Burned in the Midterms, Calls To Overthrow New York Republican Leadership Gain Steam

Punishment for Empire State Republicans started early on Tuesday, with Governor Kathleen Hochul’s win confirmed shortly after the polls closed at 9 p.m. Her opponent, the Trump-backed Nassau County executive, Bruce Blakeman, didn’t even eke out a win on his Long Island home turf.In the race for control of the U.S. House of Representatives, four incumbent New York Republicans managed to hang on to their seats, though not Representative Mike Lawler. None of the survivors secured margins anywhere near incoming Democratic Socialists Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, or their role model, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who each bested their opponents by 50 points or more.The lone success story was brash newcomer Anthony Constantino, a sticker entrepreneur and Republican organizer whose victory speech — offered before his opponent had conceded or the count was final — sounded more like an obscenity-laden WWE pre-match press conference than political oratory. He began by repeatedly denouncing the media that covered his race before calling on security to escort two journalists out of the event as the crowd chanted “Kick him out! Kick him out!” He went on to urge employers nationwide to give their employees $1,000 bonuses and advised President Donald Trump to “consider freeing Diddy.”But Congressman-elect Constantino wasn’t done after he stepped away from the mic. He took to social media just before 3:30 am to rage at Republican leadership from his district abutting Canada and Vermont to the state level.“NY-21 Republican Chairs are objectively a group of scammers,” he declared, accusing the GOP of undermining him in the primary and “behind the scenes” during the general election while his opponent enjoyed the support of “Evil Media and the Democrat Machine.” “In NYS, the Republican Party is mostly a Con Job that helps Democrats win,”he continued, accusing Mr. Blakeman of working to win over the party but not voters. He went on to denounce the chair of the Republican State Committee. “I am with the people and insist we rebuild the Party. Fire Ed Cox!”Leaders for the state committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The New York Sun on Wednesday. Mr. Cox’s leadership also came under fire while early voting was underway last week, when sometimes-trillionaire Elon Musk wrote that New York Republicans “aren’t even trying” in response to a lament from his mother, who was dismayed to find no GOP judicial candidates on her Manhattan ballot.Manhattan GOP chair Andrea Catsimatidis, daughter of billionaire John Catsimatidis, refuted Mr. Musk’s assertion a response on X and in a statement to The Sun last week, arguing that she put time, effort and her own funds into developing Republican candidates, but former candidates said on social media and told The Sun their experience was closer to what Mr. Constantino described.“A stronger, better funded Manhattan County GOP could have made a meaningful difference in my race,” former state senate candidate Alina Bonsell told The Sun hours after conceding. “I appreciated the assistance getting on the ballot, but beyond that, my campaign received no financial support or coordinated campaign operation.” “Unfortunately, I also received no support or coordination from the state GOP. Those of us running for Senate, Assembly and Congress were directed to the county GOP for campaign assistance and largely left to build and run our own independent races,” she continued.Former New York Congressman Marc Molinaro similarly implied that the state’s GOP leadership has set itself to autopilot, calling its strategy “wholly inadequate,” in a post on X. “The same press conferences on the same steps, complaining about the same things, won’t produce a different result,” he wrote, calling on the party to “reach beyond the people who already agree with us, and give New Yorkers something clear and credible to believe in. That takes showing up, doing the work, and staying engaged. It requires we hold ourselves accountable and do the work the people expect.”While Mr. Constantino’s delivery differs significantly from Mr. Molinaro’s, he is part of an organization that aims to do that, and build the kind of granular political organizing that has gotten New York voters invested in the DSA. He leads the New York arm of Republicans for National Renewal, which promotes a vision for the party “in line with the spirit of the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign,” according to its website. The organization aims to galvanize conservative voters through its We the Precinct initiative, “encouraging populists, right-wingers, hardcore conservatives, and unabashed America First patriots to sign up as leaders on precinct level,” noting that “this is how the Left gained, through community organizing” backed by “major institutional power.”Perhaps an aversion to big government and bureaucracy has stunted New York Republican organizing compared to the burgeoning NYC-DSA with its multitudinous factions, borough branches, convention delegates, working groups, and campus-level youth chapters.But the problem is not a lack of willingness from young adults on the right to organize, according New York Young Republican Club president Stefano L. Forte, but rather that Mr. Cox’s team “blackballed” its biggest grassroots organization during the election cycle. Mr. Forte alluded to “bad jacketing” of Young Republicans who came out against the Iran War in a series of X posts Wednesday. The club also faced a scandal after its treasurer was reported to have expressed Nazi sympathies.By walking away from the group, GOP leadership “robbed themselves (and the candidates that they forced to stay away from us) of our massive 50+ person door-to-door deployments, weekly phone banking, and an enthusiastic membership of almost 2,000 Republicans whose support, youth, and enthusiasm they should’ve been vying for. We’re the life of the party, in every sense of the word,” Mr. Forte wrote.But along with the Young Republicans and Republicans for National Renewal’s bids to attract hard-right conservatives, other efforts to reinvigorate the party are also taking shape in New York. Manhattan Institute Cities and AI policy fellow Daniel Golliher launched Maximum Republicans in October. The project is an offshoot of his municipal civic education initiative Maximum New York, which offers crash courses in NYC governance to anyone interested enough to learn, including, he says, incoming members of government who don’t know the basics.Maximum Republicans’ priorities, according to Mr. Golliher’s essay announcing the political club, include refocusing on local issues, which the organization regards as “severely neglected relative to their high impact on every area of life we care about,” and emphasizing economic growth, opportunity, and infrastructure over MAGA talking points and culture wars.“To put a firm point on it,” Golliher wrote: “it doesn’t matter how socially welcoming a state is if no one can afford to live there.”

Burned in the Midterms, Calls To Overthrow New York Republican Leadership Gain Steam

Burned in the Midterms, Calls To Overthrow New York Republican Leadership Gain Steam

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