Trump’s Mamdani embrace complicates Elise Stefanik’s path to governor

ALBANY, New York — President Donald Trump’s astonishingly chummy Oval Office meeting with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani could not have come at a worse time for Rep. Elise Stefanik.

The New York Republican is mounting an uphill gubernatorial bid in a deep blue state, building her campaign on the argument that Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul is the nation’s worst chief executive — and tying Hochul to the 34-year-old democratic socialist who will soon lead New York City.

Trump blew up that message in minutes. In the Oval Office, he said he wouldn’t worry about living in New York under Mamdani, noted how many voters they share and even complimented the mayor-elect’s looks. And in a rare bit of daylight with Stefanik, he declined to repeat her claim that Mamdani is “a jihadist.” In a statement, Stefanik said they would “agree to disagree.”

There was little doubt within the MAGA movement that the meeting at least temporarily undercut Stefanik’s central campaign premise.

“Dems just need to run clips of the presser today to defeat Elise,” Trump whisperer Laura Loomer wrote on X in the meeting’s aftermath.

The surreal lovefest underscored the limitations and hazards for a Trump ally like Stefanik as she runs to lead a state where Democrats have a massive enrollment advantage, the president is unpopular and a GOP candidate has not won statewide office in a generation. This, however, potentially cuts both ways for Democrats, who have otherwise relished the photos of a giddy Trump smiling at Mamdani.

Stefanik in an interview with News 12 Monday said the exchange doesn't complicate her campaign's message.

"I stand by my statement," she said. "He is a jihadist. This is an area where President Trump and I disagree. But what we all want to work toward is making New York more affordable and safe, and that's where I have a very strong record and working relationship with the administration."

Yet Stefanik acknowledged there are areas where she and Mamdani can potentially work together, like addressing utility costs.

In a statement, her campaign knocked Mamdani as a "dangerous threat to New Yorkers" and argued "his policies will further Hochul’s affordability and crime crises."

A future blow up with Mamdani — who told Meet the Press on Sunday he still believes the president is a fascist and despot — is anticipated by Democrats, despite the recent bonhomie. Such a rupture — and its timing — stands to impact not only the governor’s race, but the state’s battleground House races as well. Republicans in New York and around the country have signaled they will make Mamdani a Democratic boogeyman in the 2026 midterm elections.

Empire State GOP candidates are especially counting on a strong top of the ticket to aid their bids in swing seats on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley. Those elections will play a big role in determining control of the House in the final two years of Trump’s term. Stefanik’s campaign is expected to continue using Mamdani as a foil against Hochul, who endorsed his mayoral bid in September. The mayor-elect’s anti-Israel views haven’t changed following the Trump meeting, a Stefanik campaign official noted, and polling shows Mamdani is deeply polarizing among voters statewide.

Trump has been a gift and a burden to Stefanik after she set her sights on Albany earlier this year following the decision to yank her nomination as United Nations ambassador. The president helped clear the Republican field in the spring, endorsing moderate Rep. Mike Lawler to remain in his swing House district. Lawler, long considered a potentially competitive statewide candidate, endorsed Stefanik’s gubernatorial bid Monday.

The unpredictable Trump has complicated Stefanik’s political calculus in other ways as well. The president has not discouraged Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman from also seeking the Republican nomination for governor. Trump is deeply unpopular in his native state, and Democrats have already signaled they will make him an anchor around her campaign. The Mamdani embrace highlighted that a mercurial president with an ardent following cannot always be counted on to deliver politically for his allies.

Stefanik is walking a delicate line and must remain in the president's good graces as she seeks to lock down the GOP nomination. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who will resign her House seat early next year, is a cautionary tale of how quickly Trump can turn on a friend — and the political ramifications of getting crosswise with him.

“The thing with Donald Trump is he’s your friend until he’s not, and he’s your enemy until he’s not,” said Republican consultant Susan Del Percio, who has opposed Trump’s presidential campaigns. “If you look at it through that prism, pick your timing. It’s just the way he works. He’s that transactional.”

Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to police New York City streets and cut federal aid in response to Mamdani’s victory. Hochul’s administration has spent weeks gaming out scenarios in which Trump sends in federal troops. That planning is still in the works.

“We’re still going to be fully prepared and have the same planning underway,” said a Hochul administration official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the internal conversations. “We all know who Donald Trump is and can be.”

Stefanik, who has represented a blood-red House district for a decade, was not initially an enthusiastic Trump supporter. But the 41-year-old’s rise through the Republican ranks came, in part, through her ardent backing of the president. She came to MAGA prominence during Trump’s first impeachment, and he praised her at the time as a rising star. Stefanik was on a shortlist to become Trump’s second-term running mate, and her nomination to become his United Nations ambassador was considered a shoo-in.

But a fraught process to select her House successor and the razor-thin majority held by Republicans in the chamber doomed her nomination. Now as a candidate for governor, Stefanik is banking on Hochul’s low favorability with voters and the governor’s support for Mamdani as being politically fatal in a state once accustomed to electing moderate Republicans like former Gov. George Pataki.

Since launching three weeks ago, Stefanik’s campaign has centered around Hochul being the “worst governor in America” — a catchphrase repeated three times in her announcement video. That same announcement video accused Hochul, who endorsed Mamdani in September, of having "cozied up to a defund the police, tax-hiking, antisemitic communist.”

Her allies do not expect there will be significant fallout from Trump’s surprising Mamdani enthusiasm.

“My view is there’s a lot of fluidity in this situation based on Mamdani’s actions going forward,” said Conservative Party Chair Gerard Kassar, a Stefanik ally. “The president is running a nation, Mamdani has a city to run. I think what the president said is ‘Let’s give this guy a chance.’”

Few Republicans believe Trump made his final judgment on the incoming mayor — or that his comments from late last week are set in stone.

“I don’t see any long-term consequence at all,” said New York GOP strategist Bill O’Reilly. “Trump is idiosyncratic and having a love fest with Mamdani is pure him. The next week he’ll be back to criticizing him.”

There are ample pitfalls for Democrats ahead of Mamdani taking office.

The backbench state assemblymember has never run anything larger than his legislative office and he will soon be leading a city government composed of some 300,000 workers. He is pressing Hochul to raise taxes on rich people and large corporations — a prospect she initially opposed, but has since hedged on citing uncertainty created by Trump and Congressional Republicans.

Mamdani’s candidacy created a rupture within the Democratic Party, with stalwarts like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer refusing to endorse him. He is also polarizing in the vote-rich New York City suburbs: A Siena College poll found 49 percent of those voters hold an unfavorable view of him. Sixty-seven percent of Jewish voters have a similarly negative view, the poll found.

Republicans expect to make Mamdani the face of their 2026 midterm effort — an example of how the Democratic Party has strayed too far to the left and alienated moderate voters as a result.

That strategy has shown no sign of changing. The New York Republican Committee three days after Trump praised Mamdani at the White House released a fundraising appeal blasting the new mayor with the subject line “NYC has fallen.”

“New York City has been taken over by a radical socialist, Zohran Mamdani,” the email stated. “However, the fight is only beginning.”