(The Center Square) — New York GOP Chairman Ed Cox is calling for party unity amid a push for his removal after the state's Republicans were nearly blanked in last week's midterm elections.

Anthony Constantino, a Trump-backed political newcomer who won New York's 21st Congressional District race last week, was among the first to demand that Cox step down after Tuesday's midterms, when their party lost control of Congress.

“Fire Ed Cox!” Constantino wrote on social media. "In NYS, the Republican Party is mostly a Con Job that helps Democrats win."

The New York Young Republicans Club, which has started an online petition calling for Cox's removal, said he "lost" the state Senate for the GOP in 2018 election "and lost EVERYTHING in 2026."

"New York can and should be a purple state. Under a different Chair, it would be," the group wrote on X. "Cox must be removed and replaced with new leadership. The Republican grassroots deserve a say in their leadership."

Several local party heads have joined the chorus of criticism, including David Souliere IV, chair of the City of Plattsburgh's Republican Committee, who called on Cox to resign "immediately."

"We need new leadership that focuses on building a coalition that will last generations, not recycled ideas, by self serving oligarchs," Souliere posted on X.

But Cox pushed back on suggestions that he should step aside, calling on Republicans to unify in the week of last week's crushing defeat at the ballot box.

"This is not the time for accusations or a circular firing squad," Cox said in a statement. "It's a time for Republicans to regroup, come together and develop a strategy for moving forward, building upon the foundation of the six House seats that Republicans continue to hold."

Cox, 80, has led the New York Republican Party for much of the past two decades, during which Democrats have expanded their majority in the executive and legislative branches.

After Tuesday's midterms, Democrats will hold 20 House seats in New York's congressional delegation, while Republicans will hold six. Democrats control the governor's office, top constitutional offices, and the state Legislature, where they hold a supermajority.

Despite losing control of Congress in Tuesday's midterms, Democrats only flipped one seat in New York's midterm elections. In the 17th Congressional District GOP Rep. Mike Lawler lost his reelection bid to Democrat Cait Conley, a U.S. Army veteran who rode a wave of anti-Trump sentiment to flip the Hudson Valley swing district from red back to blue.

Democrats also held onto several New York congressional seats after deflecting a push by GOP challengers to flip the districts by focusing on crime, legal immigration, and other issues that helped Republicans make major gains in the 2022 midterms.

Incumbent Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul trounced Republican Bruce Blakeman in the gubernatorial race, winning reelection with nearly 60% of the vote, according to preliminary results.

Blakeman, a Trump-backed Nassau County Executive, also was on the receiving end of criticism from top New York Republicans about the party's poor showing in the governor's race.

Outgoing GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, who currently occupies the 21st Congressional District, said Blakeman ran a "low energy campaign with limited resources that lacked an apparatus" and deprived Republicans of winning back the governorship.

"The results speak for themselves,” Stefanik, who has stepped away from politics, told the New York Post. "The state party apparatus is broken. It needs to be built from scratch."

Blakeman fired back at Stefanik in a blistering social media post that called her a "selfish, do-nothing politician that didn’t lift a finger to help Republican candidates in New York."