It wasn’t exactly a race that people outside of the 23rd District of New York were paying much attention to, but state GOP chair Nick Langworthy defeated Carl Paladino in a close primary on Tuesday night.

Langworthy will be working hard to win the seat in the general election against Democrat Max Della Pia in November,in a district where Donald Trump received 59 percent of the vote in 2020. But while Paladino refuses to concede, the biggest loser of the night appears to be House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.

Paladino has a history of strange and frankly problematic statements. Back in June, he admitted to sharing a conspiracy theory about recent mass shootings.

Earlier this month, prospective congressional candidate Carl Paladino both shared on Facebook and sent in an email blast a post that invokes “false flag” conspiracy theories in connection to recent mass shootings in his hometown of Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas.

“I didn’t write it but did carelessly republish it without clearly reading it,” Paladino texted late Wednesday morning.

That’s a departure from comments he made to other media outlets, telling both WIVB and The Buffalo News previously that he did not know how the post got on his Facebook page. Paladino appeared to deactivate his account Tuesday.

He also stated at one point said in a radio interview (archived here) that America needs a leader who can rouse audiences the same way Adolf Hitler did. Those comments landed him squarely in the headlines of several major outlets. While he didn’t praise Hitler’s actions directly, he did make an extremely poor point about Hitler’s effect on his audiences.

I was thinking the other day about somebody had mentioned on the radio Adolf Hitler and how he aroused the crowds. And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just — they were hypnotized by him. That’s, I guess, I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it.

The problem for Stefanik, though, is that she came out hard in favor Paladino, even knowing about these issues. Both Stefanik and Paladino appear to have an ax to grind with Langworthy, according to POLITICO.

The tiff between Stefanik and New York GOP party chair Nick Langworthy began escalating this year when Langworthy jumped to support Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) for his gubernatorial bid while she was weighing her own statewide run, multiple Republican officials familiar with the matter said in interviews.

It escalated from there after Langworthy nudged Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.) into retirement over his decision to support an assault weapons ban, two well-placed Republicans said. Stefanik enraged the chair by quickly endorsing Carl Paladino in the race to replace Jacobs — whose seat Langworthy is running for too.

Paladino left his watch party Tuesday night without talking to the media, and his campaign says they want answers about “statistical irregularities.”

“We want every single legal vote to count,” the campaign said in a statement.

Stefanik has congratulated several GOP candidates for last night’s primary wins on social media, but her Twitter account hasn’t mentioned anything about Langworthy’s win. Meanwhile, the official GOP account praised not only his win, but his work as party chair in New York.

Congratulations @NickLangworthy on winning the Republican primary.

He is the chairman of @NYGOP and has proven his strong conservative values time and time again. pic.twitter.com/n9ag4NKI4M

— GOP (@GOP) August 24, 2022

The GOP needs to work on its unity in a state like New York, where every Republican victory matters. One hopes that the third most powerful Republican in the House is willing to mend ties with Langworthy.