Young Republican National Federation (YRNF) Chairman Jason Weingartner made clear Texas-based Southern Regional Vice Chair Luke Niles does not speak for the greater organization, calling his comments “unhelpful” to the organization’s national mission.
“Those tweets were Mr. Niles’ personal opinion and were not reflective in any way, shape or form of the YRNF or, quite frankly, how we operate.”
Weingartner touted YRNF’s abilities to co-organize with grassroots, many tea party, in Virginia and Colorado.
“We’ve heard nothing but positive feedback,” from campaigns and local causes when sending deployments–Weingartner argued.
The next YRNF meeting at the end of April will address the ongoing issue of elected leadership causing PR trouble due to rhetoric on personal social media accounts.
“Everyone is entitled to freedom of speech but when you are elected to serve an organization, there needs to be an understanding that if you’re ‘speaking for yourself’ it can reflect poorly upon the organization as a whole and that’s unhelpful when we try to build relationships with tea party groups.”
The issue of Mr. Niles’ rhetoric was originally reported this morning when he claimed grassroots tea party activists were “senile angry people mad at everything.” Niles added that such activists were bullies which the GOP must stand up to.
Chairman Weingartner took to Twitter this morning for some immediate damage control.
The Young Republican National Federation is a 527 political organization–preventing them from direct coordination with candidates or candidate committees. Such entities are broadly labeled super PACs and must produce publicly-viewable copies of IRS 990 forms, with some exceptions.
Follow Logan Churchwell on Twitter @LCChurchwell
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