Reeling New York Republicans are calling for longtime state party Chairman Ed Cox to step aside after Democrats’ sweeping Election Day victories, while some party insiders are floating outgoing Rep. Mike Lawler as a possible successor.
Cox is under mounting pressure after Tuesday’s Democratic wave across the Empire State. Lawler’s name has emerged as a potential replacement just days after he lost his own bid for reelection.
“I think a lot of people really want Ed Cox’s head,” one New York GOP insider told The Post on Thursday, two days after Democrats routed Republicans across the state.
“People have been complaining about Ed Cox for a while now,” said another source. “There’s already movement behind the scenes among conservatives to get rid of him.”
Cox, 80, has led New York Republicans for much of the past two decades. During that period, Democrats have maintained their dominance while the GOP has secured few statewide victories. That decline was underscored Tuesday when Gov. Kathy Hochul defeated Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman by 20 percentage points, well short of the six-point margin Lee Zeldin achieved in 2022.
The calls for Cox’s removal were more than backstage speculation. Anthony Constantino, one of the few Republicans to win on Tuesday, demanded that Cox be ousted just hours after his own election victory in District 21.
“I am with the people and insist we rebuild the Party. Fire Ed Cox!” Constantino wrote in a 3 a.m. post on X Wednesday, describing the state Republican establishment as “a group of scammers.”
“In NYS, the Republican Party is mostly a Con Job that helps Democrats win,” Constantino added.
Outgoing Rep. Elise Stefanik, who had been viewed as a potential challenger to Gov. Hochul until President Trump declined to endorse her in 2025, also suggested that a leadership revolt could be taking shape. On Wednesday, she said the state party “needs to be built from scratch” and requires “significant change in structure and leadership.”
The push to remove Cox follows years of frustration among New York Republicans, who have not won a statewide office since Republican Gov. George Pataki left office in 2006.
Democrats have controlled the state Legislature for decades and have held the state Senate since 2018. Statewide positions, including comptroller and attorney general, have also gone to Democrats in recent years.
Cox has chaired the party through nearly all of that decline in deeply blue New York. He led the organization from 2009 to 2019 before returning to the post in 2023.
His tenure, which coincided with the rise of the MAGA movement, has also been marked by internal battles. Cox declined to endorse Trump until after he won the Republican presidential primary in 2016 and again resisted endorsing him in 2024.
Tuesday’s Republican defeat across New York — part of a broader national result in which Democrats retook Congress and the Senate and flipped five governors’ seats — could ultimately prove to be the breaking point for Cox.
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Talk of replacing Cox has intensified with Lawler set to leave office in January after losing his District 17 seat to Democrat Cait Conley. Some Republican insiders believe the 40-year-old rising star could be the party’s next chairman if he chooses to pursue the position.
Lawler’s supporters point to his high-profile tenure representing a competitive district since 2023, his previous leadership as Rockland County GOP chairman and his experience as executive director of the state Republican Party.
Stefanik said Lawler “would be absolutely fantastic” as state party chairman, although she acknowledged that she did not know whether he was interested in the job.
Cox, for his part, has made clear that he has no plans to leave.
“No. I’m not stepping down,” Cox said when asked about the calls for his ouster. “We have a lot of work to do. We got a lot of talent in the party.”
New York businessman and prominent Republican John Catsimatidis — whose son was previously married to Cox’s daughter — urged Republicans not to overreact or rush to assign blame.
“It’s nonsense to panic. We have to bring everybody together,” Catsimatidis said. “Everybody is looking for a scapegoat. Ed Cox is the biggest fundraiser the New York Republican Party has ever had. Does he need some other people to help in operations? Maybe so.”
Still, party insiders said Cox might not have the final say. They argued that he could be forced to resign if a prominent Republican such as Lawler openly sought the chairmanship.
“If Mike declared tomorrow and called on Ed to resign, I think he would have the support of 50% of the chairs, easily,” one insider said. The source added that Erie County GOP Chairman Michael Kracker and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of District 11, who held on to her Staten Island seat Tuesday, were also being discussed as potential replacements.
Lawler, meanwhile, was spending the days after Election Day with his family and decompressing. Sources close to him said he was unlikely to make any immediate or aggressive moves.
Those sources said Lawler would probably do what was best for his family at this stage of his career. They also noted that he and Cox had maintained a good relationship dating back to Lawler’s time working for the state party.
New York’s Republican Committee selects the state party chairman and is not scheduled to vote on new leadership until September 2027. Cox could nevertheless be pressured to resign earlier if he loses broad support among the committee’s members.
Kracker stopped short of calling for Cox’s resignation but acknowledged that the election results showed New York Republicans needed to conduct some “soul searching.”
“I think we need to probably have some leadership bring us to a table as a party and say, let’s do some soul searching here,” Kracker said. “I for one am not going to be somebody who’s in favor of an open war between different factions.”
