U. S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, supports President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard soldiers to Washington, D.C.
“Imagine how safe our streets would be if Donald J. Trump sent the National Guard to New York,” Stefanik posted on Facebook on Aug. 26, responding to a report that no murders had been reported in Washington D.C. over the previous ten days, under federal control of the city’s police department.
Meanwhile, Stefanik is attempting to pressure officials in the nation’s capital city to end a four-decade-long Sister City relationship with Beijing, China.
Stefanik is an original cosponsor of legislation introduced July 17 to prohibit entering new or continuing existing sister city agreements between U.S. cities and “any jurisdiction located in a foreign adversary country,” including North Korea, Russia, The People’s Republic of China and Iran.
The legislation is broad in language, but its “primary focus” is ending the Sister City relationship between Washington and Beijing, according to its sponsors.
U. S. cities which violate the proposed law would risk losing certain federal funding.
“The Chinese Communist Party has weaponized so-called ‘sister city’ partnerships to advance their malign disinformation campaign in Washington, providing China with a pathway to spy on our government and expand their disinformation campaign,” Stefanik said in a news release.
Sister city programs offer cultural, educational and health care exchanges, and sometimes joint technology and economic development initiatives, with a goal of expanding global understanding and peace.
President Dwight Eisenhower, who was instrumental in founding Sister Cities International in 1956, said the concept was a way to prevent wars.
“If we are going to take advantage of the assumption that all people want peace, then the problem is for people to get together, to leap governments, if necessary, evade governments, to work out not one but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little bit more of each other,” Eisenhower said in a White House speech on Sept. 11, 1956.
Sponsors of the proposed legislation say that China violates the purpose of sister city relationships by managing its program through The United Front Works Department, the propaganda and spy arm of the communist government.
“Among all countries with which Washington, D.C. has sister city partnerships, China is uniquely marked by worsening human rights conditions, making this relationship particularly troubling,” said Rep. John Moolenar, R-MI, the main sponsor.
Washington, D.C. and Bejing entered its sister city agreement in 1984 and renewed it in 2015.
The legislation – HR 4519 – had eight cosponsors, as of Sept. 8.
Stefanik is the only cosponsor from New York.
Blake Gendebien, one of two candidates seeking the Democratic nomination in the 21st Congressional District next year, said it would be more productive to focus on ways to address Chinese trade issues.
Gendebien, a farmer from Lisbon, in St. Lawrence County, said he is skeptical of the proposed legislation, but would need to review its details before taking a definitive stance,
“I do not want to focus on symbolic legislation,” he said, in a recent telephone interview.
Dylan Hewitt, the candidate seeking the Democratic nomination, would not take a position on the proposed legislation.
“I haven’t read every item and every piece of every legislation that Elise Stefanik has drafted,” said Hewitt, a former White House trade adviser from South Glens Falls, said in a recent telephone interview.
“I know that Elise Stefanik likes to go on television and talk about things, but doesn’t seem to show up in the district,” he said.
Stefanik, in her sixth term in the House, has been laying groundwork to run for governor next year, but has said she will not make a decision on whether to run until after this year’s county and local elections in November.
The Stefanik campaign, in a recent news release, said Gendebien “is a disastrous candidate who was handpicked by party bosses” and criticized Hewitt’s political ties to former President Joe Biden and U.S. Sec. of state Hillary Clinton.