presidents about the campus climate for Jews was credited with leading to the resignations of the top posts at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and others.

Many invitations to address Jewish groups followed, including the Anti-Defamation League and Yeshiva University (which awarded her the Modern Orthodox school’s highest honor over the objections of many faculty). Her newfound allyships came despite Stefanik’s past platforming of the antisemitic “Great Replacement” theory, and other troublesome aspects of her history that confounded liberal Jews.

Stefanik, who seeks to become the first Republican since George Pataki to move into the governor’s mansion in Albany, seems likely to make antisemitism a main flank of her campaign. Her video attacks Hochul for the governor’s Mamdani endorsement, saying Hochul “cozied up to a defund-the-police, tax-hiking, antisemitic Communist.” Hochul is facing a primary challenge from her top lieutenant, who had endorsed Mamdani much earlier in the election cycle and who is married to a Jewish filmmaker.

Among the Republican endorsements of Stefanik’s campaign that the candidate retweeted Friday morning were Leo Terrell, who heads an antisemitism task force within the Trump administration, and New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, who is Jewish and vocally pro-Israel.

“Elise Stefanik will clean up our college campuses from the rot they have become and will confront antisemitism head on!” Vernikov wrote.

A staunch ally of US President Donald Trump, Stefanik had been in line to become his ambassador to the United Nations, where she had promised to be a vocal defender of Israel. Her nomination was withdrawn in order to keep her in the House of Representatives to help protect the chamber’s slim GOP majority, but Stefanik has been eyeing a bigger platform ever since.

Her announcement comes as the GOP is facing an internal civil war over right-wing antisemitism, with pundit Tucker Carlson, the head of the Heritage Foundation, and Vice President JD Vance among the figures taking criticism for embracing or failing to condemn antisemitic viewpoints. Stefanik was absent from this year’s Republican Jewish Coalition summit, where various speakers denounced antisemitism on the right.