Fact Check: Tom Rice and Russell Fry are letting the attacks fly. What’s the truth?
The Republican primary field for the Myrtle Beach-area’s congressional race is still crowded, but two of the candidates — incumbent U.S. Rep. Tom Rice and challenger state Rep. Russell Fry — have largely been focused on one another.
And that’s meant the attacks have been flying.
“Don’t trust Tom Rice,” a website run by Fry’s campaign claims.
“Russell Fry is a fraud,” claims a similar website run by Rice’s campaign.
So what’s actually true in the hotly-contested, Donald Trump-involved race?
The Sun News researched and fact-checked some of the claims the Rice and Fry campaigns have made in recent weeks. Here’s what’s going on.
Fry says voters can’t trust Rice, but bends the facts
Fry’s primary attack against Rice is that the incumbent has enriched himself while serving in Congress in South Carolina’s 7th Congressional District.
It’s true that Rice’s net worth has increased while he’s been in office, but the claim that he used his seat in Congress to enrich himself misses the mark.
To back up that assertion, Fry has pointed to an analysis of financial disclosure data by the non-partisan group Open Secrets which ranks Rice has the 37th wealthiest member of Congress. The Open Secrets analysis shows that Rice was ranked 115th when he entered office and that his wealth increased substantially in 2017.
That analysis also shows Rice’s personal wealth spiking — from $2.2 million to $14.6 million — in 2017.
Those wealth estimates, though, are not based on exact numbers. The disclosure forms analyzed by Open Secrets ask lawmakers to estimate their assets and incomes in broad ranges of thousands and millions of dollars.
Rice, in an email, said his real estate holdings increased in value, pushing him into another bracket on the disclosure forms. According to figures Rice provided, the upward swing in 2017 occurred because a real estate appraisal increased the value of one of his buildings and he paid off debt.
“If you get a new appraisal that shows a modest increase or decrease in value, it can result in a wild swing on the financial disclosure,” Rice said. “Anyone who owns a house can tell you real estate has increased in value in recent years. However, my net worth did not change significantly in 2017.”
Rice owns property across several companies including Rice REI and Rice Properties. Open Secrets estimates his total assets are worth between $5.6 million to $23.5 million.
Fry’s campaign has also highlighted the fact that Rice sold off stock he owned in February 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began sweeping the United States.
Rice said buying and selling stocks is perfectly legal, and that he didn’t use any “insider information” when he bought and sold stocks. He said he purchased $40,000 worth of stocks as part of his IRA investment account and sold them when the market began falling. He noted he lost money on the transactions.
“Honestly, I do not purchase publicly traded stocks often. As COVID-19 infections were rising, the market was falling and I sold them,” Rice said. “At no time did I trade on any information that wasn’t reported everyday in the news.”
And finally, Fry’s campaign has asserted that Rice improperly received money from the FBI while in office and voted on budgets that included funding for the FBI’s lease.
In that situation, Rice explained, he owned a building in Myrtle Beach that the FBI wanted to rent. He signed a 10-year lease agreement with the federal government in 2007, five years before he ran for Congress. Rice was first elected in 2012.
Rice has explained that he asked the House Ethics Committee if the lease posed a conflict of interest, since he would vote on federal budgets, and that officials told him no, it did not. He said he asked for a second check-in from the ethics committee when the government wanted to renew the lease. Rice said he told the government he could not do that.
In 2017, the General Services Administration pursued an eminent domain case against Rice to take control of the building and condemn the lease until it could find a new office space.
Fry’s campaign has called foul on the situation, and accused Rice of receiving rent payments funded by the federal budgets he voted on.
“He never disavowed himself of that lease. Then when they realized they were renting from a congressman the FBI said…this is bad,” Luke Byars, a political consultant for Fry, said. “It’s unheard of.”
