NY21: Elise Stefanik wins big in resounding victory

ELIZABETHTOWN — Elise Stefanik has won the race to represent New York's 21st Congressional District, becoming the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress. Stefanik, 30, soundly defeated opponents Aaron Woolf, a Democrat, and Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello, shortly after returns started coming late Tuesday, putting a definitive end to the prolonged race for the open seat being vacated by Congressman Bill Owens. With 564 of the 589 precincts in the 12 counties reporting shortly after midnight, Stefanik clocked 53.4 to Woolf's 32 percent. Funiciello garnered 10.8%. At 10:40 p.m, Stefanik addressed her supporters at the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls. "Tonight we have made a little history in the North Country," she said. "Every vote I take I will ask myself one question, will this help the residents of the North Country?" "Aaron and Matt were both gracious and I expressed my appreciation to them for their hard-fought races. You get to know your opponents well and get to know they are very good people." Stefanik pledged to cross the aisle: "I will work hard everyday to earn your respect and your trust, and hopefully your support." Following Stefanik's speech, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden congratulated the candidate. "Elise Stefanik spent her campaign outworking her opponents and traveling from one end to the other of one of the country's largest congressional districts," he said in a statement. "Elise brings a fresh perspective to Congress, and she has an extremely bright future as both a congresswoman for the North County and as a leader in the Republican Party." Essex County Republican Party Chairman and Willsboro Supervisor Shaun Gilliland praised the outcome. "This will mean great things for the district," said Gillilland, who recently took over the party helm from long-time chair Ron Jackson. "When you think of a freshman congresswoman going to Washington with so much horsepower behind her already, it can only mean good things." Gillilland said in the time he has known Stefanik in his position as Willsboro's chief administrator she has been willing to listen. "This is good for the county and for the district," he said. State Sen. Betty Little echoed those thoughts: "It's so exciting to get this district back into the R, Republican column," she said. WOOLF CONCEDES In an emotional concession speech at the Cobble Hill Inn in Elizabethtown, Woolf emphasized the theme of family and bipartisanship. "I loved being your candidate," he said behind a backdrop of supporters. "The most salient thing for me about this race was a better understanding those shared values. And I still believe those are the values the North Country needs and demands." Woolf said he spoke with his two opponents prior to conceding. Elise Stefanik, he said, assured him she would bring the values of bipartisanship and working together to Washington. "I may not being going to Washington this time," he said. "But I will continue to what I've been doing as a citizen." He once again thanked his family and volunteers for making the experience of running for Congress one of the most rewarding and enriching in his life. "While we fell short of our goal, I am proud of what we accomplished and appreciate every vote, phone call, and door knock on my behalf. When citizens volunteer for their beliefs, it is the best part of our political process, and I am humbled to have been a part of it." He ended with a bit of levity. "Alright, now let's go have a chicken wing." FUNICIELLO CONCEDES Surrounded by his friends in his Rock Hill Bakehouse Cafe in Glens Falls, Funiciello said that polling more votes than Aaron Woolf as a Democrat in Warren County did was a meaningful accomplishment likely to have substantial consequences in the future. "This is really a phenomenal victory for people in the middle- and working classes," he said to the cheers of his supporters. "We definitely stood up and let the two corporate parties know that we terribly resent their repeated attempts to buy our Congressional seat." He said he was proud of his campaign workers who spread the word of his principles without spending the huge sums the Democratic and Republican parties did. "With only a shoestring budget, we have had a massive impact on this election, and we will build from this foundation!" Shortly after polls closed at 9 p.m, results from the district's 12 counties began rolling in. Stefanik bested Woolf in her stronghold of support, Fulton, Saratoga, Warren and Washington counties, drawing in victory in wide margins. Woolf eked out narrow victories in two counties: Clinton by five points, Essex by two. In Warren County, Funiciello drew 24.9% of the total vote. LAST DAY Woolf started Election Day in Elizabethtown, where he cast his ballot at the town hall located about a mile from the family home on Route 9 where he has lived intermittently since 1968. "I'm excited," he said. "When I woke up this morning, it felt like Christmas morning." "Can I have one too?" asked Eloise, his three-year-old daughter, as she eyed the ballots. "Not until you're 18," said Woolf. The first-time candidate spent several moments in a booth next to his wife, Carolyn, and fed the ballot into a machine. "I come from a red, white and blue family," he said. "Seeing your own name on the ballot is very emotional." In elegiac remarks, Woolf said Americans are living in a country cleaved by partisanship. If elected, he said he would bring the capable North Country spirit to Washington. "A new sense of stick-to-it-ness and accomplishment," he said. "Today, we're going to keep doing what we've been doing for the past nine months: talking with voters and generating enthusiasm." The candidate spent the rest of the day in the western and central parts of the district, meeting with voters and canvassing in Canton, Potsdam, Massena, Malone and Lake Placid before returning to Elizabethtown, where supporters began gathering at the Cobble Inn, Woolf's adopted local pub, earlier that afternoon. Stefanik, long the frontrunner, began the day rallying with corrections officers in Dannemora in Clinton County. Following a second event in Plattsburgh, she cast her ballot at the Willsboro Visitor's Center. Accompanied by local officials, the candidate greeted campaign workers and thanked them for her efforts. She emerged from the voting booth with a thumbs up. "I feel really great," she said. "I hope to put an additional fragment in the glass ceiling." The candidate said she felt energized from her positive campaign. "The primary was good practice," she joked. Afterwards, she appeared on Hotline, the radio program hosted by Watertown Mayor Jeffrey Graham, and rallied staffers in Glens Falls. Matt Funiciello, who turned 47 on Tuesday, cast his vote in Hudson Falls shortly after 3 p.m. "Voting for non-corporate candidates - hope you did too!" he tweeted shortly afterwards. 