Russell Fry shared a stage with Donald Trump on Saturday. Will it be enough for victory?
Will sharing a stage with Donald Trump boost Russell Fry enough to oust U.S. Rep. Tom Rice?
That’s the big question for the state lawmaker after Saturday’s cold, damp assembly in Florence.
Both he and Trump went all in to convince a crowd of several thousand die-hard Trump supporters that they should pick Fry over Rice in the state’s 7th Congressional District race.
“Thankfully this June you have the chance to dump these grand-standing losers and replace them with two rock-solid America First champions,” Trump told the crowd. “Russell is a conservative warrior who will give no quarter to the socialist left.”
Toward the end of Trump’s hour-long speech, he brought Fry and Katie Arrington — whom he’s endorsed against U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace — on stage.
“It’s like I said earlier, on June 14 it’s our turn to vote and on June 14 here in the 7th Congressional District, we’re going to vote to impeach Tom Rice at the ballot box,” Fry told the crowd with Trump standing by his side.
The two shook hands several times.
Thousands of Trump supporters gathered in a field near the Florence Regional Airport to rally for South Carolina Republicans and bolster the campaigns of Fry and Arrington, a former state lawmaker who’s challenging Mace in the 1st Congressional District that covers the greater Charleston area.
Trump put the spotlight on Fry and Arrington as part of a broader effort to run his critics out of public office.
Rice drew Trump’s and conservative voters’ ire after he joined Democrats and nine other Republicans last year in voting to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Horry County and South Carolina Republicans swiftly censured him for his vote, and a crowded field of challengers lined up to oust him. Trump on Saturday pointed out the rebuke as further evidence of Rice’s disloyalty.
Rice has argued that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 violated the U.S. Constitution and that he backed Trump 94% of the time prior to Jan. 6. He’s said the GOP should stick with Trump’s policies but abandon Trump personally.
Fry, though, has played up the impeachment vote, cutting an ad that dropped days ahead of the rally painting Rice as a villain and out of touch with South Carolina’s conservative values.
Since the impeachment vote, Trump has targeted Republicans who voted against him or have criticized him, including Rice, R-Myrtle Beach, and Mace, R-Daniel Island, in South Carolina. Last year, he said he would support “good and smart” candidates who challenge them.
In a statement ahead of Saturday’s rally, Trump referred to Rice as “doesn’t have a clue Tom Rice.”
Rice hit back at both Trump and Fry in his own remarks, issued shortly after Trump left the stage.
“Trump is here because, like no one else I’ve ever met, he is consumed by spite,” Rice said. “I took one vote he didn’t like and now he’s chosen to support a yes man candidate who has and will bow to anything he says, no matter what.”
He went on to describe Fry as a Republican politician who “supports political violence in Ukraine or in the United States Capitol, who supports party over country, who supports a would-be tyrant over the Constitution, and who makes decisions based solely on reelection.”
By contrast, he pitched himself as a “congressman who cowers to no man, who votes for what is right, even when it’s hard, and who has fought like hell for the Grand Strand and Pee Dee.”
Fry won Trump’s endorsement last month. Just prior to that, Fry said in a Facebook video that the 2020 election was “rigged,” a claim he hadn’t made prior in his congressional race but one that earned him the backing of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Saturday.
On stage Saturday, Fry, a state representative, delivered the most high-profile speech of his nearly decade-old political career, using some of his strongest language yet to go after Rice, calling him a “slimy reptile” and part of the Washington establishment.
“For years, he talked conservative at home, but as soon as he got back to Washington and crawled in with the swamp, he sided with Nancy Pelosi,” Fry said of Rice. “And when the stakes were highest, when called upon to make the most consequential vote that any Congressman can make, Tom Rice voted to impeach Donald Trump.”
Fry a rising star in the GOP
Fry has been an up-and-coming political star in South Carolina over the past decade. A Republican from Surfside Beach, he joined the Statehouse in September 2015 after winning a special election. He was 30 years old. An attorney by trade, he graduated law school in 2011 and then served as the chairman of the Grand Strand Young Republicans in 2012. He joined the leadership of the Horry County Republican Party after that.
In the House, Fry rose through the ranks and became Chief Majority Whip for the Republicans. He’s worked on legislation to prevent opioid addictions and had a hand in the open carry and fetal heartbeat laws that passed last year.
Some conservatives in the 7th district, though, have said they don’t like Fry. They view him as too politically similar to Rice.
After Fry won Trump’s endorsement, some conservatives protested. Insurance agent Drexel Drew, for example, printed and put up signs around Horry County reading, “Trump endorsed Fry but Fry’s not the guy.”
School board Chairman Ken Richardson, another candidate vying for Rice’s seat, said Trump “pissed his endorsement away.”
And on Saturday, some rally attendees said they came for Trump, but not Fry.
“I never liked him from the start,” said Lynn Newsome, who sells Trump gear at a shop on S.C. 151. “To me, a vote for Russell Fry will be nothing more than a vote for Tom Rice.”
As if to emphasize the point that not all 7th District voters are currently behind Fry, another candidate in the race, Barbara Arthur, purchased space on a large billboard directly in front of the airport, ensuring everyone who attended saw it.
When Fry gave his own speech earlier on Saturday, the state lawmaker took equal shots at Rice and President Joe Biden. He slammed Rice for siding with Democrats on Trump’s second impeachment vote.
He smacked Biden for the economic inflation that’s raised prices on everyday goods, from gasoline to groceries.
“Folks like you and me don’t have time to play a guessing game when we go to the store,” he said. “And can you even afford it with Biden-flation?”
He told the crowd the Biden administration had “turned your tax dollars into a permanent ATM.”
“We’re stuck paying the price because of their failure to lead,” he said.
‘We have to defeat the RINOs’
Trump said on stage Fry is positioned to help redefine the Republican agenda, praising him as a sturdy, reliable conservative voice who can be relied on.
“Before we can defeat the Democrats and socialists and Communists at the ballot box this fall, we first have to defeat the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and grandstanders in the primaries later this year,” Trump said. “Unfortunately for the patriots of South Carolina, you currently have two atrocious RINOs.”
“They’re bad people in the House who went to Washington, sold you out and partnered with the Democrats to stab the Republican Party, and frankly to stab our country, in the back,” Trump said of Rice and Mace.
Trump ridiculed Rice, saying he had no respect among his peers and deserves to see his political career end.
“He said, ‘I didn’t know when I voted to impeach president Trump I was committing political suicide,” and you know that’s exactly what happened and hopefully it’ll be true,” Trump said.
Though Gov. Henry McMaster and South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick remained neutral during their speeches Saturday, other speakers boosted Fry and Arrington.
Graham Allen, a conservative media personality and former candidate in the 7th District race, said it was Republicans’ “moral obligation to get these weak-spined, RINO Republicans out of office.”
Even Lou Holtz, the former Gamecock’s legendary football coach, weighed in. He said Republicans need to make “good choices.”
“We have two wonderful people here today, we have Mr. Fry and Ms. Arrington. We need to give the people in Washington, the proper people, the backbone to care about this country and what’s going to happen,” he said.
But all of that support could prove meaningless in a primary race as crowded as it is right now. After all, incumbents tend to win if too many challengers split the vote.
That’s why, in his race for Congress, Fry is banking on Trump’s support in part to “coalesce” voters around his challenge to Rice.
“Donald Trump has made his choice, have you made yours? Are we voting for Tom Rice or are we voting for Russell Fry?” he asked the crowd Saturday. “I’m proud to have President Trump’s endorsement and I’d be proud to have yours, too.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2022 at 9:54 PM.
