Republican leader who used slur pushed to resign, but won’t go quietly

Republicans have successfully pressured Delaware GOP official Chris Rowe into submitting his resignation on Thursday, after the New Castle County chairman wrote online that “f***ots cannot handle reality.” Yet, Rowe is still using his official title and using Facebook to speak out on the incident further.

Delaware Republican party chairwoman Jane Brady confirmed in a statement that she called Rowe on Wednesday and personally asked for his resignation. “His comment was offensive and did not reflect the values of respect and tolerance held dear by the Delaware Republican Party…ultimately, as a result, he lost the support of those he was to lead.”

Related: A human rights commissioner slurred LGBTQ people repeatedly & won’t be forced to resign

(Warning – Gay slurs and antisemitism follows.)

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Rowe was frustrated that YouTube kept removing videos he attempted to share from the recent shooting in a Texas church near Fort Worth, where two people were killed by a shooter before a security officer gunned him down. Videos of mass gun violence are against YouTube’s terms of submission, but Rowe took to Facebook to twist it as part of a political agenda by both websites.”

“F***ots cannot handle reality. Bad guy loses FB pisses themselves,” Rowe wrote in the comments section, according to screenshots provided by Blue Delaware, as reported by the Delaware News Journal. Rowe then posts a Breitbart link to the violent video to a person named ‘Greg’.

After his resignation was accepted on Thursday, Rowe claimed to The Associated Press that he made the decision “begrudgingly and only under duress” because he “serves at [Brady’s] pleasure,” and she made clear that he was no longer fit to serve.

Rowe then returned to Facebook, saying that he has nothing to apologize for – as the comment was “locker room talk” between him and Greg, who he claims is a lifelong friend of his. Rowe even went as far to say he was justified in using the term because he has “been using that word since before it ever meant what people are offended by today,” he wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post. “In this context I used it for it’s impact & it was between close friends. … It was locker room talk between 2 men,” he concluded.

Now, in subsequent posts, Rowe is still referring to himself as “Chairman, New Castle County Republican Committee” and is still the central topic of the organization’s Facebook page. He’s now promising ‘a video…in response to his use of one certain word’ and promoting an appearance on the radio coming this Monday. This is further upsetting his once-constituents, with one reader commenting, “A resignation does not need a video. Just a simple ‘I resign’….Reprehensible. Resign. Right-away.”

Republicans also hope that Nelly Jordan, the Vice Chairwoman of Sussex County, Delaware’s GOP chapter, will resign as well over anti-Semetic remarks reported in the same Blue Delaware screenshots. In several posts, Jordan made inflammatory claims about Jewish people that supported impeachment investigations against Donald Trump.

Jordan’s remarks, in part, read that Jewish people were “Jews In name only” if they supported the impeachment, and that they “have been enrolled to come and testify, to come and interrogate” by Democrats “to try to look credible to the people of this country.”

The tipster that bought the attention of the comments to the public claimed that he has been called “that f*g Jew” in public by other Republican officials in Sussex County as well.

In stark contrast to Rowe, Jordan has not publicly commented since these reports. As Jordan was elected to her position, she “would either have to resign on her own or go through a process that would remove her,” according to Brady and other GOP officials. This could happen “fairly quickly,” a party spokesman told the News Journal.

“In today’s hyper-political environment words are often used without much thought as to their actual meaning,” Sussex County Republican chairman Don Petitmermet said in a statement that CNN reports in their summation. “That said, we can and must do better.”

You can see the Delaware Republican Party’s full statement below.