ND GOP executive director resigns a week after taking the job

[Edge-]

https://archive.ph/VdT8E

On Friday of last week, I reported that newly hired North Dakota Republican Party Executive Director David Roetman had made many bigoted and misogynistic posts on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Today, I can report that the NDGOP no longer employs Roetman. His tenure at the party lasted just a bit more than a week.

Asked to confirm if Roetman was no longer employed by the party, NDGOP Chair Sandi Sanford said, via text message, "That is true."

She did not immediately reply to follow-up inquiries. However, members of the NDGOP's executive committee shared a statement with me sent out by party leadership indicating that Roetman had resigned.

“I believe that the best path forward for the NDGOP is for me to take a different path,” Roetman said in the resignation letter. “I wish them all the best.”



Roetman made dozens and dozens of ignorant social media posts, ranging from caddish digital gawking at women in various states of undress to jokes about women making sandwiches to a bigoted suggestion that Black Americans leave the country and move to Wakanda.

Roetman has been completely unapologetic about the posts. "I am a man who stands by his words," he told me in response to an inquiry for the original story about them. Since my story published, he also made multiple posts mocking the controversy and liked another social media post suggesting it was a woman's role to stay at home and care for children while men "provide and protect."

Roetman's hire was announced on Oct. 23.

The controversy over his hire came shortly after North Dakota Republicans chose to delete their code of conduct at a recent meeting of the party's state committee.

He replaced, as executive director, Samantha Holly, a widely respected young Republican who abruptly resigned from the party after clashing with Sanford, a self-described "culture warrior" and book ban proponent who was elected to that position earlier this year.

More links in the archive link, as the article is otherwise normally paywalled.

This seems to continue a national pattern of some fairly gross, extremist Republicans being elevated at the state level. Thankfully it seems this gross person was out of the job quickly, even if the NDGOP continues to have no publicly available code of conduct for their membership following the former executive director's departure of the creeping extremism.

Hopefully the NDGOP can stave off a total takeover as the Michigan GOP has seen, as last I checked up on those cats their state party apparatus was fairly broke and one of their members was being booked on charges for physically assaulting another.

[Egomaniac]

https://archive.ph/VdT8E



More links in the archive link, as the article is otherwise normally paywalled.

This seems to continue a national pattern of some fairly gross, extremist Republicans being elevated at the state level. Thankfully it seems this gross person was out of the job quickly, even if the NDGOP continues to have no publicly available code of conduct for their membership following the former executive director's departure of the creeping extremism.

Hopefully the NDGOP can stave off a total takeover as the Michigan GOP has seen, as last I checked up on those cats their state party apparatus was fairly broke and one of their members was being booked on charges for physically assaulting another.

He went full Scaramucci

You never go full Scaramucci

[Breccia]

His name was Rot-man? Jeez, the jokes write themselves. The racist, sexist jokes.

[some guy]

As a resident of ND, I am surprised that this was enough to drive him out. This kind of conduct is normal for many of them. As that article linked, they did vote to eliminate their code of conduct.