Horry GOP leadership fight heats up amid ‘coup’ accusations. Could discord hurt elections?

When a majority of Horry County GOP electors picked Reese Boyd as their new leader earlier this month, he hoped it would mean the end to a bruising internal power struggle punctuated by profanity-laced meetings and online bullying.

But a dispute over who exactly is running one of South Carolina’s largest Republican blocs took an even sharper turn this week after embattled chairman Roger Slagle — who is no longer recognized by state GOP leaders — said he’ll refuse to give up key assets of the local organization.

“Unfortunately, I feel the need to address the coup that is going on in our county party,” Slagle said in a recorded message posted Oct. 21 to social media. “As the duly elected HCGOP chairman, I will continue to maintain custody and stewardship of the HCGOP financial assets, databases and media platforms.”

Slagle’s proclamation has Boyd — once endorsed by former Gov. Nikki Haley in a state Senate race — ready for a skirmish he hopes can still be avoided.

“I did not anticipate that I was signing up for a Texas cage match,” Boyd told reporters Oct. 24 — two weeks after he was elected county GOP chairman at a special meeting where a majority of the executive committee voted for him to replace Slagle.

“This is not a fight that any of us went looking for,” he said. “It’s been brought to us. We’re just trying to do the right thing. It’s not a coup. We did not set out to have this battle. The prior leadership team set this in motion by all resigning at once.”

What are the stakes?

Boyd said he has access to the county GOP’s membership rolls, but without use of front-facing social media accounts and finances, long-term planning and strategy is difficult.

“That’s not doing to deter us from what needs to be done, it just makes our work a little bit more of a challenge but it’s not going to stop us from doing what we need to do,” Boyd said.

Slagle, along with the group’s vice chairman, executive committee chairwoman, secretary and interim treasurer all announced Sept. 12 they’d be stepping down.

The S.C. GOP on Sept. 15 accepted their resignations, but two weeks later, Slagle said he’d be staying on as chairman during a fiery executive committee peppered with obscenities that was ultimately cut short by what Slagle called “disrupters.”

Members of the county’s executive committee who back Slagle plan to meet November 7 to fill those empty leadership slots while accepting his chairmanship. Boyd took over the party by getting a quorum of its executive committee to back him. Slagle was not in attendance at that Oct. 11 meeting and his name was not offered as a candidate.

Boyd, an attorney, said Slagle’s accusations of a coup — defined as a “sudden, violent and illegal seizure of power” — is unfounded.

“The legal issues are pretty clear,” Boyd said. “I don’t know exactly where this dispute is going. We’re not really asking the state party to intervene, but the (Horry County) GOP doesn’t get to just say it’s an independent legal entity.”

Coming midterm election

With midterm elections two weeks away, Boyd said anything that distracts from getting Grand Strand Republicans elected is a concern.

“There are more important issues than this infighting,” he said.

S.C. GOP spokeswoman Claire Brady said state party officials won’t do business with Slagle or anyone else who submitted their resignation.

“You can’t rescind a resignation and pretend it didn’t happen — especially when you send notification to local press of your resignation, and then proceed to get confirmation from the state party that we received your resignation,” she wrote Monday in an email.

“The state party recognizes the chairman and state executive committeeman who were appropriately elected by the county executive committee to fill the vacancies created when the previous leadership resigned.”