In response, Rice’s campaign said he was advised by the House Ethics Committee that having the lease in place prior to winning election was not unethical as long as he didn’t change it. He said he also told the GSA he couldn’t renew the lease because he was now in Congress.
“In the waning years, GSA called to renew the lease. I said I could not renew it as I was a member of Congress,” Rice said. “They then sued me to condemn a leasehold for the remaining term of the lease. They stayed until the original term expired, paid the agreed rent, and moved.”
Rice’s main attack against Fry ignores a key nuance
In recent weeks, Rice has repeatedly called out Fry for missing hundreds of votes in the Statehouse while serving as a lawmaker. Fry has fired back by saying he’s only missed six days of work as a lawmaker, with three of those absences due to his son being born.
So what’s true?
According to the state legislature’s website, Fry has missed 643 votes out of 4,606 total — or, 14% — since he took office in 2015. Rice and his campaign have used that data to claim Fry has skipped work. Rice has also hit Fry for missing a key vote on a tax cut for South Carolina residents while campaigning with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Fry, after returning from Mar-a-Lago, held up a vote on the tax cut so he could vote for it publicly.
But Fry’s campaign argued that the Surfside Beach lawmaker missed so many votes because he was avoiding conflicts of interest.
“Anything that could be perceived as a conflict of interest, Russell can’t vote on that,” Fry’s campaign manager Philip Habib said.
State Rep. William Bailey, who was previously a candidate in the SC-7 race, said both men were missing the point about Fry’s voting record. Missing votes shouldn’t be about Fry skipping work or about conflicts of interest, he said, but about the fact that lawmakers who work as attorneys are less effective because they can’t vote on important bills.
“A lawyer gets tied up in too many conflicts,” he said.
Rice has also smacked Fry for voting in 2017 to increase the state gas tax. Gov. Henry McMaster vetoed that measure after it passed the legislature, and lawmakers then overrode his veto. The state gas tax is spent on roads and bridges.
Fry’s campaign said he “doesn’t regret” casting that vote and called Rice a hypocrite for attack him for supporting infrastructure, an issue Rice has championed throughout his time in office.
“He’s trying to have it both ways, it’s ridiculous,” Byars said. “It’s hypocrisy is what it really is.”
Rice, in response, said none of the gas tax increase has benefited Fry’s constituents. Rice also voted against President Joe Biden’s infrastructure program because he said it put too much money into public transit, which his district doesn’t benefit from.
“I would never have voted for a tax increase that did not deliver for my district,” Rice said.
Both candidates trade attacks on PPP loans
The federal, forgivable loans created by the Payroll Protection Program have also been the subject of barbs from both Rice and Fry.
PPP loan data shows that Coastal Law, the firm where Fry works, received two loans — one for $80,000 and another for $82,000. Records show the firm had both loans forgiven in full. Rice has smacked Fry for these loans, saying he cost taxpayers money.
But — as Fry has retorted — PPP loan data also shows that Rice’s wife, Wrenzie Rice, received a $7,000 PPP loan for the property management company she runs, Rice Commercial. Records show she paid the $7,000 back with $11 interest several months after receiving the loan.
Fry also attacked Rice for that loan because the congressman later voted against a measure that would have made information about PPP loans publicly available. That measure failed to pass, but the government has since made the information available via a Freedom of Information Act request.
Rice said he voted against that measure because it was “a Democrat effort to stop part of the Trump CARES Act” and would have only applied to businesses that received $2 million or more from the PPP.
Fry’s campaign said Fry didn’t have a say in whether or not his firm took PPP funds. Fry is one of two attorneys at Coastal Law.
“Russell doesn’t have a problem with people taking PPP, but he had no say in what they took in,” Byars said. “And unlike Tom he didn’t vote for PPP and he didn’t vote to hide it.”
Rice said Fry should pay back the PPP money.
“To this day,” Rice said, “despite the criticism he’s faced, has refused to return to taxpayers a single penny.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Luke Byars’ name.
This story was originally published May 26, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
