Brenda Bethune wins: Myrtle Beach mayor reelected to second term, besting 4 challengers
Myrtle Beach Mayor Brenda Bethune cruised to an easy victory Tuesday to win a second term, besting four challengers who sought to steer the popular tourist destination in different directions.
Commanding a significant lead over the four opponents early in the evening, Bethune’s total only grew as boxes of voting equipment were wheeled into the Myrtle Beach City Council Chambers, tallied and displayed on a large screen.
By 8:30 p.m., Bethune was declared the winner. She ultimately won nearly 3,289 votes out of 5,888 votes that had been counted as of Tuesday evening. A small amount of provisional ballots, fewer than five, will be counted later in the week, city spokesperson Mark Kruea said.
Coming in second place behind Bethune was the photographer Gene Ho, who won 1,155 votes. And just behind Ho was businessman Bill McClure, who won only two fewer votes, with 1,153. Former police officer Tammie Durant won 199 votes, while former firefighter C.D. Rozsa won just 84 votes.
Voter turnout was 21.7% on Tuesday, Kruea said.
Ho, a pro-Trump photographer who worked for the former president — and who had endorsed the QAnon conspiracy theory both prior to his run and on the campaign trail — was among Bethune’s more significant challenges.
Tuesday night, at the restaurant 44th and King, Bethune watched election returns come in and celebrated with supporters.
“I’m excited, I’m ready to get back to work, ready to focus on continuing a lot of things we started,” Bethune told The Sun News on Tuesday. “I’m just so grateful to the community, to the voters, to my volunteers, especially to my husband who has been right by my side through all of this. I’m just ready to get back to work and focus on continuing to make Myrtle Beach better.”
Bethune declined to address her victory over Ho directly on Tuesday, but said she was proud that she’d run “a clean, honest campaign with integrity.” She said she expected that she would have to face a run-off election, but was grateful she earned enough votes to avoid one. Ho did not respond to a message seeking comment on Tuesday.
Voters view homelessness, downtown redevelopment as major issues for Bethune
At polling locations around the city, voters appeared eager to give Bethune another four years in office.
“I want to give her another chance to continue to do what she wants to do to help our city,” Joyce O’Ryan, who voted at the Base Recreation Center, said.
Before decades of retirees and others seeking the Grand Strand would move here in waves, O’Ryan came to Myrtle Beach via an older route: She was born in Louisiana, raised in England and then came to Myrtle Beach nearly 50 years ago when her father was transferred to the Air Force Base here.
O’Ryan said she likes how Bethune has handled public safety issues, and that she’s enjoyed seeing the development of the Market Commons area. But with Bethune now serving another term, O’Ryan said she’d like to see the mayor focus on redeveloping the downtown area.
“I’m getting a little impatient with downtown renovation and I’m ready for her to make a big move, her and city council and city hall, to jump on it,” she said.
One issue that energized voters as they headed to the polls on Tuesday was homelessness in downtown Myrtle Beach. Ho, on the campaign trail, made bold statements about how he would “flush” crime and homelessness away and clean up the city.
“On day one after I get elected, I’m going to go downtown, look at the drug dealers in their eye and say, ‘You’ve got 45 days to get out of here!’” Ho said at an Oct. 6 candidates forum.
But such an idea didn’t resonate with all voters.
“When you have homeless people you can’t just get rid of them and that was his thing, ‘We’re just going to get rid of them,’” said Joe Phillips, 67. “Well, where are you going to put them? You can’t drop them off in Conway. Dillon has their problems.”
Voters like Philips weren’t sure what the best solution was — dedicated low-income housing, shelters, a police force that helped direct unhoused individuals to resources — but they said they hoped Bethune could come up with a good fix.
Phillips lives in the Market Commons area of Myrtle Beach and said Ho’s stance on issues of crime and homelessness turned him off.
“(Ho) just wants to get rid of some people and I know in his heart that’s not the way he meant it but it’s the way he said it,” Phillips said. “And so I took him out.”
Catherine Hudson, who was the last voter at the city fire station on 38th Avenue, said she viewed homelessness as a significant problem and believed Bethune could take a humane approach to such issues.
She said she liked that Bethune was a fiscal conservative but was pro-LGBT.
Renee Mozingo agreed.
“There was nothing I didn’t like” about Bethune’s first term, she said.
O’Ryan described herself as “not a defund the police (supporter)“ but “definitely a reorganize the police (supporter)“ and said she would like to see Bethune come up with a humane solution for unhoused residents.
“We need somewhere for the homeless, you can’t just boot them out of there, you’ve got to have somewhere for them to go, to rehabilitate them, to transition them,” O’Ryan said. “I definitely want to see some clean up.”
Bethune on Tuesday said she’d focus on downtown revitalization, crime and homelessness in her second term.
“We’re on a great trajectory with that and we’ll continue on that same path,” she said about plans for the city’s downtown. She said residents would begin to see new projects come to life early in her second term.
She said the city would continue with a number of local partners to aid unhoused people.
Other voters Tuesday said they were concerned with the city’s rapid growth, and suggested Bethune could do more to reign in developers.
“I wish they would control the construction a little bit only because there’s so much of it and do we have a plan?” said Barb Perian, who voted for Bethune. “I don’t want to stop people from moving here but I think we need to get a plan of what we’re doing with it, it seems just willy-nilly and (there’s) not a plan about it.”
Ho’s supporters, detractors and ties to QAnon
Some voters on Tuesday, though, said they were ready for a fresh face in the mayor’s office, and voted for Ho.
Ho announced that he was running for mayor nearly a year ago, and defined himself as a figure in the Trump-world orbit who was also a Myrtle Beach local and understood intimately the issues facing the city. Ho, originally from Long Island, New York, moved to Myrtle Beach after high school, attended Coastal Carolina University and later started a career as a professional photographer. He ran a successful photography studio for several years before signing on to work as a campaign photographer for former President Donal Trump in 2015.
