They hail from sprawling, Canadian-border congressional districts on either side of Lake Champlain and represent similarly rural, white and aging constituencies. They sit just four seats away from one another on the 22-member House Intelligence Committee.
But when it comes to the impeachment of President Donald Trump, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) couldn’t be further apart.
Over the past week, as their committee commenced the public phase of its impeachment proceedings, the northern neighbors distinguished themselves as leading voices of their respective parties.
Even before the House panel’s first witness could deliver his opening statement on November 13, Stefanik sprang into action with an indictment of its chair, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
“Mr. Chairman, will you be prohibiting witnesses from answering members’ questions, as you have in the closed-door depositions?” she asked.
“As the gentlewoman should know, if she was present for the depositions—” Schiff began, issuing an unusually biting rebuke of a fellow committee member.
“Which I was,” Stefanik interjected.
“Some of them, yes,” he responded tartly.
Schiff said he had only halted questioning when Republicans “were seeking to out” the unnamed government whistleblower who provoked the impeachment inquiry by alleging that Trump had withheld military aid to Ukraine to extract a political favor. Glaring at Stefanik, Schiff said he was “disturbed to hear members of the committee, who have in the past voiced strong support for whistleblower protections, seek to undermine those protections by outing the whistleblower.”
Hours later, when it was his turn to speak, Welch also addressed Republican demands that the whistleblower be publicly identified. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) had just delivered a diatribe complaining that the one witness Democrats refused to “bring in front of the American people” was “the guy who started it all: the whistleblower.”
“I’d say to my colleague,” Welch responded to Jordan, “I’d be glad to have the person who started it all come in and testify.” The Democrat from Vermont pointed toward the witness chair. “President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there.”
Though Welch is not known for drawing the spotlight, his impromptu retort brought down the house, and clips of the exchange soon went viral. One version, produced by Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” featured the tagline, “You just got Welch’d.”
Stefanik and Welch would seem to be unlikely party standard-bearers on the issue of impeachment.
A former aide to president George W. Bush and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Stefanik spent her early career aligned with the traditional Republican establishment. During her three terms in Congress, the 35-year-old Harvard University graduate has often bucked the conservative fringes of her party, supporting the Paris climate accord, criticizing a travel ban on Muslim-majority countries and opposing construction of a border wall with Mexico.
Ahead of the 2016 election, Stefanik kept her distance from Trump, criticizing his behavior and rhetoric. But according to North Country Public Radio reporter Brian Mann, that changed after Trump traveled with her to Fort Drum, in the western end of her district, in August 2018.
“Since then, she’s increasingly been just very unambiguous that she supports him,” Mann said. “She thinks that he’s the right man for the job.”
Now, Stefanik seems perfectly comfortable speaking in Trumpian terms. She refers to her 2018 and 2020 Democratic challenger, former county legislator Tedra Cobb, as “Taxin’ Tedra” and denigrates Cobb’s supporters as “far-left Socialist Democrats.” Schiff’s impeachment inquiry, she frequently tweets, is a “#RegimeofSecrecy.”
“I would say this is not common for North Country politics,” Mann said. “It feels much more personal, and it feels much more driven by social media attacks than a real conversation about issues.”
Stefanik’s transformation from Trump skeptic to #MAGA loyalist has dismayed some moderate Republicans. MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, with whom she served in the Bush administration, tweeted last week that Stefanik was “drinking the same loony tune juice with her breakfast” as former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, “going from occasionally reasonable republicans to Trump shills. #pathetic.”
Closer to home, Glens Falls’ Post-Star editor Ken Tingley questioned in a recent column whether Stefanik would “just be carrying water for her party” during the impeachment hearings. “That would be unconscionable considering what is at stake,” he wrote.
Welch, meanwhile, has undergone his own transformation.
Since his first term in the House in 2007 and 2008, when many liberal Vermont activists were seeking Bush’s removal from office, Welch has been wary of using Congress’ impeachment powers.
For more than two years after special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Welch refused to say whether he believed Trump had committed crimes, and he frequently threw cold water on the notion of impeaching the president. Welch alternately argued that impeachment would never succeed and that attempting it would only help Trump win reelection.
