On Monday, Nick Langworthy was unanimously re-elected as chair of the state’s Republican Party. He was originally elected in July 2019. 

With the 2022 elections just over a year away, Langworthy acknowledged that the GOP has a lot of work to do to help end the party’s two-decade-long statewide election drought and cut into the Democratic supermajorities in the state Legislature.

“We are putting forward a common-sense agenda for the state of New York because one-party Democratic rule has absolutely destroyed the fabric of our state,” he said. “We’re going to make that case just like we’re trial lawyers going into an important case, and lay the facts out to voters all across the spectrum.”

Langworthy isn’t concerned by the results of a recent Siena poll which showed that nearly 70% of New Yorkers didn’t know or didn’t have an opinion about the party’s presumptive gubernatorial nominee, Rep. Lee Zeldin.

“This is why we started this process [early]. I didn’t fall into the same trap that so many of my predecessors did, which was you wait to recruit your candidate for governor until the year that they’re running,” Langworthy said. “We started to screen our candidates back in April.”

Another challenge for Republicans? New York state is in the middle of a redistricting process that could end up benefitting Democrats. When asked if it might be time for the party to move toward the center of the political spectrum, Langworthy indicated that the party is already there.

“We have core values. We talk about personal responsibility, lower taxes, creating an affordable New York, a place where families can stay and stay together. We believe in the constitution.  We believe in the rule of law. We support police. Those are the values of the Republican Party in this state.  We are going put candidates forward that support those values,” Langworthy explained.  “We are going to have an agenda and a platform that people of all party affiliations can comfortably support.”