Photo: Youtube
They are both in Republican politics.
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Aug 21, 2020
The schedule of speakers for the Republican National Convention is slowly taking shape. One of the headliners for the week will be Representative Elise Stefanik, a longtime GOP operative and current Member of Congress from the upstate New York area. This is will be a big national platform for the three-term Representative and her husband Matt Manda will be by her side to cheer her on.
Who is Elise Stefanik's husband, Matt Manda?
Stefanik and Manda have been married since 2017 after years of dating before that. They were both working in politics when they met at a party in 2012 and they have been together ever since. These days, he is in online media instead of working on Capitol Hill but he's a major supporter of his wife and her promising career in politics. She is considered a rising star in the party and is well-known for defending Donald Trump during numerous contentious hearings, including the impeachment proceedings in 2019 related to Trump's wrongdoing with respect to Ukraine.
Who is Matt Manda? He's originally a Midwesterner.
Manda is from Lawrence, Kansas where his father was a dentist. He stayed in town for college, attending the University of Kansas. He is 37 years old and these days he splits his time between the Washington, DC area, where he works, and his wife's Congressional district in New York State. He still identifies strongly with his Kansas roots, especially the local BBQ traditions but he has embraced the culture in his new home state as well. His wife told reporters that he loves "BBQ, music, KU basketball, the Adirondacks, and craft beer.”
Manda loves BBQ and enjoys judging BBQ contests.
Matt Manda got into politics a decade ago.
In 2010, Manda started working for as the political director for Republican Senator Jerry Moran's re-election campaign. By 2012, he had moved over to the House side of Capitol Hill where he was the communications director for Kevin Yoder, a freshman Congressman from Kansas. At the same time, Stefanik was working with Representative Paul Ryan, who was on the ticket as the Vice Presidential nominee alongside Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney so they had a lot of mutual connections before they met.
He helped manage a very strange political scandal.
In the fishbowl world of Washington politics, there are a lot of opportunities for elected officials to get caught making mistakes. Manda's one-time boss Kevin Yoder got caught up in one instance like that. In 2012, Yoder, along with a lot of other Representatives and some of their staff, was on an official trip to Israel and decided to go skinny dipping in the Dead Sea. The group claimed they were moved by visiting the site where Jesus was alleged to have walked on water and decided to immerse themselves as a show of faith. However, it all just became a show of bad judgment when the press got wind of it. Manda had to deflect questions about it at a town hall in Kansas a few weeks later.
How did Elise Stefanik and Matt Manda meet?
The couple tries to keep their relationship out of the headlines but Stefanik did tell reporters that they met at a party. Back in 2012, she was having people over and a mutual friend brought Manda to the soiree. They hit it off and started dating not long after that. They were together for nearly five years before he popped the question. He took her on a getaway to Lake Placid, New York, which was the first place she ever took him in New York state.
When he went to give her the ring, she discovered that he had made extra sure it wouldn't get lost; he had tied it into the box using dental floss. Stefanik appreciated how the dental floss security string was kind of a nod to her future father-in-law. "Matt’s dad is a dentist, and he didn’t want the ring to slip and drop it and lose it!” she recalled. They got married in 2017 in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Manda and Stefanik at their wedding.
What does Matt Manda do for a living.
Like a lot of one-time Capitol Hill staff, Manda turned his experience in politics into a career in private industry. He left the Hill after his boss lost his election to Democrat Sharice Davids in 2018. He currently works at Media Group of American, a digital media company that consults on political campaigns as well as publishing the Independent Review Journal, a news aggregator site.
What's next for Elise Stefanik and Matt Manda?
The Manda-Stefaniks don't talk a lot about the ins and outs of their relationship. While they both happily share photos of places they have visited together and make no secret of their happy marriage, they haven't shared what their plans for the future are.
The couple in Florence Italy.
Stefanik is scheduled to speak during the prime time broadcast of the GOP convention next week but the exact date and time have not been announced.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.