That experience ultimately served as Ho’s entrance into Trump’s orbit and he’d go on to write a book about his experience on the campaign trail, comparing Trump to various biblical figures.
As he ran for mayor, Ho was no stranger to controversy. Shortly after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol Building, Ho said he was in Washington D.C. that day, but didn’t participate in any part of the violence. Ho would later participate in the “Health and Freedom Tour” which warned attendees against receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and spread other misinformation about the deadly pandemic. Ho’s ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory — which alleges that powerful elites and Democrats are engaged in child sex trafficking and that Trump was on a missing to bring them to justice — also emerged.
Prior to his run for mayor, Ho had spoken on podcasts and at rallies endorsing some of the darkest tenets of the conspiracy theory, including that elites were trafficking people and children and harvesting chemicals from their blood for health benefits.
“This whole thing of what we’re doing is all about blood. Q says constantly, ‘Check the blood lines,’” Ho told a crowd at a QAnon rally in Washington D.C. — held on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2019 — according to a recording of his speech published as part of the QAnon Anonymous podcast. “We know they’ve been misusing blood with the adrenochrome and all this stuff. But ultimately, ultimately what this is about, it’s about blood.”
On the campaign trail and on social media during his run, Ho declined to denounce the conspiracy, which has earned him money via speaking fees. One such speaking fee, from an event known as “Q Con Live” was listed on his campaign finance forms.
In recent Facebook post, Ho said he “deeply respect(s) those in the Q community.”
But Ho’s alliance with the conspiracy theory didn’t sit well with some voters. Others felt that he was following too closely in Trump’s footsteps.
“You could have taken word-by-word and it sounded like it was coming out of Trump’s mouth,” Mark Perian, who moved from Pittsburgh to Myrtle Beach in 2015, said of Ho’s performance at a recent mayoral debate. “Too radical. Way too radical. It was inappropriate.”
“QAnon? Forget it,” added Perian’s wife, Barb.
Other voters said they were so concerned by Ho that they came out to vote against him, rather than for Bethune.
Allen Barbee said that he’s mindful that politics is often controlled by “old white men” and that he tries to vote for more diverse candidates when he feels they’re qualified. He ultimately picked Bethune for mayor.
“I was torn actually, a little bit, but she’s doing okay,” he said. “(Ho) was on the Trump train. I’m not an anti-Trumper but I’m trying to vote based on politics and issues and a lot of the issues I saw and...I just felt that someone that closely associated with that camp wasn’t what I was looking for.”
But Ho did manage to swing some people into his camp and against Bethune. Joe Ferment, from the Emmens Preserve neighborhood, said he liked Ho’s stance on crime and public safety issues.
“It’s just a no-nonsense stand on it, he’s just not going to tolerate it. I think that’s the number one issue in Myrtle Beach right now, every week you hear about another shooting,” Ferment, 73, said. “I think (Bethune) had four years and I haven’t seen a lot.”
Doug Farthing, who lives in the Sea Gate neighborhood, said his main concerns are crime and corruption among public officials, two things he felt a vote for Ho could fix.
“I liked his stand with police and fire,” Farthing, 76, said. “My big problem, I came down here in 2003 and it was the good old boys network. I’ve seen some instances where there’s obvious conflicts as far as I’m concerned, the lack of transparency.”
Ho scores endorsements
In the final days of his campaign, Ho also scored endorsements from a number of conservative figures, both locally and nationally.
The conservative media personalities Diamond and Silk (real names Ineitha Lynnette Hardaway and Herneitha Rochelle Hardaway Richardson) announced they were backing Ho, and billboards broadcasting their support were hung in the city. Ho has worked as a photographer for the sisters and has appeared at events with them.
And “Duck Dynasty’s” Uncle Si Robertson endorsed Ho, who appeared with Ho at a conservative political rally in Myrtle Beach over the weekend.
And a local political figure, John Gallman, who challenged state Sen. Luke Rankin for his seat last year, warned voters against supporting Bethune. Gallman didn’t endorse Ho outright, but warned heavily in a nearly 18-minute video on Facebook that Bethune held “radical” ideas.
Gallman’s criticism stemmed from comments Bethune made at a recent candidate forum hosted by a local NAACP chapter. There, Bethune noted that people should “love everyone” despite differences in race, sexual orientation or gender identity.
“It’s about having empathy and respect for others, that’s how we get equity, diversity and inclusion,” Bethune said. “And it’s not just about race, it’s about sexual preferences, it’s about if a child decides if they want to be a male or a female, it’s about loving everyone.”
But Gallman called that an “outrageous” idea.
“For someone to espouse the idea that a child...should choose their own gender is outrageous folks, it is outrageous,” Gallman said, according to the video. “So whether you believe in the Chamber of Commerce, or don’t believe in what the Chamber is doing, or believe in I-73 or don’t believe in I-73, get off your rear end tomorrow and vote to protect children from a radical, radical, radical idea that God doesn’t know what he’s doing when he creates our children, because he does.”
Some voters, though, didn’t dip their toes into the controversy. They said Bethune was a clear choice.
“She grew up down here didn’t she? That’s what you need, you can’t have an outsider coming in because they don’t understand,” said Susan Guedes. “You need someone with grass roots.”
For other voters, the choice between Bethune and Ho was an easy choice.
“With Brenda, she already has experience, she already knows the ins and outs...I think because she already has the experience,” Joyce Maya, 65, said. “The other one, I don’t think just because you’re a photographer for a particular person, that doesn’t qualify you to be a mayor.”
The Sun News’ Jason Lee contributed to this story.
This story was originally published November 2, 2021 at 8:35 PM.
