In Horry GOP, a lawsuit has bitterly divided the party. Now, some want new leadership
The ranks of Horry County’s Republican Party have grown bitterly divided in recent weeks with some members calling on the current leadership to step down following a defamation lawsuit accusing leaders of defaming a disruptor at a June GOP convention in Greenville.
“They should resign, these people are horrible. If you don’t agree with them, they go after you on Facebook, they doxx people,” said June Avinger, a member of the Horry County GOP’s executive committee, representing a precinct from the Red Hill community. “They talk about unity but it’s unity that they want if you agree with them, otherwise there is no unity.”
Over the past week, several dozen members of the executive committee, have attempted to reach a quorum to censure the current leadership — Chairman Roger Slagle, Vice Chairman Jeremy Halpin and State Executive Committeewoman Tracy “Beanz” Diaz — but have failed so far. The party currently has about 90 members of the executive committee, each representing an Horry County voting precinct, and a simple majority is needed to hold a formal party meeting and take votes, including one to censure.
But so incensed are party leaders that they were able to use a parliamentary procedure — in which a third non-quorum meeting in a row is considered a quorum — to pass a resolution calling on leadership to resign. That vote happened Saturday with a little more than 30 party members present. The group of executive committee members who are upset with party leadership met on Monday, Thursday and Saturday last week to reach the three-meeting limit to use the procedure.
The members of the executive committee have pursued a rebuke of party leadership because party rules don’t contain procedures to remove members or leadership, regardless of circumstances. Still, some in the party want the leaders removed.
“If there was ever a reason for them to be removed from these positions, it’s because of this,” said former Horry County GOP chair Dreama Purdue at Thursday’s meeting.
Both Slagle and Halpin did not respond to requests for comment on the calls for their removal. Diaz, in a statement, said she, Slagle and Halpin would not resign and said she wished “the vocal minority would join with us...rather than attempt to destroy all of the amazing growth we’ve had this past year.”
“It’s very unfortunate that a small group won’t allow the justice system to work as intended and are calling for our resignation immediately after a frivolous and politically motivated lawsuit is filed. Imagine if Donald Trump had resigned when the small group called for it at the start of the Mueller probe?” Diaz wrote. “We fully intend to remain in our positions and work hard to ensure the Republican Party is successful in Horry County.”
Why the party is divided
Why the Horry County Republican Party is bitterly divided stems from tensions that have been broiling in the party for months now, as well as the defamation lawsuit the party and its leadership are currently facing. The suit is based in large part on a statement Slagle, Halpin and Diaz penned and attributed to the party as a whole, and the attorney suing the party, Tucker Player of Columbia, has said he’ll bring individual defamation lawsuits against each member of the party’s executive committee if Slagle, Halpin and Diaz decline to resign. That demand has some party members blaming the leadership for potentially getting them sued.
Beginning in February last year, some party members began raising concerns about a credit card tied to the party’s bank account and used by Purdue. Members then voted to revoke Purdue’s use of the card, though she continued using it for party expenses. Then, in March, members again raised concerns about the card and called on Purdue to stop using the card and provide receipts for the purchases she’d made. Purdue said at the time that she didn’t have receipts for all of the spending but only spent the money on party-related expenses like the group’s website and funeral flowers for both a former chairman and significant donor who both passed away.
At the time, the Horry GOP was beginning its biennial reorganization process, and Purdue told The Sun News then that she felt the concerns about the credit card were being raised in part because some party members wanted her out of leadership.
“We are in the middle of reorganization and I will probably be out of the whole party thing,” she said in March. “They want me removed so that they can gain control through the convention.”
As the reorganization process continued, the local conservative activist and former right-wing radio show host Chad Caton helped lead an effort to field candidates to run for chair, vice chair and state executive committee representative. At the time, some moderate members of the county GOP worried that if Caton’s effort was successful, far-right conservatives would take over the party and potentially run them out. Ultimately, Caton was successful, and the slate of candidates he supported and helped host events for — Slagle, Halpin and Diaz — won at the party’s convention in April. A number of new executive committee members were also selected at the April convention, and party members celebrated the fact that their ranks had grown.
But the party has had a rocky few months since the convention.
“Ever since this leadership team has gotten in place we’ve had crisis management,” Mike Connett, a member of the executive committee, said at a recent meeting.
Connett cited a recent conflict over whether or not the party needed to file a state ethics form, and a recent push by party leadership to censure South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick. In the later case, members of the Greenville County GOP called for an audit of the reorganization election, found that there had been irregularities in the process and called for the newly elected leaders to resign, which they ultimately did. Following those events, McKissick made derogatory comments about the local party to The Post & Courier newspaper which angered members of the Horry County party.
Diaz earlier this month called McKissick’s comments “disgusting” and said he was “dividing the GOP.” Slagle added that if McKissick could criticize the Greenville County GOP and signal that the state party may not work with leaders there, he could do the same thing in Horry County.
“I think any time the people in elected positions make statements which are violating rules and/or not just calling people out, but basically calling them names like lepers and (saying) it’s going to be a dumpster fire, then yes I think there is a concern that he may do very similar things in other counties,” Slagle said earlier this month.
But the vote to censure McKissick was narrow, with only a slim majority of executive committee members voting in favor of it. To members like Connett, pursuits like the censure vote don’t demonstrate good leadership.