It wasn’t until July 2019, a week before Mueller was set to testify before Congress, that Welch became the 87th House Democrat to endorse impeachment. Even then, he said he hadn’t based his decision on Mueller’s findings. Rather, he argued that Trump’s continued obstruction of congressional oversight and his racist attacks on House colleagues of color merited removal from office.
According to Vermont writer and activist Susan Ohanian, who introduced a successful advisory motion to impeach Trump at Charlotte’s 2017 town meeting, Welch was late to the game. “I think he was safe to the game,” she said in a recent interview.
Welch, 72, has never been one to rock the boat. The former attorney and longtime state legislator has carefully cultivated a reputation as a moderate Democrat — at least by Vermont standards — who works hard to partner with Republican colleagues. (Welch and Stefanik have collaborated on initiatives related to Lake Champlain and dairy policy, but they don’t appear to be particularly close. “We totally disagree about impeachment, but she’s a very capable person,” Welch said of Stefanik.)
Even last week, in the moments before his committee’s impeachment hearings began, he appeared ambivalent about the task at hand.
“None of us particularly want to be here. It’s not a good thing for our country that we’re having an impeachment debate,” he told Seven Days. But, he added, “It feels like this is the job I have to do at this point.”
Welch hasn’t explicitly stated that he will vote for impeachment articles related to Ukraine, but he has left himself little room to retreat, calling the president’s actions “a profound abuse of power.”
As for his concerns about the price Democrats may pay for pursuing impeachment? “You know, I got past that with Ukraine because I think it went from being politically inconvenient to constitutionally essential,” he said during an interview last week in his Capitol Hill office.
Welch is facing at least some criticism back home for supporting impeachment. Deb Billado, who chairs the Vermont Republican Party, called it “sad and misguided,” adding that he and his congressional colleagues were simply “trying to remove the president that they don’t agree with because I don’t believe they can beat him at the polls.”
But it’s hard to imagine Welch paying too great a political price. The seventh-term House member hasn’t faced a competitive race since he was first elected — and a higher percentage of voters in Vermont opposed Trump in the 2016 election than in any other state.
The politics of the moment are trickier for Stefanik. Her district, which stretches from Lake Ontario to Lake Champlain and includes the entire Adirondack Park, generally sends Republicans to Congress, but her immediate predecessor, Bill Owens, was a Democrat. Her constituents backed Democratic president Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 — then Trump in 2016. She defeated Cobb by 14 points in 2018, a banner year for Democrats.
Though the prospect of a robust Democratic challenge could push her toward the center, Stefanik is surely loath to alienate the president’s supporters in her district.
“I think that the congresswoman has pretty brilliant political instincts,” Mann said. “She is probably reading the district pretty well that while there are a lot of people here that are dismayed by President Trump’s behavior, there are also a lot of people … who are very loyal to Donald Trump and who are convinced that he is facing unfair attacks.”
Saranac Lake resident Ray Collin, who chaired New York’s Franklin County Republican Party for five years, has mixed feelings about Trump but thinks Stefanik has acquitted herself well during the impeachment process.
“I will tell you that I think Congresswoman Stefanik is significantly more popular than any congressperson we’ve had in the last decade or better,” he said, adding that he finds the impeachment inquiry “a little silly.”
Given the challenges Republicans face winning statewide office in New York, Stefanik may have concluded that she has a better chance at a promotion by moving up the ranks into House leadership or even securing a job in the Trump administration. That could explain her willingness over the past week to become one of her party’s most visible anti-impeachment warriors.
Her party also has a reason to put her front and center: Stefanik is one of only 13 women in the House Republican caucus and the only GOP woman on the Intelligence Committee. When she first took office at 30 years old, she was the youngest woman ever to win election to the House. (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, later supplanted that record at 29 years old.)
Stefanik’s gender was a particular asset for Republicans at last Friday’s hearing, when Democrats sought to establish that Trump and his allies had bullied former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch out of her post. Soon after the hearing began, Stefanik again attempted to initiate a debate over Schiff’s conduct.
“The gentlewoman is not recognized,” the chair said, cutting her off.
