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The New York Federation of College Republicans has withdrawn from the College Republican National Committee following an investigation into the CRNC and its chairman, Chandler Thornton.

The state branch plans on creating a new forum-based national college Republican organization to replace the current CRNC, the NYFCR stated in a July 13 report titled “CRNC Dossier.” 

The NYFCR published the document, which includes contributions from college Republicans nationwide, the report reads. In the document, the NYFCR alleged multiple instances of misappropriation of funds and violations of the organization’s bylaws by Thornton and other governing members of the organization.

Questions first arose in May from budget proposals for the 2018, 2020 and 2021 fiscal years, according to the report. While the CRNC’s budgets over three different years had allocated a total of more than $1 million towards digital advertising, “only $164 had verifiably been spent on digital ads during that timeframe,” the NYFCR said in its report, citing a screenshot of a Facebook Ad Library page for the CRNC showing $164 spent on ads about social issues, elections or politics from May 7, 2018 through July 5, 2021. 

Data from OpenSecrets based on records released by the IRS shows an expenditure of $369 for web ads by the CRNC in 2018, compared to the $275,000 allocated for digital advertising in the organization’s budget proposal for that year.

The NYFCR also alleges in the report that the CRNC stripped it and 10 other College Republicans state federations of their delegation in the CRNC election for the next chairperson by rejecting their credentials, which the report says helped rig the election for Amplify CRNC ticket candidate Courtney Britt, who was opposing Ignite CRNC ticket Judah Waxelbaum. As members of the CRNC, each chapter and state must submit credentials detailing their member numbers and names. In the report, the NYFCR also alleges that the CRNC applied a constitutional provision requiring university letters of certification from late submissions to federations that submitted their credentialing on time.

The CRNC and Thornton did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

The CRNC stated to the NYFCR that on multiple occasions its chapters have submitted incorrect numbers and names, said Dustin Hall, chairman of the College Republicans at Syracuse University. One of the parties named incorrectly submitting data was Syracuse University’s chapter of College Republicans.

“We provided an accurate number of members during the credentialing process,” Hall said. “We ended up giving names again during the second round audit, but we were again flagged as giving incorrect numbers.”

If the delegates of the 11 state federations are not reinstated and anti-corruption reform is not allowed in the organization, state federations will leave the CRNC, the NYFCR said in the report.  

The relationship between The College Republicans at Syracuse University and the NYFCR is stronger than ever, and there will likely be few to no changes on the local level going into this fall, Hall said. 

“Seeing the national committee like this, it made me think how unchecked can this organization go,” Hall said. “NYFCR needs to secede, but at the same time, we didn’t see support from the national organization. We’re looking into bringing a high-ranking GOP speaker this fall, which I think goes to show how credible our chapter really is here on campus.”

Published on July 24, 2021 at 5:52 pm

Contact Karoline: kaleonar@syr.edu