In northern New York,
the election that wasn’t

In the great campaign for the special election that wasn’t, voters in New York’s northernmost congressional district might have revealed just how much our politics have been transformed by the arrival of the second Trump presidency.
But any new message from the voters remains on ice for now. Although the stage was set for a new political contest back on Nov. 11, when the president-elect nominated U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik to become the next ambassador to the United Nations, no special election was ever scheduled to fill Stefanik’s House seat.
That’s because she never resigned from her seat. Republicans had emerged from the November election with a narrow 220-215 House majority, and two other GOP members soon quit for positions in the Trump administration, reducing the party’s control of the chamber to a historically tiny margin. Speaker Mike Johnson pressed Stefanik to delay her departure at least until those vacant seats could be filled.
So she stayed on through January and February and into March, even as she was replaced on the House leadership team and many of her staff moved on to other jobs. She bade farewell to her constituents and went through the Senate confirmation hearing for her new position.
And then on March 27, President Trump abruptly pulled her nomination to the U.N. post.
“There are others that can do a good job at the United Nations,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website, later adding, “With a very tight majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat.”
Stefanik’s district has turned a deeper shade of red as its boundaries have been redrawn in recent years, and she won re-election in November by a margin of 24 percentage points. Did the president really think that another Republican candidate running in the district might lose?
Well, there are some signs of a backlash against parts of the new administration’s agenda. For example, imposing huge tariffs on goods from Canada, which of course prompted retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports to Canada, might not prove to be the most popular idea in a border district where cross-border business operations have grown substantially in recent decades.
The tariffs, along with the president’s menacing comments about annexing Canada, also have prompted lots of Canadians to boycott U.S. goods and cancel plans for vacations south of the border. That might not be so good for Lake George.
If there had been a special election to fill Stefanik’s seat, the candidates would have been chosen by party leaders in the 15-county district, rather than through a primary. Democratic leaders had already lined up behind Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer from St. Lawrence County.
But there were some signs of turmoil on the Republican side. By late March, the district’s GOP leaders had expressed a preference for state Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, whose current Senate district substantially overlaps the congressional district, though two other finalists remained.
Not on the GOP short list was Anthony Constantino, who became popular with MAGA loyalists last year after tangling with city officials over a huge illuminated “Vote for Trump” sign atop the roof of his Sticker Mule plant in Amsterdam.
Constantino threatened to run as an independent if the GOP backed Stec. A three-way race, of course, might have given Gendebien a much better chance of winning. Perhaps that is why Stefanik is back to representing the North Country.