Alice Stewart, CNN political commentator, dies at 58

Alice Stewart, Republican strategist and CNN political commentator, has died. She was 58 years old.

His death was announced by CNN. The company said police found Ms. Stewart’s body outside in northern Virginia early Saturday morning. Authorities believe she was having a medical emergency.

Mark Thompson, CNN’s chief executive, described her in an email to staffers as “a veteran politician and Emmy Award-winning journalist who has brought an incomparable spark to CNN’s coverage.”

Ms. Stewart had appeared on the cable news channel as a conservative commentator since the 2016 presidential race. Before that, she worked on several Republican presidential campaigns.

She served as communications director for the 2008 presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, and later served in similar roles for Republican candidates in two subsequent elections, including those of Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz.

Ms. Stewart served as Deputy Secretary of State of Arkansas and was a 2020 Fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. She also worked for the Republican Party and conservative organizations.

At CNN, Ms. Stewart saw herself as a stalwart promoter of conservatism as the Republican Party reshaped itself under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump.

“I don’t think everything he does is great, and I don’t think everything he does is bad,” Ms. Stewart said of Mr. Trump in a 2020 Harvard interview. Political Review. “My position at CNN is to be a conservative voice while also being an independent thinker.”

In an opinion piece published on CNN last year, Ms. Stewart asked Republican voters to reconsider their unconditional support for Mr. Trump’s candidacy in the 2024 election, given the various criminal charges he faces. .

“This is a campaign of self-preservation, not altruistic public service,” she wrote. “I’m not convinced that this is how we can make America great again.”

Before moving into politics in 2005 with a job as press secretary in Mr. Huckabee’s administration, Ms. Stewart was a news anchor and reporter for seven years at an NBC television affiliate in Little Rock, Ark.

“I loved covering politics. I loved the courts. I loved the latest news,” Ms. Stewart said in a 2020 interview with the Harvard International Review. “But several years ago I realized maybe I had something different to do.”

She was born March 11, 1966, in Atlanta and earned a degree in broadcast news and political science from the University of Georgia.

Ms. Stewart last appeared on CNN Friday on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”

Information on his survivors was not immediately available.