WASHINGTON — GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik has landed an “all-star” crew of New York-bred strategists — together with those that helped defeat Gov. Kathy Hochul in previous races — and even Dem backers as she prepares to tackle the governor, sources say.
The upstate Republican is about to announce her extensively anticipated bid for governor as quickly as subsequent week — and has already employed such marketing campaign heavyweights as Erie County natives Stefan Mychajliw and Chris Grant.
Mychajliw began as a journalist masking Hochul, and Grant was the chief strategist and media advisor behind GOP Rep. Chris Collins’ profitable run towards the gov for the Home in 2012, the yr Democratic President Barack Obama was re-elected.
“It will likely be my pleasure to assist hearth the worst governor in America to save lots of New York,” stated Mychajliew, who was later elected as a Republican comptroller in Erie County within the 2010s, to The Publish.
Hochul beforehand served there as county clerk earlier than being elected to at least one time period within the Home from 2011 to 2013.
A supply stated Stefanik was very deliberate in her alternative of Mychajliw and Grant.
“As she was placing collectively a crew, it was essential to her that they’ve a deep understanding of New York, particularly the regional facets,” the supply stated, including that each of the incoming staffers are well-equipped to “run up the rating” on Hochul on her residence turf in Western New York.
Tony Fabrizio — who was President Trump’s high pollster for his 2024 marketing campaign and is from Lengthy Island and a longtime political consigliere to Suffolk County Republican Chairman Jesse Garcia — will head up polling, giving the Stefanik marketing campaign an excellent firmer footing in areas which have shifted proper lately, insiders stated.
Former New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin defeated Hochul in Lengthy Island’s Suffolk and Nassau counties in 2022 however misplaced to her in Erie County.
Including to Stefanik’s effort is the truth that “quite a few Democrats and outstanding former Hochul supporters have been each urging Elise to run and pledging to assist her marketing campaign as properly,” a second supply stated.
Stefanik plans to announce her gubernatorial bid after the New York Metropolis mayoral election Nov. 4.
Different Stefanik aides who’ve signed on to her marketing campaign embody Alex DeGrasse, who has labored for the Republican congresswoman for a decade and helped keep a grassroots donor record of greater than 400,000 contributors, Patrick Hester, who has additionally been with the upstate pol for a decade and one other Trump 2024 marketing campaign official, Tim Saler.
DeGrasse will function the 2026 gubernatorial marketing campaign’s chief of employees and CFO; Mychajliw will head up fast response; Grant shall be an adviser. Hester may even take part advising, and Saler will oversee micro-targeting, Axios first reported.
The second supply referred to as the meeting of staffers an “all-star crew” and stated will probably be specializing in messages that assault Hochul’s file on crime and affordability and her current endorsement of socialist New York Metropolis mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, amongst others.
The staffing blitz comes as Stefanik is touting a greater than $13 million marketing campaign warfare chest throughout a number of fundraising committees — together with almost $11 million in her principal marketing campaign committee, Elise for Congress, which might simply be transferred for a statewide run in New York.
Along with Stefanik’s upstate roots and her crew’s experience with media technique within the Capital District, the congresswoman launched a political motion committee in June that’s serving to foster connections in 62 counties statewide, in line with the primary supply.
If the congresswoman beats Hochul subsequent yr, she would turn out to be the primary Republican governor within the Empire State since George Pataki defeated Democratic incumbent Gov. Mario Cuomo in 1996, pushed by disenchantment with three phrases of “too liberal” insurance policies in Albany.
Pataki left workplace in December 2006, resulting in what has turn out to be 20 years of Democratic management of the governor’s mansion.
The Dem reign stored up even after a sexual-harassment scandal pressured Cuomo’s son, Andrew Cuomo, to resign as governor in August 2021, with Hochul ascending to fill the emptiness.
“I do know Kathy Hochul properly, personally and politically,” stated Mychajliw, a former TV anchor and investigative reporter for WKBW and WGRZ who has extra not too long ago been attacking the Democrat in op-eds for the Lengthy Shore Press.
“She’s a hypocritical fraud who was by no means actually litigated because the unintentional governor who received swapped in on the final minute.
“I noticed firsthand as Erie County comptroller what a catastrophe she left the Erie County Clerk’s Workplace, which took fairly a while to wash up,” he stated.
“Her check-cashing scandal is a precursor to how badly she turned New York state into a large dumpster hearth.”
Hochul had left the clerk’s workplace mid-term to run within the particular election for New York’s twenty sixth Congressional District in 2011, forsaking roughly $3 million in unprocessed checks regarding real-estate transactions, although her successor didn’t place blame her immediately for the backlog.
New York State Democratic Get together spokesman Addison Dick shot again, “Sellout Stefanik is greater than welcome to concentrate on how she has jacked up costs along with her tariff tax hikes and enabled Trump’s makes an attempt to chop funding for the police in New York.
“New Yorkers know that Stefanik is working on her failed file in Washington and Trump’s damaging agenda that makes our state much less secure and fewer reasonably priced.”
However some outstanding Democrats and Hochul’s opponents are “urging” Stefanik to formally announce her marketing campaign — and say they are going to be backing her bid “financially” and “vocally,” the second supply accustomed to the scenario stated.
That effort was given a lift final week when the right-of-center Manhattan Institute put out a ballot of registered New York voters exhibiting Stefanik besting Hochul, 43% to 42%, with 7% nonetheless undecided and 9% preferring neither candidate.
The survey discovered that Stefanik would beat Hochul 54% to 37% on Lengthy Island, dominate in upstate rural areas by greater than 40 proportion factors and narrowly win amongst upstate city voters, 46% to 45%.
However Hochul beat Stefanik within the Hudson Valley area, 45% to 36%, within the hypothetical match-up, in line with the survey of 600 probably voters taken final week.
The New York Republican is anticipated to maintain needling Hochul on her Mamdani endorsement, as she has been a combatting antisemitism in Congress and plans to publish an “insider’s account” of her oversight work in April 2026, The Publish beforehand solely reported.
