Kansas Young Republicans’ racist texts show how far the party has strayed from its noble roots
The bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln on the south lawn of the Kansas Capitol in April 2025. The statue, by Topeka sculptor Merrell Gage, was dedicated in 1918. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)
The issue really isn’t the vicious racism in the texts linked to members of the Kansas Young Republicans, exposed by the news website Politico. It’s too easy to blame the young adults involved. Sure, they aren’t kids. Some have reached 30 and beyond.
Republican adults recently posted culturally insensitive images of Gov. Laura Kelly in a sombrero. The apple, it seems, doesn’t fall far from the tree.
The deeper issue is that America needs a healthy Republican Party. It needs the balance. Amid this crisis, the party needs to make a decision: hold to its current, ruinous course, or choose democracy and denounce extremism.
Dithering and rudderless progressives, whose indecision and timidity continue to alienate their party’s base, also need work. But we don’t see the same kind of virulent racism from Democratic ranks that soaked those text messages. Kansas Young Republicans chair Alex Dwyer and vice chair William Hendrix participated in the Telegram group chat. Hendrix used racial slurs to refer to Black people, including “n–ga” and “n–guh.”
In a July conversation on the thread about Black people, Hendrix said, “Bro is at a chicken restaurant ordering his food. Would he like some watermelon and Kool-Aid with that?”
Vice President J.D. Vance has defended the Republican texters, but Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach fired Hendrix from a communications job as Politico prepared its report.
“The comments in the chat are inexcusable,” Kobach said. “As soon as the office learned of those messages, Will Hendrix’s employment was terminated.”
Dwyer and Hendrix were photographed at a campaign event with Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, the Andover Republican now running for governor. Masterson denied any connection to the young people beyond the photo.
The text discussion ranged from antisemitism and love for Adolph Hitler to anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. In the chat, Dwyer and others delved into discussions of how GOP operatives could tarnish a political candidate by linking the individual to white supremacists.
Here’s the key point.
They dismissed the idea because the plan could backfire in a place such as Kansas, where “Young Republicans could end up becoming attracted to that opponent,” Politico wrote.
What a damming admission. These young Republicans considered white supremacy a default belief in parts of the party’s base. And these 20- and 30-somethings didn’t birth these ideas. The party (and the nation) must come to grips with race instead of trying to bury or to whitewash it. The texts are the result of decades dalliances with racial invective. Years of “welfare queens,” Willie Horton ads, and attacks on civil and voting rights.
Right now, the GOP mourns Charlie Kirk, a man who said: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’ ”
He also said prominent Black women, including former First Lady Michelle Obama and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who hold multiple Ivy League degrees, “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.”
These are judgements based only on skin color. President Donald Trump just posthumously awarded Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
On the chat log, someone was asked to guess what room number they had at a hotel.
Dwyer responded “1488,” shorthand among white supremacists when referring to the 14-word, slogan: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The “88” stands for “Heil Hitler,” with “H” being the eighth letter of the alphabet.
Today’s Republican Party bears little resemblance to the party President Abraham Lincoln led. Once Democratic President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the parties essentially switched jerseys. Since then, the GOP generally has opposed civil rights and voting rights. Still, conservatism has long meant limited government, individual freedom, the rule of law and a belief in an enduring moral order.
I’m told that my great-grandfather, as was true with many Black people before Kennedy, was a proud Republican, still honoring Lincoln’s efforts to end slavery.
There are many proud moments from a healthier time for the modern version of the party.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne into Little Rock to enforce the Brown v. Board decision. He desegregated Washington, D.C., and federal bases. He tried to keep segregationists off the federal bench, if you believe Ike biographer David Nichols. A Republican judge Ike appointed in Alabama, Frank Minis Johnson, lifted an injunction that allowed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s voting rights march to proceed. Arizona U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater walked into the White House and told President Richard Nixon, amid Watergate, that the time had come for Nixon to step down.
But there’s nothing conservative about exploding the debt. The current administration campaigned on free speech yet has targeted comedians for mocking the president and his cabinet. The “states’ rights” party now wants to occupy the cities of its perceived political opponents over the objection of governors.
That’s a very unhealthy position.
Republicans’ ability to reconnect with proud moments of their past would bode well for their future — and for the nation’s.
Mark McCormick is the former executive director of the Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.