Spartanburg delegation fight: Behind the curtain
Monday night’s meeting of the Spartanburg legislative delegation was, as has been the case since November, not the usual. The meeting was comprised of eight of the nine representatives and senators that are of one faction, chaired by Rep. Lanny Littlejohn. The Gang of Four, which broke away under the auspices of weighted voting, were not there. Sens. Lee Bright, Shane Martin, Glenn Reese and Rep. Joey Millwood were all missing (Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler was absent as well, because he was on his way back from Super Bowl XLIII).
It was known what Millwood was doing instead — he tweeted a point-by-point account of his trip to the grocery store and an abortive move to Subway before getting gas and grabbing dinner from Twin Palmetto.
The Byzantine specifics of the dispute between the two sides have been regularly covered by The Herald-Journal, but there is more to the story.
From research by Wolfe Reports, it appears that there are two men working behind the scenes in the drama. One is Kerry Wood, who ran Martin’s successful campaign to unseat Sen. Jim Ritchie. Wood, naturally, is working with the Gang of Four. The other player is Spartanburg County GOP chairman Rick Beltram. The nature of Beltram’s involvement is up for debate.
Sources close to Wolfe Reports have said that it is Wood stirring the pot on the issue and pushing the agenda of the four breakaway legislators.
“No, I don’t think I’m the one stirring it at all,” Wood said. “I’m just trying to help out. I don’t stir anything — I really don’t. I just work for these guys.”
Littlejohn said in early January that he believed the issue came down to judges, not votes for delegation leadership or weighted voting.
“That’s not it at all. That’s been explained to him, over and over,” Wood said. “It’s all about the weighted voting. When these senators are in Columbia, and they vote — a lot of people use that as an example — it’s a one-by-one vote. Every vote counts, you know, one, right? Each of those votes, they go through every so often, like it’s coming up now for them to redraw all the district lines. Why do they do that? They redraw the district lines so their vote is weighted by the redrawing of those lines, so they represent an equal part of the voters, an equal part of the population.”
However, some could cite as circumstantial evidence the membership of Wood, Bright and Millwood in the Conservatives in Action Facebook group. Also, Millwood’s campaign was run by the Sandlapper Group, which was cofounded by CIA spokesman Taft Matney. During the 2008 election cycle, CIA ran Internet banner ads recruiting supporters by using the threat of activist judges, and has run ads attacking legislators for voting Judge Don Beatty to the S.C. Supreme Court.
“I get a lot of things on Facebook asking me to join — if it’s somebody I know, asking me to support an issue, I generally try to help them out,” Wood said. “I really haven’t thought anything about that. I don’t get on Facebook very much.”
On the blog Upstate Update, which is operated by Wood, Beltram is accused of collaborating with Littlejohn to put pressure on Bright and Martin.
In a Facebook wall-to-wall posting with SHJ reporter Jason Spencer, Beltram calls the blog “ridiculous,” and, in reference to a recent news release by Wood, wrote that “I cannot control his fables.”