“That to me is not leadership, that is chaos and as a result of it we now have us and them, it’s the craziest damn thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” he said at a meeting last week. “I’m a Republican, I’m here to grow the party. Tell me one thing this leadership team has done to help us beat the Democratic party next year.”
The defamation lawsuit
As things stand now, the core of the divide in the Horry County Republican Party is a defamation lawsuit filed by Clemson man Matthew McDaniel who says he was assaulted by Caton and others at a recent GOP convention in Greenville and later defamed in statements made by leaders of the Horry County GOP and the Greenville County GOP.
The convention was the “Rock the Red” event, a once-Tea Party-affiliated conference that has morphed into a gathering of the most conservative wing of the South Carolina Republican Party. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was the keynote speaker at the event held in early June, and, following his speech, McDaniel grabbed a microphone and called him “the biggest scumbag traitor in the history of this country, next to Donald Trump,” according to McDaniel’s lawsuit.
Before McDaniel could finish speaking, he was “grabbed,” then “slammed” to the ground by Caton. McDaniel claims in his lawsuit that he was then kept in a “horse-collar grip” as he was lifted back up, knocked to the floor again, and pushed out the door of the hotel ballroom where the the event was held. Caton has said he worried McDaniel was a threat to Flynn or others in the room and acted to quash a potential attack. Caton has not responded to phone calls or text messages from The Sun News seeking comment on the incident or the lawsuit.
The day after the incident, video of the encounter surfaced online and a Myrtle Beach blogger published it, criticizing and denouncing Caton in the process. Responding to that blog post and other online articles describing Caton as “body slamming” McDaniel, Slagle, Halpin and Diaz penned a statement defending Caton and criticizing McDaniel, and posted it on the party’s website.
In their statement, the three county party leaders described McDaniel as having infiltrated the event and said he posed a threat to Flynn. The statement also called him a member of Antifa — a broad term for anti-fascist activists who often attend protests — and said he had a weapon. McDaniel, in his lawsuit, denied all of those accusations and said those descriptions defamed him. In an interview, McDaniel said he’s been the target of online trolls because of the statement.
In part because the statement was posted on the party’s website, the Horry County GOP is named as a defendant in McDaniel’s lawsuit.
Several days after McDaniel and his attorney, Player, filed the lawsuit, Player wrote a letter to the members of the Horry County GOP executive committee saying that he would drop the county party from the lawsuit if Slagle, Halpin and Diaz removed it from the site, issued a retraction and resigned from their positions. If they chose not to comply, Player wrote, he would bring defamation lawsuits against each member of the executive committee.
That’s now led to several dozen party leaders calling on the leadership to resign so they and the party can avoid being sued.
“The current team who issued the letter needlessly put the organization in harms way,” Reese Boyd III, an attorney and radio show host who ran against Slagle for chairman, said last week. “You can have a debate about whether the letter that they published...whether it’s 100% accurate or 100% defamatory to the plaintiff...(but) the real question is why the eff did they do it to begin with? They needlessly put the organization in harms way for no reason.”
An attorney representing the Horry County GOP, as well as Slagle, Halpin and Diaz, pushed back in a letter of his own last week, though. In it, attorney Jason Greaves of the Washington D.C.-area Binnell Law Group, called McDaniel’s lawsuit “politically motivated and frivolous” and said McDaniel was “not the victim.” In the event Player does file lawsuits against members of the executive committee, Greaves said he’ll move to dismiss those suits and sanction Player for filing them.
Still, some members of the executive committee are upset. Member John Bonsignore said the party leadership needs to do a better job at acting on behalf of the whole party, rather than only part of it.
“The bottom line is they did something they should not have done and they got carried away with their importance and they thought nobody was going to object to it and they were wrong,” he said. “They thought they had a majority and they didn’t.”
Continuing harm to the local party
As conflicts continue to roil the Horry County GOP, some members are beginning to worry that the party will be too seriously divided to adequately raise money and turn out voters for local and statewide elections next year. Though Horry County is still considered a Republican stronghold in South Carolina, one fear is that a suppressed voter turnout, caused by the party infighting, could allow Democratic candidate for governor Joe Cunningham to prevail over Gov. Henry McMaster. Sen. Tim Scott (R-North Charleston) is also up for reelection next year.
“If we don’t get to work on 2022 we’re going to get beat and what we’re doing right now plays right into Joe Cunningham’s game plan,” Boyd said. “We’re doing his work for him.”
Connett agreed.
“They’ve done nothing but basically eat our young,” he said. “Everything has been a disaster that we have to (manage). And...that’s not the way we’re going to get people to come to these meetings.”
Shannon Grady, a member of the executive committee and leader of the Horry County Republican Women’s Club who’s called for the local party leaders to resign, said she thinks individual party members will still work to make 2022 a successful year for Republicans, but said those efforts would be stronger if it weren’t for the infighting.
“It’s unfortunate we can’t work hand in glove with the party but there are other groups,” she said. “I don’t think Tracy or Roger or Jeremy are out to destroy us, I think they believe they’re draining the swamp. It’s just the people they’re calling swamp aren’t the swamp.”
Purdue, the former party chair, said she worried about the local GOP making it through 2022 in one piece.
“I truthfully don’t know that our party can hold steady for two years,” she said. “But let’s all agree to be there and hold it together as much as we possibly can.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify a parliamentary procedure used by members of the Horry County Republican Party’s Executive Committee.
This story was originally published August 2, 2021 at 10:58 AM.
