Rep. Elise Stefanik ends campaign for New York governor, will retire in 2026

Andrew Menezes and Mary Ellen McIntire, CQ-Roll Call on Dec 19, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik announced Friday she was ending her campaign for New York governor and would retire from the House at the end of her current term.

Stefanik was challenging Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul but had to contend with a primary opponent, with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman entering the race earlier this month.

“I did not come to this decision lightly for our family,” the congresswoman told supporters on social media. “(While) we would have overwhelmingly won this primary, it is not an effective use of our time or your generous resources to spend the first half of next year in an unnecessary and protracted Republican primary, especially in a challenging state like New York.”

While Stefanik has cast herself as a strong supporter of President Donald Trump, the president had been unwilling to take sides in her primary against Blakeman. At a White House event last week, with Stefanik standing near him, Trump praised the recently reelected county executive as a “very good Republican.”

Stefanik, in her Friday statement, also cited her 4-year-old son in explaining her decision not to seek reelection.

“I know that as a mother, I will feel profound regret if I don’t further focus on my young son’s safety, growth, and happiness — particularly at his tender age,” she said.

A member of House GOP leadership, Stefanik is currently in her sixth term representing the 21st District, a deep-red swath of New York’s North Country. She serves as chairwoman of House Republican Leadership, and previously was the chamber’s No. 3 House Republican as conference chairwoman.

It’s been a roller coaster year for Stefanik, who began the year planning to depart the House to be Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. In anticipation of getting confirmed, Stefanik stepped down from her leadership position, and in January her nomination won approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by voice vote.

But a Senate floor vote was not immediately forthcoming, and in March, Trump withdrew Stefanik’s nomination, saying Republicans needed to hold her House seat given their narrow margins in the chamber.

Stefanik has undergone something of a political transformation since she was first elected to Congress in 2014. When she first entered the House, she was considered a centrist voice and a new face of the GOP. She has since embraced Trump, recasting herself in his conservative populist mold. In 2019, during the president’s first impeachment trial, Stefanik emerged as one of his most vocal defenders.

In 2021, Stefanik ascended to conference chairwoman after her colleagues voted to oust Trump critic Liz Cheney from the role. She rejoined the leadership team after her U.N. ambassador nomination was pulled.

A longtime member of the Education and the Workforce Committee, Stefanik has in recent years focused on the rise of antisemitism on college campuses, making headlines for her exchanges with prominent university presidents during hearings as Republicans questioned the leaders over their alleged liberal views.

In October, she announced she is set to come out with a new book in the spring about “the failures of American higher education and the reckoning facing universities,” according to a release from the publisher Simon & Schuster.

Republicans are favored to hold Stefanik’s upstate New York district, which Trump carried by 21 points last year while the congresswoman won a sixth term by 24 points.

Republicans who have already launched campaigns for the seat include state Assemblymember Robert Smullen and businessman Anthony Constantino.

Democrat Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer who was briefly the Democratic nominee in the aborted special election to complete Stefanik’s term when she was Trump’s U.N. ambassador pick, is running again. He had $2.1 million in his campaign account at the end of September. Other Democrats seeking the seat include former Biden administration official Dylan Hewitt and restaurant owner Stuart Amoriell.