Gab
The Republican Town Committee has turned to a no-holds-barred corner of the web to try to grow its local membership.
Last Monday, the town committee set up an online account on Gab, a social media platform that fashions itself as a free-speech haven for conservatives critical of an apparent liberal bias by mainstream sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Emily Hays pre-pandemic photo
Current RTC Chair John Carlson with former chair Jeff Weiss.
“Welcome to the official account of the New Haven, CT GOP!” reads the party’s first of a total of eight posts (also known as “gabs”). Carrying over the same profile description it has on Twitter, the local party’s profile on Gab identifies its mission as: “The New Haven Republican Town Committee fights to undo destructive Leftist policies and restore prosperity to the Elm City. We meet every 2nd Thursday, 7pm. #NewHavenCT #Connecticut #MAGA”
Gab has received an increasing amount of public attention over the past few weeks as one of several alternative social media sites where Capitol rioters spread the word about their attempted insurrection before and during Jan. 6. It’s also welcomed a flood of QAnon conspiracy theorists as they’ve been exiled from Facebook and Twitter in the fallout of the mob attack in D.C.
Republican Town Committee Chair John Carlson told the Independent that he didn’t know about Gab’s more controversial side — its association with the Capitol riot or its welcoming of QAnon or its hosting of an anti-Semitic screed in 2018 by a Pittsburgh man who went on to shoot up a synagogue.
Rather, Carlson said, he noticed that Gab had recently added millions of new users.
“It’s one of the fastest growing social media sites right now,” he said. “We decided to join to take advantage of it having more people.”
When asked about Gab’s fringe reputation, he said, “New Haven does not have anything to do with QAnon. We don’t subscribe to any prejudice or racism or anti-Semitism. We have nothing to do with that.”
“Free speech is free speech,” he continued. “We don’t subscribe to hate. We didn’t follow them over. We’re just following the fact that millions of people joined in over a week.”
And when asked about the Capitol riot, he said, “We believe that anyone breaking the law should be arrested. Anyone. We don’t support terrorism of any form. You break the law, you pay the price.”
Carlson said the New Haven Republican Town Committee is much more concerned with local than national politics.
Its first few Gab posts include a celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. day and the recognition of a Republican challenger to U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
Carlson said the local RTC is hoping to field “many candidates” in this year’s aldermanic races. “We’re hoping to have a mayoral candidate” too, he said. “We have some people who are interested.”
When asked for the committee’s top policy priorities, he said opposing high taxes and finding a solution to high crime are at the top of the list.
The local party’s website includes a diverse set of policy priorities, including calls for lower taxes, a more efficient public transportation system, greater transparency around Board of Alders decision-making, and police enforcement of “civility ordinances” around noise violations and ATV usage.
Even beyond policy, Carlson said, “Our main priority right now would be growing the party.”
He said that roughly a dozen people show up each month to Republican Town Committee meetings. He said those meetings have continued during the pandemic, sometimes held online, sometimes in-person at city restaurants that remain open.
As for how he balances a local party identity vs. national party allegiance, Carlson said, “We have members locally who love Donald Trump and people who hate Donald Trump. I said this when I ran for alder: I’m not Donald Trump. I’m John Carlson. I’m running to help my neighborhood, my city, my ward.”
That very schism is evident in the comment thread beneath a recent post on the New Haven Republicans Facebook page.
On Jan. 20, Carlson posted, “Congratulations to Joe Biden on becoming the 46th President of the USA.” The comment provoked a flurry of comments from people unwilling to identify Biden as a legitimate president, and critical of the local party’s recognition as such.
Carlson, writing under the New Haven Republicans account name, posted under one such response:
“This post is not about right, wrong, or ‘tucking tail’ It is called having class and respect for the office. A congratulations is neither an endorsement, nor a condemnation. It is a simply sentence congratulating the man who is now the 46th POTUS.”
According to the city registrar of voters office, New Haven has 2,839 registered Republicans, 41,247 registered Democrats, 18,161 registered unaffiliated voters, and 702 registered third-party voters.
MAGA is a racist hashtag, and it calls to a corrupt movement that worked to undermine free and fair elections.