Riding the coattails of a favorable congressional map and negative Democratic headwinds on crime and the economy, Republicans scored surprise wins in New York in 2022 to wrestle back control of the House. In this four-part series, the Washington Examiner will take a look at how focused the GOP will be on the Empire State in 2024 and if it can stop the Democratic Party from regaining the upper hand in its traditional stronghold. Part four of this series examines how former President Donald Trump is trying to rekindle an association between Republican politics and New York that has been absent for decades.
Voters are staring down a once-unthinkable possibility in this year’s presidential election: two New Yorkers topping the Republican ticket.
Former President Donald Trump appears to be running away with the GOP nomination, while House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is among the most-rumored of his vice presidential possibilities.
If paired up, both of the GOP standard-bearers this fall would hail from the Empire State, which is traditionally one of the country’s most reliable Democratic strongholds. While Trump resides in Florida now, his decadeslong history in New York leaves him strongly associated with the state in voters’ minds.
“The former president is certainly associated with New York, and especially New York City,” New York-based Democratic strategist Jack O’Donnell said. “His career, his fame, his show, all of these things are kind of associated with New York. So it seems only right that he would pick a New Yorker like Elise Stefanik to be on the ticket now that he’s no longer a resident of the state.”
Geographic diversity was once considered important for the presidential ticket but may no longer be a consideration for most voters, even if both Republicans emerge from a traditionally blue state, as ideology is now paramount.
The selection of Stefanik as running mate would mark another milestone in Trump’s transformation of the GOP from a business-friendly, small government-minded political party to one embracing populism, tariffs, and the social safety net.
Trump, by background, would seem an odd figure to lead this transformation. New York has historically been the epicenter of the liberal, Chamber of Commerce-oriented Republican Party, as embodied by figures such as Nelson Rockefeller, former state governor and vice president, and George Pataki, former three-term governor.
Both men ran for president but were usurped at the national level by more conservative figures. Rockefeller fell to Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater in 1964, and Pataki briefly sought the 2016 Republican nomination but was saddled by his left-leaning positions on abortion, gun control, and climate change. Pataki dropped out after failing to top 1% in polling.
Trump, at one point, boasted his own ties to the socially liberal politics of his city, describing himself as a supporter of abortion rights, donating to Democratic candidates, and spending most of the aughts as a registered Democrat.
He jettisoned all of that upon launching his successful campaign for president in the summer of 2015. In a now-famous announcement speech, Trump outlined his antagonism toward New York City’s establishment.
“I started off in a small office with my father in Brooklyn and Queens, and my father said … ‘Donald, don’t go into Manhattan. That’s the big leagues. We don’t know anything about that. Don’t do it,’” Trump said. “I said, ‘I gotta go into Manhattan. I gotta build those big buildings. I gotta do it, Dad. I’ve gotta do it.’”
Trump did do it — he gave the speech from Manhattan’s Trump Tower — but always harbored an antagonistic attitude toward New York City’s business elite.
“He always wanted to be but never was accepted by the bluebloods of Wall Street,” former Democratic operative Sandy Maisel said of Trump. “I think that’s part of what moved him. He said, ‘I will beat you all at your own game.’ You can define a lot of Trump’s personal effect by his craving to be accepted by a group that has never accepted him.”
Trump channeled that outsider spirit of fighting against the elites to connect with voters across the country during his campaigns, even and especially in rural areas.
The antagonism ran both ways, with Pataki calling Trump “a poisonous mix of bigotry and ignorance” in the waning days of the 2016 contest. Trump decamped to Florida in 2019.
Stefanik’s politics are more in line with her geography. She represents a House district in upstate New York that runs from the Albany suburbs where she grew up to the border with Canada. It’s a largely rural area that went for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
“Upstate and Long Island have a long tradition of running counter to the New York City and New York City suburb limousine Republicans,” O’Donnell explained.
Stefanik has been a Republican since her teenage years and is now one of Trump’s staunchest and most consistent defenders, which has fueled much of the vice president buzz surrounding her.
She has slammed “radical leftists,” urged her colleagues not to support a southern border immigration deal, and even said specifically that she would not have certified the results of the 2020 election the way former Vice President Mike Pence did.
Even if Stefanik isn’t picked, or the ticket doesn’t win, such statements are not likely to hurt her, given her Republican-leaning district.
But whether the populist version of the Republican Party can make further inroads in New York state remains to be seen.
Former New York Republican congressman Lee Zeldin, a Trump ally, outperformed expectations during the 2022 governor’s race, gaining the highest percentage of the vote for a Republican since Pataki’s successful 2002 bid. He was also credited with helping the GOP flip four seats in the House, crucial in Republicans winning back overall control of the lower chamber.
Yet Zeldin lost to Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), and Democrats still hold supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature. Both of New York’s U.S. senators are Democrats, as are 15 of its 25 House members. Through a spokesman, Zeldin declined an interview request for this story.
“The Republican Party, as long as they find themselves as a populist party, will find themselves the minority party in New York,” Maisel said.
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But Maisel does not think most presidential election voters, even in the interior of the country, will be concerned about having two New Yorkers topping the GOP ticket.
“Maybe if you had two traditional New Yorkers or even two traditional East Coast establishment people running,” he said. “But Trump doesn’t fall into that category.”
