We don’t know if the Free Times know more than they’re letting on, but this quote says so much, “For the past few weeks, political observers have been wondering about a time bomb that might be ticking somewhere down the ballot in the statewide Republican primaries on June 8. One must look no further for the trigger on this particular detonator than the campaign for state treasurer, which could challenge even the governor’s race in the fireworks department.”
We’ve found out that Curtis Loftis, who has been palling around with former S.C. Republican Party treasurer John Cattano and consultant Jeffrey Sewell, was arrested on Feb. 2, 1990 on two counts of assault. According to the police report, he approached his wife (from whom he’d been separated from for months) and a friend of her’s as they left the Capital City Club. The report says he pushed his soon-to-be ex’s friend to the ground and punched him “several times,” then he pushed his ex to the ground before leaving. The report states that his soon-to-be ex, Barbara Diane Goff, exhibited a skinned knee and bruised finger. It mentioned nothing about the physical condition of her friend, Stanley Kuhn.
There’s a lot of talk going on around town about Loftis’ anger issues. His ex, in a legal statement, said that when they were married they had an argument. During that argument, he turned over a table on her and broke a window. She also said through her attorney, regarding the incident on Feb. 2, “On the evening on February 2, 1990 Mr. Loftis approached her as she was leaving the Capital City Club, Columbia, South Carolina, forced his way into her automobile, harassed and intimidated her with threats of litigation and pushed her to the ground.”
In another statement, she said, “I do specifically recall that [Loftis friend] Mr. [Michael H.] Montgomery stated to me that Mr. Loftis had a bad temper and that I should realize that part of my husband’s problem arose from his embarrassment being a ‘bug man’ from West Columbia.”
From what we’ve found out, he beat the charges in court. That’s shocking, considering how damning the police report looks.
Funny thing, this is only the beginning of the bombs we’re aware of in this race. The rest will be coming in due time as we figure them out. But it’s an amazing thing that a guy is running for public office with something like this, and other time bombs, just chilling in the closet like so many skeletons.
If you want to see some wild events and wilder things said, just tune into a GOP primary race in the Upstate. Such as it is with the multitude of challengers to U.S. Rep Bob Inglis in the Fourth District. Christina Jeffrey, who lectures at Wofford, has teamed up with SCHotline‘s Jeffrey Sewell. That wouldn’t be a big deal, normally. Then, strange things start to happen and you have to wonder what the hell is going on.
For instance, Friday evening, this tweet came from the SCHotline account:
Wait, what? That’s an interesting way to make an unsubstantiated hit on an opposing candidate. Seventh Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy is one of the several trying to unseat Inglis in the primary, as well. Maybe it’s just us, but if you’re going to say something like that about a candidate, you may want to show you actually have evidence of said conduct. A day later, there doesn’t appear to be any of that.
What is frankly bizarre is why Jeffrey allowed someone to run her campaign that put out a tweet like the one above, followed by this one, roughly 19 hours later:
We’re not saying Jeffrey made a mistake bringing on Sewell to run her operation — hey, different strokes for different folks — but her campaign is looking more and more like the fringe effort it was pegged as in 2008. For people just looking at the race, unsubstantiated rumors about a candidate’s personal life, plus unsubstantiated rumors of a retort, equal people not taking the campaign pushing those rumors seriously.
Gov. Mark Sanford hasn’t learned a damn thing from 2006 and 2008, if a recent post by political operative and friend of Sanford, Jeffrey Sewell, is to be believed. In the past two cycles, Sanford has tried with poor success to enlist allies like Howard Rich to help him take out fellow Republicans in primary fights. The last time, we were proud to be a part of the effort to shine some transparency on the plans between Sanford, Will Folks and S.C. Club for Growth to do it.
Right now, the Governor as a ton of money in his gubernatorial campaign account. More than $1.8 million, and in fact, for a significant amount of time, people were wondering what the hell the philanderer in the Governor’s Mansion was going to do with all that junk, all that junk in his trunk. Well, here we go again.