“So we know clearly you’re going to interrupt us throughout this hearing,” Stefanik responded, shaking her head.
That afternoon, she and her Republican colleagues appeared intent on goading Schiff into preventing Stefanik from asking questions. Though House-passed rules allowed only Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the Intelligence Committee’s ranking member, or a designated staffer to question Yovanovitch for a 45-minute period, Nunes attempted to turn the microphone over to Stefanik.
Before she could utter more than a few words, Schiff interjected: “The gentlewoman will suspend. The gentlewoman will suspend.”
“What is the interruption for this time?” Stefanik asked. “It is our time—”
“The gentlewoman will suspend,” Schiff repeated.
“You’re gagging the young lady from New York?” Nunes complained.
“This is the fifth time you have interrupted members of Congress — duly elected members of Congress,” Stefanik said.
The set piece drew a strong reaction from skeptics. “They knew calling on Stefanik was 100% a stunt,” the Atlantic‘s veteran correspondent, James Fallows, wrote on Twitter. “And still they did it, knowing that it would be bolstered on Fox and probably get ‘both sides’ treatment elsewhere.”
“Elsie [sic] Stefanik is lying here,” former Vermont governor Howard Dean tweeted. “I’m embarrassed to have her representing so many of my friends across the lake.”
Soon, prominent Trump opponents — including attorney George Conway, the spouse of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway — were calling for contributions to Cobb’s second campaign against Stefanik. “@EliseStefanik is lying trash,” Conway wrote on Twitter. “Please give to her opponent, @TedraCobb.”
On Sunday, Cobb announced that she had raised more than $1 million over the weekend — nearly tripling her war chest. Stefanik’s campaign was also fundraising off the hearings, though it did not release a total. Neither Cobb nor Stefanik responded to interview requests.
If Stefanik’s goal was to speak to her party’s base, it worked. Clips of Schiff cutting her off aired repeatedly on Fox News and congressional allies leapt to her defense.
“@RepStefanik is a young, powerful, conservative woman — and Democrats are threatened by that,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wrote on Twitter, “Retweet if you are on #TeamElise.”
By the end of the weekend, that team included Stefanik’s most prominent supporter yet: Trump himself. As the president shared a clip of her questioning on Twitter, he wrote, “A new Republican Star is born. Great going @EliseStefanik!”
Colin Flanders contributed reporting.
Disclosure: Paul Heintz worked as Peter Welch’s communications director from November 2008 to March 2011.
The original print version of this article was headlined “North Stars | At Trump impeachment hearings, neighboring Reps. Elise Stefanik and Peter Welch chart different courses”
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This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2019.
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Thank you Peter Welch for your service to this state and the country. You are a good person and a statesman we can be proud of. Stefanik is a transparent idiot and a disgrace to New York and the US House.
At least Stefanik is maintaining her integrity, where Welch has sold out to put his party before country.
If a Ukrainian investigation into corruption might result in valuable assistance to Trump’s political campaign …because it implicates candidate Joe Biden, what result would occur if that same investigation …exonerated Biden? Would that not constitute valuable assistance to the Biden campaign?
The Democrats doth protest too much. Apparently, the Democrats believe Joe Biden (and his son) have done something wrong. Otherwise, isn’t it reasonable to assume the Democrats would welcome a Ukrainian investigation?
It’s also disingenuous for Rep. Welch to say Trump should investigate the Biden’s involvement with Burisma (a corrupt Ukrainian energy company) on his own, not as a representative of the U.S. government. After all, Ukraine is a sovereign state and neither the U.S. government nor a private individual can effectively investigate Ukrainian corruption… only the Ukrainian government can. And the presumption that only the Bidens are the target of an investigation… is a false narrative. Surely, the furious Democrat protestations should lead any reasonable person to consider that others may be involved.
Lastly, we should realize that anything Trump does …that pleases his constituents …signifies ‘valuable assistance’ to his political success. That’s why voters vote. Which may be why the impeachment narrative is the mainstay of the Democrat strategy.
I hope the Democrats vote to impeach Trump. And the sooner the better. Then the American voters on both sides of the aisle will have the benefit of constitutional due process …and learn what’s really going on.
