New York’s top Republicans voted Friday to close the state’s Young Republicans chapter after the group’s leaders sent racist and antisemitic messages in a group chat that leaked to the press.
Republican State Committee Chairman Ed Cox sent a letter to the National Federation of Young Republicans to say the Empire State’s organization is suspended. The group has nearly $40,000 in debt, according to campaign finance disclosures.
"The Young Republicans was already grossly mismanaged, and vile language of the sort made in the group chat has no place in our party or its subsidiary organizations,” Cox said in a statement.
The move signals Republicans in New York — in contrast to some national figures like Vice President JD Vance —want to distance themselves from offensive rhetoric that has become increasingly common in the party’s far-right circles. The GOP hasn’t held statewide office in New York since 2006, and lost control of the state Senate in 2019.
But Republicans feel bullish that President Donald Trump has brought new voters into the party in his one-time home state, even though he easily lost New York in his three presidential campaigns.
Party strategists know they will also need votes from moderate and independent voters for whom the violent, racist and misogynistic comments in the chat are off-putting.
“At a time when good, honest Republicans are trying to fight all these brand issues, people talking like that is bad for many reasons,” Chapin Fay, a veteran GOP consultant in New York, said. “New York Republicans are a different breed from national Republicans or Republicans from other places. You can’t win here by playing those kinds of identity politics.”
The chat, first reported Tuesday by Politico, involved people from New York, Vermont, Kansas and Arizona and was started by former New York State Young Republicans Chair Peter Giunta to support his bid to lead the national organization.
He made racist comments in which he compared Black people to monkeys. Giunta also made apparently joking references to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust in multiple messages.
In a statement, Giunta apologized, saying the messages were leaked by a political rival and he couldn’t verify their accuracy. He lost his job working for state Assemblymember Mike Reilly, a Republican from Staten Island.
Democrats said the messages are horrific and faulted Vance and other Republicans who didn’t immediately denounce them. Gov. Kathy Hochul pointed to U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of the North Country, who is considering a gubernatorial campaign next year.
“This is sickening at every level,” Hochul said Thursday on MSNBC. “It is vile and I'm just shocked that people don't have the courage to just say, ‘It's wrong and it should never happen again.’”
Stefanik condemned the comments and called for the New Yorkers in the group chat to step down. In responding to Hochul, the congressmember pointed to Jay Jones, a Democrat running for attorney general in Virginia, who sent text messages fantasizing about the death of a political opponent. Hochul said on MSNBC that Jones’ rhetoric was abhorrent.
Broome County Republican Chairman Benji Federman said the vote to disband the state’s Young Republicans was unanimous.
“What we heard from the Politico story in those chats was despicable. And so that was an easy decision to make,” Federman said. “We just need to move on.”
