The New Hampshire Republican Party headquarters was vandalized with the word “Nazis” scrawled on the side of the building, police said Thursday.
The word, written inside a heart, was spray-painted and several windows on the back of the building were broken after rocks were thrown at them, Concord Police Lt. Sean Ford told CNN, citing officer dispatch notes.
Police are on site canvassing the area, speaking to neighbors and looking through potential video available for any further information.
Police did not immediately name any suspects.
In response to the vandalism, Patrick Hynes, spokesman with the New Hampshire Republican Party, urged groups of both sides to bring their tone and demeanor “to a more reasonable level.”
Jeanie Forrester, chairwoman with the state’s Republican party, agreed with Hynes and condemned the vandalism.
“We’ve got to tone down the rhetoric. What happened last night is really disappointing. Violence and vandalism are not acceptable. We can disagree on issues but it should not rise to the level of violence and vandalism,” Forrester said.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, said in a statement that “it is certainly disturbing and very sad to see vandalism with such hateful rhetoric. There is no place for that in our politics or society.”
The vandalism comes after remarks President Donald Trump made on Tuesday in which he blamed “both sides” of the Charlottesville protests — the white supremacists and those protesting against them — for the violence that took hold of that small Virginia city.
While Trump condemned the neo-Nazi and white supremacists who protested, he insisted there were “very fine people” among those protesting the removal of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s statue in Charlottesville.
