Horry County Realtor running for Forestbrook-area County Council seat
Mikey “Mash” Masciarelli, a member of the Horry County Planning Commission, announced he’s running for the District 8 seat on Horry County Council.
The district encompasses the Forestbrook area, between Conway and Socastee. Masciarelli, a Berkshire Hathaway Realtor, is running as a Republican. He filed as a candidate Wednesday.
County council member Johnny Vaught, who currently holds the seat, won’t run for reelection this year because he’s running for County Council Chairman. He said Wednesday that running for the higher office precludes him from running to keep his current seat.
“If I was on a different cycle…then I could run for chair and retain my seat,” Vaught said. “(But) I don’t intend to lose the chairman race.”
With the seat open, Masciarelli said he chose to run because he felt the council needed a moderate voice.
In an interview, he said he is able to find common ground on the county’s most pressing issues, like development, flooding and affordable housing. He said he’s pro-growth but wants to “protect” residents from bad development. He’s not an environmentalist, he said, but opposes the clear-cutting of trees.
“As much as one bad apple can spoil the bunch, one good one can be a change agent,” he said. “Someone has to be a go-between.”
Masciarelli said he has used his seat on the county planning commission to ask hard questions of both developers and residents who complain about development. He said he’s not in favor of all development, and also not in favor of building or rezoning moratoriums.
“There has to be a common ground between residents and growth,” he said. “It comes down to compromise.”
Ideas to diversify economy
Masciarelli was born in southwestern Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh, and grew up there. He joined the Marines after graduating from college and then worked as a law enforcement officer. Following that, he worked as vice president of investment at a Wall Street firm.
Masciarelli came to Horry County by way of his son, who’s a senior at Coastal Carolina University. When his son was in the eighth grade, he said, he attended a Myrtle Beach baseball camp and was scouted by CCU’s baseball team.
Masciarelli said his son was so set on playing ball for CCU that the family eventually allowed him to move in with Socastee High School’s baseball coach so he could play in high school and prepare for college. Masciarelli’s daughter later transferred from the University of North Carolina to CCU, and the siblings lived together.
Masciarelli and his wife would visit frequently, and eventually purchased a house of their own in 2014.
Injuries kept the Masciarellis’ son from playing all four years at CCU, he said, but he and his wife decided to put down roots in Horry County.
Masciarelli said he’s passionate about diversifying Horry County’s economy and luring new companies and jobs to the Grand Strand. His daughter leaving Horry County after graduating from CCU is a big reason he cares about that, he said.
“It killed me to have my child move away. She said, ‘Dad there’s no employment here where I can make the money I could be making,’” he said. “I feel the need to have a younger base here, people in their 20s and their 30s. The seesaw is all one sided.”
He said he’d love to see technology companies come to Horry County.
“Myrtle Beach is the perfect place for a tech company,” he said.
In the meantime, he said, the county needs to continue allowing its real estate market to blossom.
“We are a one-trick pony, so if you quit building houses and development, your big income stream that’s funding this area is gone,” he said. “So you do need growth.”
Need for affordable housing
Masciarelli said the county also needs to build more affordable housing. He doesn’t support Horry County building or operating housing itself, like other county governments do, he said, but added that the county council could find ways to work with developers and offer incentives so they will build affordable homes.
Masciarelli said he supports Interstate 73 because it could provide a needed evacuation route and help diversify the county’s economy.
He said he thinks the county should take a more forceful role with legislators in Columbia and work to get a larger allocation of state tax dollars.
If elected, Masciarelli would be the second member on county council who wasn’t born and raised in Horry County. The other is Myrtle Beach-area council member Dennis DiSabato, whose family moved to the area from New York when he was a teenager.
Masciarelli said he hopes voters will assess him based on his ideas, rather than where he grew up.
“In my time being here, I’ve coached ball, I do business and where I was born and raised has never been a contingency on the quality of work or my character,” he said. “I try to do things for the right reason.”
This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 9:25 PM.
