Langworthy Defeats Paladino in New York House Primary, Elise Stefanik Hardest Hit – Opinion

It wasn’t exactly a race that people outside of the 23rd District of New York were paying much attention to, but state GOP chair Nick Langworthy defeated Carl Paladino in a close primary on Tuesday night.

Langworthy is expected to work tirelessly in order to secure the seat against Max Della Pia (Democrat) in November’s general election. The district was where Donald Trump got 59 per cent of the vote in 2020. Paladino refused to concede but Elise Stefanik (House Republican Conference Chair) appears to be the greatest loser.

Paladino’s past has been filled with bizarre and even problematic statements. He admitted in June that he shared a conspiracy theory concerning recent mass shootings.

Earlier this month, prospective congressional candidate Carl Paladino both shared on Facebook and sent in an email blast a post that invokes “false flag” conspiracy theories in connection to recent mass shootings in his hometown of Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas.

“I didn’t write it but did carelessly republish it without clearly reading it,” Paladino texted late Wednesday morning.

That’s a departure from comments he made to other media outlets, telling both WIVB and The Buffalo News previously that he did not know how the post got on his Facebook page. Paladino seemed to have deactivated his account on Tuesday.

In a radio interview, he also said that America needed a leader capable of rousing audiences in the way Adolf Hitler did. These comments put him in front of major media outlets. While he didn’t praise Hitler’s actions directly, he did make an extremely poor point about Hitler’s effect on his audiences.

The other day, I thought about someone who had spoken on radio Adolf Hitler. He was known for his ability to excite the masses. And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just — they were hypnotized by him. That’s, I guess, I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. Someone who inspires. Someone who is determined, a leader and has done the hard work.

Stefanik is the problem, because she voted for Paladino even though she knew about these issues. According to POLITICO, both Paladino and Stefanik appear to be pursuing Langworthy’s ire.

The tiff between Stefanik and New York GOP party chair Nick Langworthy began escalating this year when Langworthy jumped to support Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) for his gubernatorial bid while she was weighing her own statewide run, multiple Republican officials familiar with the matter said in interviews.

It escalated from there after Langworthy nudged Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.) into retirement over his decision to support an assault weapons ban, two well-placed Republicans said. Stefanik enraged the chair by quickly endorsing Carl Paladino in the race to replace Jacobs — whose seat Langworthy is running for too.

Paladino left his watch party Tuesday night without talking to the media, and his campaign says they want answers about “statistical irregularities.”

“We want every single legal vote to count,” the campaign said in a statement.

Stefanik has congratulated several GOP candidates for last night’s primary wins on social media, but her Twitter account hasn’t mentioned anything about Langworthy’s win. The official GOP account praises Langworthy’s victory and also his leadership in New York.

In a state such as New York where every Republican win is important, the GOP must work to improve its unity. It is hoped that Langworthy will be reconnected with the third-most powerful Republican in Congress.

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