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 facing mounting pressure after Tuesday’s blue wave moved across the Empire State. Lawler’s name has emerged as a potential replacement just days after he lost his own reelection bid.
“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 dealt Republicans decisive defeats 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 the New York Republican Party for much of the past two decades. During that time, Democrats have maintained their dominance while Republicans have posted few statewide victories. That trend continued Tuesday, when Gov. Kathy Hochul defeated GOP challenger Bruce Blakeman by 20 percentage points — well beyond the six-point margin Lee Zeldin secured in 2002.
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.
“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. He also described 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 — once viewed as a potential challenger to Gov. Kathy Hochul before President Trump declined to endorse her in 2025 — also appeared to signal that a rebellion against Cox may be gathering steam. 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 offices 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 served from 2009 to 2019 before returning to the post in 2023.
His tenure, which unfolded alongside the rise of the MAGA movement, has also been marked by internal divisions. Cox declined to endorse President Trump until he won the Republican primary in 2016 and again resisted endorsing him in 2024.
Tuesday’s Republican losses across New York — part of a broader national result in which Democrats retook Congress and the Senate and flipped five governorships — 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 race to Democrat Cait Conley. Some GOP insiders say the 40-year-old rising star could become the party’s next chairman if he wanted the position.
Lawler’s supporters point to his high-profile tenure representing a competitive district since 2023, his previous role as Rockland County GOP chairman and his experience as executive director of the state Republican Party.
Stefanik said Lawler “would be absolutely fantastic” as party chairman, although she acknowledged that she did not know whether he was interested.
Cox, for his part, has firmly rejected speculation that he 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 party members not to rush into a leadership fight.
“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 may not be able to withstand the pressure 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 onto her Staten Island seat Tuesday, were also being discussed as possible replacements.
Lawler, meanwhile, was spending the days after Election Day decompressing with his family and was unlikely to make any immediate, aggressive move, according to sources close to him.
Those sources said Lawler would likely do whatever was best for his family at this stage of his career. They also noted that he and Cox have maintained a good relationship dating back to Lawler’s time working for the state party.
New York’s Republican Committee chooses the party chairman and is not scheduled to vote on new leadership until September 2007. Cox could nevertheless be forced to resign if he loses broad support among committee members.
Kracker stopped short of calling for Cox’s resignation but acknowledged that the election results showed local Republicans needed to engage in some “soul searching.”
“I think we probably need some leadership to 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.”