Elise Stefanik poised to replace Liz Cheney as Republicans split over Donald Trump’s election lie

Cheney, the House Republican conference chair, has refused to endorse Trump’s claim that election fraud caused his 2020 defeat

Stefanik, on the other hand, has demonstrated her loyalty to Trump, underlining the influence the former president wields over the party

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Published: 10:52am, 9 May 2021Updated: 8:31pm, 9 May 2021

US politician Elise Stefanik began her Washington career as a moderate, but has changed tack and surged in influence to likely become the most powerful Republican woman in Congress – a trajectory she owes entirely to her staunch defence of Donald Trump.

Stefanik, just 36 and in Congress for six years, is aiming to oust principled conservative Liz Cheney as House Republican conference chair, a dramatic change of course that concedes the extraordinary shift that is shaping the party’s future around the defeated president.

Political scion Cheney, daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, is on the verge of being punished for refusing to buy into what she calls Trump’s “BIG LIE” that election fraud caused his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden.

The Wyoming conservative’s adherence to election truth appears to be apostasy in Trump’s remade Republican Party, and its members are expected to vote her out of her number three leadership post as early as Wednesday during a scheduled meeting.

Their argument: the party requires solidarity rather than Cheney’s persistent public denunciations of Trump as it seeks to win back the House and Senate majorities in next year’s midterm elections.

Stefanik, a Harvard graduate representing an upstate New York district, has stressed party unity and her unstinting loyalty to Trump as she campaigns for the powerful role.

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