New Hampshire GOP chairwoman Jennifer Horn is fighting off calls for her resignation after she violated the bylaws of her own state party by attacking GOP candidate Donald Trump.
WMUR, a local New Hampshire news outlet, first reported the calls for her resignation by GOP state Rep. Steve Stepanek of Amherst, New Hampshire.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or anyone else,” Stepanek said. “I’d still be calling for her resignation because she is violating the bylaw and hurting the Republican Party of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire primary.” He added:
Donald Trump has pledged publicly to support the Republican nominee, whoever that may be, and for Jennifer Horn as party chair to come out with such an obvious slanted and slanderous comment about the leading candidate in New Hampshire, who at this point is about 19 percentage points ahead of everyone – in fact, for her to criticize any candidate is totally unacceptable and should be considered grounds to call for resignation.
“Her actions jeopardize the primary process and the first-in-the-nation primary, if candidates believe the party chairperson is going to pick winners and losers,” he said. “Jennifer Horn is chairwoman of the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party. She should be criticizing Democrats, not her fellow Republicans and it’s time she figured that out.”
Stepanek’s call her resignation came after Horn attacked Trump’s candidacy, during a Wednesday interview with the Boston Globe,
“Shallow campaigns that depend on bombast and divisive rhetoric do not succeed in New Hampshire, and I don’t expect that they will now,” Horn told the Globe about the billionaire and frontrunner. “In New Hampshire, historically, the truth is, people really don’t make their final decisions until very, very close until Election Day,” she added, before also promoting several other GOP presidential candidates.
On Twitter, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski called Horn’s actions “everything that’s wrong with the GOP elite.”
“Another elitist who thinks they know better than tens of thousands that support Trump at events,” Lewandowski added in another Tweet.
WMUR’s report shows clearly how Horn violated the bylaws of the NH GOP by attacking Trump while propping up the candidacies of three establishment candidates—Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and his mentor, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, plus New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
“The bylaw in question forbids any officer of the state committee to ‘participate in any primary contest on behalf of any candidate for a Republican nomination.’ It goes on to say, ‘They shall remain strictly neutral in any such primary contest,’” WMUR wrote.
Horn has not answered repeated requests for comment from Breitbart News when pressed on how her attacks on Trump and her efforts to promote the specific candidacies of Rubio, Bush, and Christie do not amount to her abandoning neutrality. She has also ignored an email asking for a response to the calls for her resignation as state party chairwoman.
But Horn did tell WMUR she isn’t planning on resigning. “I think our bylaws are pretty clear,” she said. “I am not getting involved in a campaign or joining a campaign, and I won’t.”
She also doubled down on her comments against Trump’s candidacy for president. “As chairman of the party, I am certainly concerned whenever divisive rhetoric gets in the way of furthering the strong message of Republicanism,” she said. “It is a message that embraces everyone in the community and lifts up everyone in the community.”
Horn’s actions represent a new low by the party establishment, as it goes after Trump.
Former NH GOP chairman Fergus Cullen attempted to challenge Trump’s ballot eligibility, but failed almost instantly after his challenge was dismissed as ludicrous by authorities.
But a sitting GOP chair is supposed to be impartial, and this move by the GOP establishment is a significant step, where the tools of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and official New Hampshire party proper are now being used to damage the party’s frontrunner for president.
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