Sources close to the governor confirm to SCHotline.com that there is in fact ‘Enough dirt to bury prominent grandstanding adversaries’ built over seven years of opposition research. Our sources tell us this could be “lost trust times ten”… Developing…
We sincerely hope that asshole (and we could think of some more uncouth names to call him) tries to pull the same crap he has the past two cycles. Bring it on, fool.
Often, people on the Internet do not hot link for two reasons: 1) it is considered bad form, and 2) the person on the other side of the link can do whatever they feel like and mess with you.
As it happens, there was the latest issue with S.C. Hotline proprietor Jeffrey Sewell locking and loading against another Palmetto State consultant, Wesley Donehue.
The original post that Sewell put up featured a picture from Donehue’s latest Web video venture, Livin’ Venti. But, Sewell made the mistake of hot linking and not putting the picture on his own server.
So, the following happened:
Jeffery Sewell, S.C. political consultant and noted RINO hunter, recently sent out an email advertising his access to the S.C. Election Commission voter file. In the subject, he writes, “Complete ’08 SCEC file complete with appendeges e.g. no dead, felons etc blah blah…buy from me or pay twice the price…available right now.”
Now, Sewell has been kind to this site in the past, which surely means Wolfe Reports will join the number of recently axed sites from his news aggregator. That is fine. It is only a matter of time until we piss off nearly everyone and find ourselves begging for money for cheap beer like the rest of the homeless in Five Points.
However, how does a guy who has taken pride in going after “Republicans In Name Only” offer his voter file to Democrats? One of the email addresses listed is Jay Parmley, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Not only that, but Parmley is a member of the RISE SC Facebook group. RISE SC, as you may recall, is totally opposed to school choice, which Sewell says he favors and in which movement he has been involved.
But, that is not all. He has also offered the list to Rick Beltram, chairman of the Spartanburg County Republican Party. It should not take most people long to wonder why a guy who says he is a supporter of Karen Floyd and says she will be the next S.C. Republican Party chairman would be offering his list to one of her opponents.
And, still, there is more. He also offered it to people he called RINOs in the past, like S.C. operatives Rod Shealy and Wesley Donehue. What is not known is if the other people on the listing, like SCGOP chairman Katon Dawson, Richard Quinn & Associates’ Rick Quinn, McAllister Communications‘ Dave Wilson and Starboard Communications‘ Mike Green are considered to be in the same camp as the others, or just open to cut rate voter file access.
Either way, there are more things afoot in S.C. politics than anyone could even imagine.
According to a widely-circulated letter that was leaked today, U.S. Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham have endorsed Columbia attorney Kevin Hall for chairman of the S.C. Republican Party. The move is a bombshell of sorts in the race, coming at the same time RNC committeeman Glenn McCall announced that he had no intention of running for the post.
“Throughout all of his service, he never made a dime from the campaigns he’s helped,” the letter read. “He does it because he is a true believer in our party and in the conservative cause. He does it because he understands that if we’re going to reclaim our credibility as Republicans, we must recruit and support candidates who will be true to our ideals and principles.
“Kevin’s philosophy of volunteerism is exactly what built our Party’s grassroots organization. Who better to recruit and organize new volunteers for our party than someone who has volunteered so much of his own time and talent.”
The endorsements put the momentum firmly behind Hall, who is up against Spartanburg County GOP chairman Rick Beltram. Though McCall has taken himself out of the running, others may still jump in. According to SCHotline, Karen Floyd is seriously considering a run and could make her decision within days.
Sunday night, Jeffrey Sewell started up a Facebook group to back Floyd, “Karen K. Floyd,” to draft the former Superintendent of Education nominee to lead the party.
As of Monday afternoon, however, the group seemed to have disappeared from the social networking site.
A new chairman will be chosen at the party meeting in May.
Over the weekend, Jeffrey Sewell and Robin Biro posted a link on Facebook, seemingly begging the question, “Is everything better with bacon?”
