The Family Fortune Behind Elise Stefanik's Humble Origins Myth [View all]
From the start of her electoral career a decade ago, House GOP Conference Chairand potential 2024 vice presidential nomineeElise Stefanik has stressed her supposedly rough-cut origins, telling a story in which she saw firsthand the struggles of a scrappy family plywood business.
In a friendly Wall Street Journal profile in 2021, an opinion columnist for the paper contrasted her working class family with the supposedly snobbish ostracism Stefanik has faced from her alma mater, Harvard University, which removed her from a senior advisory committee for her efforts to overturn President Donald Trumps 2020 defeat. Stefanik noted that neither of her parents attended college.
Ill never forget what my dad told me the summer before my freshman year, Stefanik told writer William McGurn. He said, Elise, I cant tell you what to expect or whats going to happen because I never had this experience. I know you will do well and we will be proud of you. All I ask is that you remember where you came from.
But if Stefanik was supposed to remember where she came from, she seems to have forgottento the point of making blatantly misleading statements, beginning in her first congressional campaignhow her familys wealth has given her a leg up, from providing her with an expensive private-school education to her parents buying her a $1.2 million D.C. townhouse when she was just 26.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-family-fortune-behind-elise-stefaniks-humble-origins-myth?ref=wrap