What’s the matter with Spartanburg County? It’s always something with those guys. This week, The Herald-Journal revisited the resolution that was passed by the county Republican Party executive committee this summer, as campaigns are gearing up for the 2010 run. To speak to the executive committee (and the rule will likely begin to move to precinct organizations, if not already), the candidate has to sign a statement saying he or she supports the S.C. Republican Party platform and the U.S. Constitution.
We can see it now. Candidate X looks at the thing and exclaims, “No illegal search and seizure? No forced quartering of soldiers? This thing is bullshit.”
Really, though, the issue is more the SCGOP platform. If a candidate has disagreements, those must be explained. Former county chairman Rick Beltram, not above his own strange actions, said the new rule “smacks of Nazism.” Hyperbole aside, it looks to us as one more bomb thrown into the internal state Republican battle.
In the movie “Reds,” John Reed’s wife, played by Diane Keaton, finally gets fed up with his shenanigans, lecturing him about the idiocy of fighting to see “which part of the left of the left is the real Communist Party in America.” This is more like fighting over which part of the right of the right is the real Republican Party in South Carolina.
The precinct this all came from is West View B, which is represented by former House candidate Ken Roach on the executive committee. He said that “the idea was borne out of a desire to bring more transparency to campaigns, to go beyond the ’slick mail pieces’ that inform many voters.” Well, Roach would know. In his primary campaign against Rep. Mike Forrester last year, he had a few “slick mail pieces” attacking his opponent done on his behalf by groups like South Carolinians for Responsible Government.
Seventh Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, laid out exactly what’s going down.
“If you’re using it and it’s a fair tool, where you say, ‘Look, if you disagree, we’re not going to prevent you from speaking, we’re not going to summarily execute you, we just want to know the areas where you disagree,’ then that’s fine,” Gowdy said. “… But there are two things that turn people off: People who are running as something they are not for political expediency, and … the moral vanity that causes someone to think they can pick who the ‘real Republicans’ or ‘real Christians’ or ‘real Americans’ are.”
Gowdy said a litmus test designed to weed out people who score 99 out of 100 on a test resulted in “cannibalism.”
South Carolina may be entering one of the most politically strange periods in the state’s history. As it stands now, Carol Fowler will be the chair of the S.C. Democratic Party going into the 2010 elections, and, most likely, Karen Floyd will be the chair of the S.C. Republican Party.
At any other time, having two women run the two major parties in a Southern state would be something to celebrate. However, there are a number of people who are apprehensive about the future.
The Democrats
Carol Fowler is, possibly, the worst person Democrats could have running their party. Last year, when Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham was at the most vulnerable point he will be in his career, she failed at both grooming a candidate and recruiting a candidate to run against him.
Democratic insiders would say that she was not that big of a deal in years past, and her marriage to SCDP heavyweight Don Fowler has put her where she is now. Unfortunately for the donkey class, she is running for another term as state chairman and does not seem to have any credible opposition.
In the announcement of Fowler’s intention to run again on Indigo Journal, State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex and House Minority Leader Harry Ott endorsed her candidacy. Maybe they felt they had to. But, one thing is for certain: if Fowler is in her current position next year, Ott will still be in the minority, and Rex will probably be out of a job.
If the Democratic Party in this state wants to be competitive in 2010, they need to overthrow the leadership that has been driving the party into the ground for the past several years.
If they want to remain irrelevant in South Carolina, they can keep doing what they have been doing.
The Republicans
Pick your poison: Spartanburg County chairman Rick Beltram or former Superintendent of Education candidate Karen Floyd. Obviously, Beltram will not be elected. He is too idiosyncratic, and too widely disliked, to win the SCGOP chairman’s job. Hence, Floyd is basically a shoo-in. And, that is a shame for all Republicans.
Floyd was the only statewide Republican candidate in 2006 to lose, and not the least of which because she was wedded to the Howard Rich crew, which pissed off enough Democrats and moderate Republicans to let Rex win.
So, the argument has to be made: if she could not properly manage her own campaign, what would that mean for the SCGOP in the two years she would be chairman?
Conclusion
If South Carolinians rest on their laurels and let these two people run the state’s two major parties over the next two years, it will not be a surprise if we continue to get bad candidates nominated and bad officials elected. Democrats and Republicans need to gain control over their parties and put forth smart partisans who will groom, recruit and get elected the best candidates possible.
In what amounts to the next bombshell move in the race for S.C. Republican Party chairman, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint is personally calling up party activists on behalf of SCGOP chairman candidate Kevin Hall.
According to a source close to Wolfe Reports, DeMint just started whipping votes for Hall recently, following up on the endorsement letter he and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham sent out in the second week of February.
“It’s not unusual for an elected official to endorse another candidate,” the source said. “But for a U.S. senator to put in the time to personally call activists urging them to support Kevin Hall for state party chair, well, that’s a big deal and it illustrates how badly DeMint wants Hall running the party during his 2010 reelection campaign.”
Other currently announced candidates are former Superintendent of Education candidate Karen Floyd and Spartanburg County Republican Party chairman Rick Beltram.
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.
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.”
