Stefanik wins three-way Congressional race

PHOTOGRAPHER: The Associated Press

Elise Stefanik celebrates her win in the 21st Congressional district on election night at the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls, N.Y., on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014.

The voters of the 21st Congressional District on Tuesday elected Elise Stefanik, who will become the youngest woman to ever serve in Congress.

The 30-year-old Republican handily defeated Democrat Aaron Woolf in the race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Bill Owens, D-Plattsburgh. Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello of Glens Falls finished a distant third.

“We put another crack in the glass ceiling,” Stefanik told cheering supporters at the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls.

Stefanik, a politically conservative former domestic policy aide in the George W. Bush White House, moved to a family home in Willsboro last year and announced plans to run for Congress even before Owens’ unexpected decision to retire last January. She campaigned on a platform calling for lower taxes and a smaller role for government.

Woolf, a documentary filmmaker and part owner of a Brooklyn grocery, campaigned on traditional Democratic issues including preservation of Social Security and raising taxes to support the program.

The 21st Congressional District, where Republicans have a significant voter enrollment advantage, stretches from central Saratoga County and Fulton County to the Canadian border.