Trump backs newly elected Horry County GOP slate, urges unity ahead of 2024 election
Republicans in South Carolina’s fastest growing county have spent more than a year battling for the future of the party in courthouses and on social media.
On Saturday, the GOP’s biggest name called for the fighting to end.
“We have no choice. We have to win this election. So we have a primary coming up. I know I can count on Horry County and everybody there,” former President Donald Trump said in a recorded message broadcast during the April 22 Horry County GOP convention. “This is an area that is just very special to me.”
For the next three hours, the word “unity” and its variations were uttered more than three dozen times as nearly 200 Horry County Republicans gathered to put a year of ugly political infighting to rest by nominating a new slate of officers.
Reese Boyd, a Conway attorney who was appointed interim chairman last October, was unanimously voted in for a full two-year term.
“We are working hard to unify this party, and we are going to continue to unify this party,” Boyd said. “We have received a lot of love, a lot of support. And we also have received an onslaught of relentless criticism from people who want to divide and divide and divide.”
Boyd was picked at a special meeting to replace former chairman Roger Slagle, who said Sept. 12 he planned to resign at month’s end but then changed his mind two weeks later.
By that time, however, the state Republican Party accepted Slagle’s departure and said he’d have to win re-election if his work was to resume.
S.C. GOP executive director Drew McKissick said Saturday fractures inside a key Republican stronghold were corrosive.
“We’ve got some people out there that don’t understand arithmetic. We understand in politics what works, addition and multiplication. Not subtraction and division,” he said. “Thank you for what you all have done to, for lack of a better way to put it, fix the problem.”
McKissick and Slagle have clashed several times over the past few years. In July 2021, Horry County’s GOP — then under Slagle’s control — censured him over comments McKissick made earlier in the summer as he fended off a challenge from Lin Wood, a former Trump attorney.
Slagle was then condemned by state party leaders last September over a failed attempt to stall the 2021 convention.
Despite his strong performance on Saturday, Boyd still faces hurdles. Namely fighting for access to the county GOP’s finances, membership rolls and website, all of which remain controlled by Slagle.
On Jan. 30, Magistrate Judge Bradley D. Meyers ordered several pieces of furniture, financial ledgers and internet passwords be turned over to Boyd and his leadership team.
U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, R-7th District, also threw his support behind Boyd on Saturday.
“For two years Horry County, one of the reddest counties in the state, has had an absent county party. Well, not anymore,” he said. “Let’s put personalities aside and get back to the business of having a vibrant county party in Horry County.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2023 at 3:07 PM.