The word among people in the know is that Karen Floyd, the presumptive next chairman of the S.C. Republican Party, has already selected her chief lieutenant.
Ryan Meerstein, who South Carolinians might remember as the state director of the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign, has been in Spartanburg helping Floyd recently and is widely assumed to be the SCGOP’s next executive director. Last year, he worked three other places in addition to the Giuliani campaign, including being the Ohio state director for the McCain-Palin ticket, but was suffering the post-cycle unemployment blues before Floyd brought him in.
According to those wonderful kids at George Washington University, Meerstein worked with the RNC on Sen. Bob Corker’s campaign in 2006 and was an RNC field director in Ohio in 2004, after graduating from Allegheny College in 2003.
He was also the star player on his high school basketball team. Playing ball for Allegheny, he started all 28 games his senior year, shooting 48.3 percent from the floor and averaging 14 points a game.
That is about what you would expect. But, in the fall of 2008 he was implicated by liberal groups in Ohio, along with other McCain campaign staffers, of voter fraud.
The Franklin County Board of Elections is probing the complaint of a liberal group is calling for an investigation of operatives for Republican John McCain who’ve registered to vote in Ohio, and in some cases have actually cast a ballot, with no intention of remaining in the state.
Deputy Elections Director Matthew Damschroder told The Dispatch that if the matter merits further investigation, the case “will be forwarded to the prosecutor immediately.”
ProgressOhio.org says the activity is the mirror image of Democratic activity that is the subject of an ongoing probe by Franklin County Proseuctor Ron O’Brien.
ProgressOhio called on the Franklin County Board of Elections to refer the new material to the Franklin County prosecutor.
One example cited by ProgressOhio involves Ryan Meerstein is currently the state director for McCain’s campaign in Ohio. The group says that online biographies indicate he has worked for political campaigns or parties in four different states during the past two years, attended college in a fifth state, and his given hometown is in a sixth state.
The Franklin County Board of Elections reports receiving his completed absentee ballot last Tuesday, even though he current is registered to vote in South Carolina, ProgressOhio says.
Others in much the same situation include McCain’s top Ohio spokesman, Paul Lindsay, and Jason Levine, brought into Ohio to help the state Republican Party.
Needless to say, this does not make a brilliant start for Floyd’s chairmanship.
