October 20th, 2024
By Alex Gault
Congresswoman Elise M. Stefanik is lending her voice and support to a colleague of hers in an extremely tight race in the southern tier and the Capitol region – Congressman Marc Molinaro.
On Saturday, in a rally at a golf course in suburban Rensselaer County, Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, urged voters in NY-19 to support Molinaro, R-Tivoli in his rematch election against Democrat Josh Riley.
FIGHT FOR THE MAJORITY
The stakes are high – in 2022, Molinaro won over Riley by about 2%, or just under 4,500 votes, and Republicans are counting on keeping at least a few of the New York swing districts they took from Democrats in 2022 to keep a hold of their majority in the House.
“I just think that’s very important to remember,” Stefanik said to the rally crowd. “Rensselaer County, you are going to determine the outcome of the House majority, because the House majority runs right through the state of New York.”
BORDER POLICY
To the friendly crowd of Republicans, Stefanik made a number of references to former President Donald J. Trump, saying she’ll be at his rally in Manhattan towards the end of the month and urging voters to select him at the top of the ticket. But Molinaro, who has traditionally run a more moderate campaign, only used Trump’s name once to refer to the former president’s border policies.
Speaking with reporters before the event, Molinaro said he fully supports Trump, but pivoted to the issue of immigration and his opponent’s position on the issue.
“The Trump administration will without question provide not only border security but obviously to keeping Americans safe,” he said.
Both Stefanik and Molinaro talked at length about Riley — they tied him closely to the issues that Democrats poll worst on – the border chief among them.
“Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, they surrendered the southern border, they dismantled border security and while doing so, 10 and a half million people poured into this country illegally,” Molinaro said. “But you know who came up with the argument? Josh Riley, 20 years working for a Washington D.C. law firm, working for the U.S. Senate, led the legal argument to dismantle the Trump border security policies.”
The Congresspeople also sought to tie Riley to Governor Kathy Hochul, the Democratic New York Governor that polls very poorly with Republicans.
“He supports and is the architect of the wide open border policies, he supports Kathy Hochul and her failed bail reform,” Stefanik said, talking about Riley in a very similar manner to how she talks about her own Democratic opponents. “Josh Riley is hiding from constituents because he wants to use $30 million to convince you otherwise.”
‘SECURE THE BORDER ACT’
With such an intense focus on the border in the NY-19 race, and indeed in most of the Congressional races this year, Republicans are aligned behind a very conservative immigration bill that the Republican-led House passed last year, the “Secure the Border Act,” identified as House Resolution 2 for this session of Congress. Passed with no Democratic support, the bill would make wide changes to the American immigration system.
It would require the resumption of construction on a southern border wall, expand the controversial Stonegarden grant program that gives local law enforcement grant money to engage in border security operations, ends pre-processing for immigration paperwork, limits legal asylum protections, allows U.S. officials to deport illegal immigrants to countries they have no history in, expands the number of crimes that make an immigrant of any kind eligible for deportation, and would require the creation of a citizenship verification system that employers would be mandated to run all employees and new hires through.
BIPARTISAN BORDER BILL
It’s a far cry from the so-called “Bipartisan Border Bill” that the U.S. Senate called to a vote earlier this year. That measure failed to break past the filibuster – but was crafted with bipartisan input through 2023 and early 2024, and would have made many changes to the immigration system as well, expanding the Department of Homeland Security’s authority to remove illegal immigrants, limiting the number of asylum requests that can be submitted, speeds up the removal process for immigrants on track to be deported while also establishing a pathway for Afghan nationals who assisted the American military to pursue legal status in the U.S.
That bill, while originally supported by DHS and Customs and Border Patrol officials, as well as a bipartisan group of Republicans and Democrats including President Joseph R. Biden, was tanked by Trump in February, reportedly because he didn’t want to give the Democratic incumbent a victory on what’s proven to be a very effective issue for Republicans.
Stefanik and Molinaro were opposed to the bipartisan bill almost immediately after it was released – Molinaro said it included some provisions he supported like increased funding for law enforcement, but failed to effectively close the borders. Stefanik, as a senior House Republican chairing the House Republican Conference, has been aligned behind the Republican-led bill uniformly since it was introduced.
“If Senate Democrats were actually serious about solving the problem and ending the border catastrophe, they would bring up H.R. 2 and pass it this week,” she said in late May when the Senate took up the bipartisan bill.
Stefanik said the bipartisan bill included “amnesty,” for people who entered the U.S. illegally, although nothing in the bills language would provide amnesty to immigrants currently in the U.S. and rather makes the asylum process more strict and provides for more deportations for people who don’t fit it’s updated requirements.
Again, Stefanik tied the issue to Molinaro’s opponent.
“We passed (H.R. 2) far before there was any Senate discussion of an amnesty package, we passed that with unanimous Republican support, and Josh Riley opposed that,” Stefanik said Saturday.
According to the roll call vote for H.R. 2, the measure wasn’t unanimous among Republicans: two voted no on the measure – Reps. Thomas H. Massie, R-Ky. and John S. Duarte, R-Calif.
STEFANIK INFLUENCE
With about two weeks left until Election Day, Molinaro is continuing to tour his district on what he’s calling a “Hometown Priorities Tour,” while Stefanik is scheduled at a number of events throughout the north country’s NY-21.
“I’ll be in Washington County right after this,” she said. “Stay tuned.”
Among the attendees at Saturday’s event were 10-year-old Annie Agnew and her father Jim. Sporting a Trump hat adorned with buttons for the Nixon, Agnew ticket from the 1960s, she said she thought Stefanik was “awesome.”
Jim said he was excited to see a younger Republican in a position of power representing upstate New York in Washington. He said Stefanik, whose trended more conservative over the last decade since she was elected in 2014, represents the conservative heart of northern New York.
“I was in the U.S. Army, and when you say New York to the veterans I was with when I was active duty, they assumed its a deeply blue liberal state, but it’s not,” he said. “Most of New York is geographically red (conservative), and she represents that, and she represents the diversity of the party.”
Joan Schweigert, a member of a Republican club in nearby Schodack, said she was impressed by the Congresswoman, especially her questioning of the presidents of MIT, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania over their campuses response to reports of antisemitism in Dec. 2023. In a fiery exchange between Stefanik and the three administrators, Stefanik asked the presidents if calls for genocide of Jewish people from students or staff were a violation of their campus policies, and each replied largely that the issue depended on the context of the situation.
“She didn’t let them go, she nailed them to the wall, as far as I was concerned, and they’ve all resigned,” Schweigert said. “I thought that was wonderful, just wonderful.”
Schweigert said she’s regularly seen Stefanik in Schodack, visiting with her Republican club, as much of Rensselaer County used to be included in Stefanik’s district until the maps were tweaked in the long-running redistricting battle in New York this year.
“She’s come down several times, and it’s just wonderful when she does,” Schweigert said. “She’s not somebody that just comes in and makes a little sweep, she goes back to the kitchens and talks to the people who make the food, she spends time with us all, she’s a wonderful person.”