15 MONTHS Following a stint in Washington, the Harvard grad moved to the district in 2012. She took a position at her family's plywood business and began drafting the blueprints for her candidacy, which she announced in Aug. 2013. The Congresswoman-elect had initially planned on a come-from-behind campaign against Owens and began methodologically traveling the district, meeting with officials and locking down support. But the Plattsburgh-based Democrat's sudden retirement in January was a game-changer that sent Democrats scrambling for a candidate. After a series of possible candidates passed on the race, Woolf stepped forward and was nominated in February in Long Lake by an unpublicized conclave. Following his announcement, Woolf, 50, went into hibernation for a month, a decisions analysts have widely said inflicted future damage on his campaign from which he never quite recovered. In March, three-time GOP candidate Matt Doheny emerged and engaged Stefanik in a brutal primary. American Crossroads entered the fray three weeks before that election in June, the first ever in a primary race, and spent $770,000 pummelling Doheny, a factor he later blamed on his loss. Woolf ceded the spotlight to the GOP and faded into the background, content to let the candidates duke it out. But by the time he reemerged in early-summer to introduce himself and his policies to voters, the GOP had already begun to weave a narrative that dogged him throughout the campaign — that of the urbane millionaire. The candidate spent much of the summer bogged down in defending himself from a flurry of attacks from the right, including questions related to his investment portfolio and a flotilla of problems with his Brooklyn-based business, including tax, labor and inspection issues. His platforms — increasing the minimum wage, enacting the Buffett Rule, closing tax loopholes, investing in infrastructure — were largely lost in the noise. But unlike Stefanik and Funiciello, both of whom excelled at sticking to the script, Woolf could never quite hatch a one-size-fits-all rebuttal to put these issues to bed, opting instead for cyclical and uneven responses. The National Republican Congressional Committee spent the summer excoriating Woolf, something that often left the campaign breathless and unable to effectively combat. County Democratic committees appeared silent and surrogates, if there ever were any at all, did little to generate enthusiasm amongst the rank and file. Woolf's attacks on Stefanik — namely on what he said was a refusal to detail her thoughts on the future of Medicare and Social Security — inflicted little damage on the candidate, who continued to focus on her sunny brand of retail politics. She even referred to herself as the Energizer Bunny. And then there was Funiciello. While the baker excoriated both candidates as corporate-backed elists whose policies were misaligned with that of the working class, he focused the brunt of his attacks on Woolf, who opted to ignore him, even up until the second debate, when Funiciello took him to task for it. As Funiciello rose in the polls — the last showed him with 11 percent — conventional wisdom was that he was draining support from Woolf's left flank. And as the Democrat's poll numbers stagnated, Funiciello called on him to drop out. Doing so, he argued, would be the only way to beat Stefanik. In late-September, the House Majority PAC yanked $300,000 in scheduled television spending for Woolf; the Democratic Congressional Committee pulled up stakes shortly thereafter, leaving Team Woolf to make it on their own. As a creeping sense of inevitability began to sink in, Stefanik's profile had ascended to GOP rock star status. In early October, she delivered the Weekly Republican Address with a theme of "Bringing Jobs Back to Main Street." The country's most powerful elected Republicans descended on the district to stump for her — including House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Congressman Paul Ryan, one of Stefanik's political mentors, stumped for her in May) — while the candidate appeared in an increasing number of slots on cable news and in national media profiles, including the Weekly Standard, the New York Times, CBS News and the Business Insider. It was also an expensive race. As of Oct. 15, Stefanik had raised $1.6 million and Woolf, about $1.9 million, $800,000 of which was self-funded. Funiciello raised about $32,000. And spending from super PACS poured in, about $2.3 million, most advocating on behalf of Stefanik. Following the final poll on Oct. 27, the race appeared to be crystallized. While Stefanik failed to sweep the endorsements of local media — she took just two, the Watertown Daily Times and the Leader Herald — she continued rallying voters, engaging in GOTV efforts and pressing the flesh up until the last minutes of the race. AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL This election, which is widely seen as a referendum on an unpopular president and global anxieties paired with a dysfunctional government, has put Republicans in a position to rack up their majority to the highest number in decades. At the minimum, analysts expect a pick-up of between 5-12 seats. Twelve would match the GOP's post-World War II record of 246 seats set in 1947. Even more would give them the highest majority since the 1920s. Republicans currently hold 233. Paired with the a GOP takeover of the Senate, tonight's results will set the tone for Obama's remaining two years in office. Stefanik's victory is a return to the district's red ancestral roots. Prior to redistricting in 2010, what had been known as the NY23 had been under GOP control since the Civil War. Keith Lobdell and Thom Randall contributed to this report.

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NY21: Elise Stefanik wins big in resounding victory

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