UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The Republican Party’s New York City headquarters was vandalized early Friday morning, and party leaders are calling the act “political violence.”
Vandals broke several windows of the Metropolitan Republican Club on East 83rd Street near Lexington Avenue and spray painted a symbol associated with anarchism on the club’s doors. Ed Cox, the chairman of the New York Republican State Committee, told reporters that the police have launched an investigation into the vandalism.
“This is an act of political violence done by cowards in the middle of the night,” Cox said Friday. “There’s no doubt what they came here to do in respect to our headquarters.”
The vandals left behind a note that reads: “Our attack is merely a beginning. We are not passive, we are not civil, and we will not apologize.”
Cox tied the vandalism and the language in the note to a recent interview given by 2016 Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton. Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that Democrats “cannot be civil with” the Republican Party because it “wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” Cox called on leaders of New York’s Democratic Party such as Andrew Cuomo, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to condemn the act of vandalism.
“This kind of violence leads to violence against individuals,” Cox said Friday.
The state Democratic committee condemned the vandalism in a statement that also criticized Cox’s rhetoric linking the vandalism to Democrat officials.
“New York Democrats have zero tolerance for violence in our political system and condemn this latest act of vandalism. This type of divisiveness is repugnant to everything we believe as New Yorkers. That being said, Ed Cox and Marc Molinaro’s rhetoric on this is wildly inappropriate. We need less hate and division – not more,” New York State Democratic Committee Executive Director Geoff Berman said.
The note left behind by the vandals refers to Democrats as the “spineless partners-in-crime” of the Republican Party. The note also appears to refer to an event being held at the Metropolitan Republican Club on Friday night. The club will host Gavin McInnes — founder of the self-described “western chauvinist” group the Proud Boys — as a speaker on Friday.
“The Metropolitan Republican Club chose to invite a hipster-facist clown to dance for them,” the vandals’ note reads.
Andrea Catsimatidis chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican party and daughter of billionaire John Catsimatidis noted that the Metropolitan Republican Club is a historic building and an Upper East Side “institution.”
“This is not just an a political party, but also a attack on this neighborhood,” Catsimatidis said. “And as the not said, this is just the beginning, they’re going to come back and we need to keep our neighborhood safe.”
Photos by Brendan Krisel/Patch