In Myrtle Beach, GOP bickering leads to two competing political events on same weekend
Internal political fighting between the South Carolina Republican Party and the Horry County Republican Party is now spilling over into Myrtle Beach event venues.
For several months now, state party leaders have been planning a GOP conference for Myrtle Beach — called “First in the South” — meant to attract national Republican figures and 2024 presidential hopefuls. Speakers like Florida Sen. Rick Scott, former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus are currently booked as speakers.
The Horry County GOP, including the local party’s representative to Columbia, Tracy “Beanz” Diaz, have said party members have sought to work with the state officials to host and staff the event, but have been brushed aside. Diaz has said she views the move as a rejection of the local party, and evidence the state party doesn’t like or care about Republicans along the Grand Strand.
“Our county party leadership has been reaching out to the SCGOP leadership to assist them with this event for the past several months. They’ve completely ignored our requests. We wanted to come together in the spirit of unity,” Diaz wrote in a long post on the social media website Telegram, which is popular among conservatives. “So, you’ve got an SCGOP event, in OUR COUNTY, and the leadership of the SCGOP has decided the ‘unwashed’ can’t be involved with it.”
In response to the perceived slight, Diaz wrote, she and other local Republicans are instead helping to put on a different GOP conference the same weekend.
The South Carolina GOP, though, said there was no slight, and that the party was planning all along to organize and host the event without local help. In fact, a party spokesperson said, the party chose Myrtle Beach as the location for the event as part of “a concerted effort to spread love to other parts of the state.”
Conservative personalities Diamond & Silk, unsuccessful U.S. House candidate Kim Klacik and “Uncle Si” from the television show “Duck Dynasty” are all featured speakers at the event, billed as the “I Pledge Allegiance Tour.” Diaz is also slated to speak, as is South Carolina Rep. Jonathon Hill (R-Townville) who represents part of Anderson County.
The SCGOP’s event, called “The First in the South Republican Action Conference” will be held at the Marriott Grand Dunes in Myrtle Beach from Oct. 29-31. The “I Pledge Allegiance” gathering will be held Oct. 29 at the John T. Rhodes Myrtle Beach Sports Center, about seven miles away.
In her post on Telegram, Diaz went onto say that the state GOP offered to help promote the “I Pledge Allegiance” event if the organizers removed one of the speakers, though she didn’t say who. Organizers complied, Diaz wrote, but the state party then revoked its offer to help promote the event. Because of the conflict, Diaz wrote, she was encouraging Republicans in Horry County to attend the “I Pledge Allegiance” event rather than the state GOP event.
“So, WE are helping with his event, because guess what? The establishment GOP doesn’t like you. They don’t like me. They despise us and all we stand for. I will be speaking at the event because I’ve got a lot to say about a lot of things,” she wrote.
Diaz added: “...We need to pack this ‘I Pledge Allegiance’ tour FULL of brave, passionate, American patriots. Let’s show the establishment what we are capable of. Let’s make sure this event is amazing while they hang out down the road with their (pinkies) up in the air. I need you all - I don’t ask for much. Come out and support.”
But Claire Brady, a spokesperson for the SCGOP, said Diaz and other Horry County party members viewing the state party’s behavior as a slight were misinterpreting things. Brady said it’s common for county parties to put on events that the state GOP is not involved in and for the state party to organize events that local parties aren’t part of.
“We want county party members to attend and get trained, not put it on,” she said. “I guess their confusion and frustration is because they haven’t been around long enough to understand that. We have had multiple county parties or activists reach out to us about volunteering and we haven’t said yes or no to anyone because we want people to come and get trained.”
Earlier controversies led to the current rift
The rift between the state party and local party is not the first this year.
Beginning earlier this year, groups of party activists in Horry and Greenville counties began organizing to take over leadership positions in their local GOP organizations. Those groups ultimately promoted and supported the attorney Lin Wood in his campaign to oust SCGOP Chairman Drew McKissick, though McKissick won handily.
Throughout both efforts, the activists decried current Republican leadership, both in the party and among the ranks of elected officials as RINOs, or “Republicans In Name Only.” The activists claimed that current leaders weren’t listening to the base of voters that supported them, and were backing ideas and policies that ran against conservative values.
In Horry County, the insurgent wing of the party swept a spring reorganization election, winning all three local party leadership positions and adding similarly-aligned members to the party’s executive committee. Similar efforts in Greenville County failed initially, but a vote audit activists demanded eventually found issues with the process. The elected leaders resigned and the activists took over control.
All of that led to McKissick making comments to the Post & Courier newspaper about the Greenville County party in which he decried the messy takeover.
“It will fall into a state of disrepair, become a complete dumpster fire and essentially be a leper colony for the next year and a half,” McKissick told the Post & Courier in July.
Those comments angered the Horry County leadership, and less than a week later — at a rancorous meeting of the executive committee — the party voted to censure McKissick for his comments.
Then, last weekend, Diaz was in Miami to accept an award at a pro-Trump conference called AmpFest, which was hosted at Trump’s Doral resort. While on stage, Diaz claimed she and other conservative activists had “taken over” the GOP in South Carolina.
“We took over the Republican Party in South Carolina, I don’t know if you guys know that. We kicked out the RINO bitches,” Diaz said.
Those comments and past actions rankled both the state party as well as Republicans in Horry County.
“We’ve seen public displays of annoyance from them…they’ve made it clear that they don’t want to work with us,” Brady said. “They say sometimes, ‘We want to come together for unity, we’re getting stonewalled,’ and then in the same breath they call people bitches.”
Brady added: “We have bigger fish to fry than a county party fighting. We’re kind of over the name calling.”
For her part, Diaz said Thursday she wished the state party would have more clearly communicated to her and other local leaders that they didn’t want or need help organizing the “First in the South” convention. But, she said, the state party has ignored their efforts to reach out.
“That would be fine if they would have let us know, but they have just not responded to any of our communications,” she said.
Diaz also said she was surprised to see people get offended by her “RINO bitches” comment. She said all party members should want so-called “Republicans In Name Only” out of the party.
“If you’re not a RINO Bitch you have nothing to worry about…if you take offense to it, what does that say about you? Guilty conscience (if) you’re going to take it personally,” she said.
Where the GOP goes from here
On the whole, though, Diaz said she wishes the Horry County GOP and the state party could have a healthy and functioning relationship. The two are working toward similar goals, she said, and the two organizations should be able to work together.
“It just gets worse and worse to know more and more that the establishment party here does not want the American people involved, it hurts,” she said. “We have goals to accomplish and things we need to do and we’ll continue doing those things.”
For others in the Horry County party, the fighting between the local and state party is unproductive at best, and dangerous at worst. Gerri McDaniel, a longtime political operative in Horry County and South Carolina who held Diaz’s position last year, said the state party was right to want to ignore the local party.
“You slap them in the face, you talk crap about them for six months…and then you want to cry tears,” she said. “I don’t think (the SCGOP) is giving them the time of day because it’s all covered.”
McDaniel added that the effort to run out so-called “RINOs” from the Republican party is happening in other states, too. She views it as a force dividing the party.
“You can’t treat people like that. People need to have a voice, you need to be able to have discussions, and…people who have been here so long no longer have a voice,” she said. “That’s just not the way it should be. I don’t want to see us go backwards.”