What a great article, & coming from Seven Days👏🏻👏🏻. Keep up the good work.
The public has generally been deceived about who the impeachment witnesses are, what they have done, who they are carting water for. But this Glenn Beck presentation is amazingly well researched. It is 2 hours long, but the subject is complex; he gives the history of Ukraine, the State Dept., the CFR control of the Dim Party. After watching his presentation you will realize the depth of the corruption, the lie of Schiff, and the probable treason of Peter Welch against our nation.
Glenn Beck Presents: The Democrats’ Hydra – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si-vMj-FB8…
“At least Stefanik is maintaining her integrity”
You mean the “integrity” of starting out as a Never Trumper, and then radically switching sides to become a Trump attack dog?? What did the Trump Crime Family promise her to go after the patriotism and character of Ambassador Yovanovitch and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman?
She ditched whatever intregrity she had when she decided to throw in her lot with Don Corleone Trump.
Jay Eshelman opines: “Apparently, the Democrats believe Joe Biden (and his son) have done something wrong. Otherwise, isn’t it reasonable to assume the Democrats would welcome a Ukrainian investigation?”
As usual, this is flagrant nonsense.
By his own logic, Mr. Eshelman would surely be pleased to have the President of the United States and his minions make up a totally false story about him and blast it all over the national media, in order that he could then welcome an investigation to clear his name.
I’m reminded of a story about one of LBJ’s Texas campaigns. He told his staff to gin up a rumor that his opponent slept with goats. When they complained that the rumor was clearly false, Johnson replied: “Of course it is, but I want to see him have to deny it.”
Personally I do not believe that Joe Biden will or should become the nominee of the Democratic Party, but I also do not believe that he deserves to have his name dragged through the mud for something which he never did, EVEN IF a subsequent investigation (there have been many) clears him of all wrongdoing (which they already have).
Finally, the testimony now shows clearly that Trump demanded an investigation of the Bidens, not Ukrainian corruption in general and not Burisma. And despite the fact that Ukraine is, as Eshelman points out, a sovereign nation, Trump insisted that the president commit to such an investigation publicly before releasing aid already authorized by Congress, in what several well placed witnesses testified was contrary not just to Ukrainian interests, but to American self-interest. The only party who’d gain from that is Trump himself. No surprise there.
Is it a “totally false story” that Hunter Biden was hired to the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that was being investigated for corruption? That he was paid more than $50,000 a month for unspecified services while his father, as vice president, was directing U.S. – Ukrainian foreign policy?
If it were me, and these accusations were untrue, I would welcome an investigation.
Hunter Biden got paid by Burisma. That’s true. Odds are, he’s a spoiled jerk. So what?
False narratives can contain a kernel of truth. It’s the REST of this narrative that is false, namely that Joe Biden, then a public official (VP) tried to shut down an investigation of Burisma. In fact, no investigation was taking place, and like the EU, he was trying to get one started.
I notice that you simply ignore the points you can’t answer: specifically here, the damage done to a reputation by false public accusations, especially at the presidential level.
I would also remind you that these allegations HAVE been investigated, and diverse sources have found that there is nothing to do them.
If you want to damage someone’s reputation and you have no factual basis for doing so, your best strategy is to launch an accusation that sounds credible enough, loudly enough and then sit back and enjoy the fallout until your accusation is discredited. At that point you can start the process all over again with a new accusation. Republicans employed this strategy with great success against Hillary Clinton over a period of decades.
Second best — Republicans have low standards — is to repeat the same accusation and accuse the investigators of lacking credibility, usually by labeling them “liberal,” “socialist,” or even “treasonous.” After all, who would believe the exoneration of anyone if it came from a traitor?
The game plan is always the same: truth doesn’t matter; smears do.
With luck, sooner or later, the public starts to believe “If there’s smoke, there must be ….” Sure worked with Hillary.
Okay. Hunter Biden’s just ‘a spoiled jerk’. No crime in that, I guess.
“Okay. Hunter Biden’s just ‘a spoiled jerk’. No crime in that, I guess.”
You are correct. There is no crime in that.
