Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) announced Friday that she is running for New York governor, after much speculation that she was vying for the governorship.
In a video released Friday morning, Stefanik took multiple jabs at incumbent New York Governor Kathy Hochul, playing video clips that repeatedly call her the “worst governor in America.”
“Under her failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery bills,” Stefanik wrote. “When New Yorkers were looking for leadership from our governor, she bent the knee to the raging defund the police, tax hiking communist causing catastrophe for New York families.”
According to the video, the “Empire State has fallen” to rampant crime and runaway cost of living.
Kathy Hochul is the Worst Governor in America. Under her failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery bills. When New Yorkers were looking for leadership from our Governor, she bent… pic.twitter.com/HXyQlNIjEj
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) November 7, 2025
Stefanik became the youngest woman elected to Congress when she was chosen to represent New York’s 21st congressional district in 2014. Since then, she has been reelected five times.
Stefanik rose to prominence in 2023 thanks to a series of high-profile hearings in which she grilled elite college presidents over the rise of antisemitism on American campuses and the failure of their administrations to protect Jewish students. She is set to release a book, Poisoned Ivies, critiquing the academic degradation and ideological conformity that’s taken hold at the nation’s leading universities.
After President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024, he tapped Stefanik to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Trump later decided to have Stefanik maintain her seat in the House to avoid jeopardizing the tight Republican margin.
Stefanik is a longtime, vociferous critic of Hochul and has recently begun training her attacks on New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani, who is featured in the campaign video.
Mamdani and Hochul are shown in the video holding their hands up in the air and campaigning together, while a narrator notes that under Hochul’s leadership, energy, grocery, and rent prices have soared.
“Apparently, screwing over New Yorkers in Congress wasn’t enough – now she’s trying to bring Trump’s chaos and skyrocketing costs to our state,” Hochul said in her response to Stefanik’s announcement. “While Stefanik puts Trump first and New York last, Governor Hochul is lowering costs, cutting middle-class taxes, and fighting for the New Yorkers Stefanik abandoned.”