There is, however, potential crime in a President withholding congressionally-mandated military aid to an ally (an ally militarily besieged by Russia), in order to force that ally to agree to publicly announce that it has launched an investigation into the Bidens — regardless whether or not it is actually investigating the Bidens.
That is immoral, corrupt behavior and an impeachable offense.
And so, of course, now we all know your assumptions too.
“If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.” Don Meredith
This sword clearly has two edges, which is why I anticipate the House vote for impeachment …and the Senate trial. But, again, the sooner the better. Due process has been a long time coming.
Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts
A bait and switch sales pitch by Democrats is becoming evident. Vice President Pence, long the victim of Democrat character assassination, was, this morning (11-22-19), eulogized by the left media on National Public Radio. It was classic propaganda.
As the impeachment of President Trump draws near, the Democrats recognize that Senate removal of Trump has consequences – specifically that Pence would become the 46th president of the United States. To make that prospect more palatable, the Democrats are now disguising their long-held contempt for Pence. Agathocles of Syracuse, and his follower, Machiavelli, would be proud of them.
“The word ‘tyrant’ today has become associated with cruel and merciless despots, but its original meaning was slightly different. The term originated in ancient Greece, and etymologically ‘tyrant’ was the technical term for a person who came to power by unconventional means and it did not infer an objectively good or bad ruler.” https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-fa…
Caveat emptor, citizens… Caveat emptor. The future of the American Republic is hanging in the balance.
Facts Matter:
1. In 2014 Burisma Holdings, a Ukranian energy company was under investigation by Ukranian authorities as well as British authorities for money laundering.
2. Hunter Biden was named to the Burisma board in April 2014, when his father was still in office, to 2019 but never visited the company for business.
3. Between April 2014 and November 2015. Burisma paid a total of $3.4 million to Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC, (a company controlled by Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer) both serving on the board.
4. Joe Biden boasted on camera that (while vice president in 2016) he threatened to withhold $1 billion in American aid fromUkraine unless president Petro Poroshenko didn’t fire the countrys top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin – who was investigating Burisma for corruption.
Biden has been in Washington 47-years but it’s Donald Trump who’s the real problem? A man who had never held elected office before 2016? I don’t buy it.
Washington, DC is infested with political lifers, hacks and insiders whose only existence is keeping the apparatus alive, Epstein didn’t kill himself and Joe Biden is a crook.
Facts matter? How about Ukrainian conspiracy theories pushed by Putin and readily absorbed by the Twin Idiots Guliani and Trump . . . Does that matter?
Calling something a conspiracy theory doesnt change the fact. Dont take my word for it, do your own research The New York Times, Politico, and The Hill – hardly conservative mouthpieces, all wrote about this as early as 2015. Its ironic that the left has no problem covering for crooks in their midst.
“pjgodmarv” claims that “Joe Biden boasted … that … he threatened to withhold $1 billion in American aid from Ukraine unless president Petro Poroshenko didn’t fire the countrys top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin – WHO WAS INVESTIGATING BURISMA FOR CORRUPTION.”
The first part of the sentence is correct; but the part I’ve emphasized is not. Actually, Biden threatened BECAUSE Shokin was NOT investigating, rather than the opposite.
Since “pjgodmarv” suggests that we “do your own research The New York Times,” I did just that. Here’s the Times: “A year later [2015], Viktor Shokin became Ukraine’s prosecutor general, a job similar to the attorney general in the United States. He vowed to keep investigating Burisma amid an international push to root out corruption in Ukraine.
But the investigation went dormant under Mr. Shokin. In the fall of 2015, Joe Biden joined the chorus of Western officials calling for Mr. Shokin’s ouster. The next March, Mr. Shokin was fired.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/busines…
Contrary to the Russian propaganda spin, Joe Biden’s actions look perfectly reasonable, moral, and in accordance with longstanding American and European policy: namely, demanding that Ukraine end its corruption. That’s why he “joined the chorus of Western officials” making the demand.
I have no interest in defending Hunter Biden. From what I’ve read so far, his actions do not seem to have been illegal, but they are clearly questionable at the very best. But Hunter Biden is not running for office and has not served in any. His actions surely do not rise to the level of even potentially justifying ANY change in relations between the US and Ukraine.