Despite similar campaigns, Horry County Council District 3 candidates try to set themselves apart

The Republicans running for Horry County Council District 3 read from similar scripts.

All four come from working class backgrounds. A golf instructor. A retired police officer. A taxi driver. A repairman.

None of them have ever held public office and only one has even mounted a campaign before this year. There isn’t a bachelor’s degree in the bunch.

Their platforms are nearly identical. Each candidate wants the county to hire more police officers and pay the current force better salaries. Completing long overdue road projects in Carolina Forest also ranks high on each man’s to-do list.

Where Bob Kelly, Ethan Leyshon, Bubba Owens and Keith VanWinkle hope to distinguish themselves is with their personal stories, which they hope will resonate with voters on Tuesday.

Some candidates also contend that what isn’t in their backgrounds should set them apart. Owens has a criminal record and VanWinkle owes the State Ethics Commission more than $60,000.

Apart from Owens, the other candidates’ names rarely appear in court records, except for traffic violations. VanWinkle has a conviction for littering from 1999 and he was arrested in 2009 when he was stopped in Myrtle Beach for disregarding a stop sign and the officer discovered he was wanted on a bench warrant for failing to pay a fine for a ticket from 2007.

VanWinkle is the only candidate in the race whose name appears on the ethics commission’s debtors’ list, though he’s also the only one who previously sought public office.

Neither Owens nor VanWinkle denied what’s in public records. They also said their campaigns shouldn’t be characterized by those issues, though at least one of their opponents maintains their problems should be a red flag to voters.

The winner of the GOP primary will face Democrat Jimmy Washington, who has no primary opponent, in the Dec. 22 special election.

The race is being held to fill the seat vacated by Marion Foxworth, who stepped down in August to accept the position as the county’s register of deeds. Foxworth had held the post for nearly 14 years.

Here’s a snapshot of each candidate:

Bob Kelly

Kelly, 59, worked as a police officer for 25 years in New Jersey before retiring to Plantation Lakes in Carolina Forest about a decade ago.

He also served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army toward the end of the Vietnam War.

That background, he said, makes him the most qualified candidate to address the county’s public safety challenges.

Kelly said the county’s police and firefighters are underpaid and undertrained.

“I don’t like what I see,” he said. “Who better than me, with my law enforcement background, to sit there and try to effectively come up with a resolution?”

Although county officials gave Class 1 patrol officers a 5 percent raise earlier this year, the department’s entry level salaries are still nearly $2,000 below what the city of Myrtle Beach pays and about $5,000 less than what rookie officers make at the city of North Myrtle Beach, according to county records.

Kelly believes improving officer pay would reduce turnover.

“It’s hard to get people to come and work for us,” he said. “We need to do something where we’re going to be more competitive with the other towns and the other counties. ... Otherwise, they’re just going to keep going.”

Paying for those extra officers, however, would require generating additional revenues or making cuts in other departments. Kelly isn’t sure where the county would find the money.

“That’s hard to answer,” he said. “Because I’m not involved in the workings of anything that goes on at the county level.”

Another problem facing the district, he said, is a strained relationship between county and city officials. Kelly wants to change that.

“I want to try to be a bridge between the city and the county,” he said. “I don’t think that anybody in District 3 has accomplished that in quite some time.”

Kelly would also like to see more businesses in downtown Myrtle Beach and redevelopment on the south end of the city.

While he doesn’t have any specific plans for promoting development, he said he’s willing to work with city officials to accomplish that goal.

“The Five Points area needs to get businesses in there,” he said. “They need to clean that area up. And I think once they get that cleaned up, that will eliminate a lot of the crime that’s going on in there. ... There hasn’t been a push from the county to get that accomplished and that’s something I want to change.”

Along with his police background, Kelly said his lack of a criminal record is also “a big plus” in the race.

He added that VanWinkle’s ethics fines should raise concerns.

“Keith owes close to $62,000 to the ethics commission,” he said. “I’m sorry. A guy like that I don’t want sitting on the council.”

Kelly has never run for public office, but years ago he volunteered to serve on his homeowners’ association board. He stopped being involved when his wife was diagnosed with cancer.

“Throughout my life, I’ve served the public in one way or another,” he said. “After my wife passed, I had several years to reflect on that and now it’s time to give back to the community.”

Ethan Leyshon

At 29, Leyshon is the youngest candidate in the race.

An Iraq War veteran, the Morganton, N.C., native served in the U.S. Army for four years. He moved to Carolina Forest in 2011 to attend the Golf Academy of America.

Leyshon works part time as a golf instructor and is studying intelligence and national security at Coastal Carolina University. He said he’s running for council for two reasons.

“In the absence of someone of such stature as Marion Foxworth, who’s done so much great things for the third district, we need someone that can go in there and hit the ground running and tackle these issues that are here right now,” he said. “The second reason: I want to be a good example to veterans who are returning to civilian life to continue their service in any way that they can find.”

Like the other candidates, topping Leyshon’s campaign issues list are public safety and infrastructure.

To pay for more police, he suggested creating a dedicated funding source like the one the county has for fire service. That way, he said, the specific tax rate could be adjusted based on the department’s needs.

The county, he said, spends too much training officers to lose them to other agencies.

“We’re spending a large output up front to train these officers,” he said. “And after they’ve done it for a couple of years, they’ve made an economic decision to go elsewhere. We’ve got to, in a conservative way, plan to fix that problem over the next five to 10 years.”

If elected, he said he would focus on finishing International Drive and other road projects to alleviate congestion on U.S. 501.

Although public safety and roads are the signature issues of Leyshon’s campaign, he’s also interested in working with the Horry County legislative delegation to install a permanent veterans affairs officer for the county. The previous officer, Wendell Allen, retired over the summer. The delegation determines who gets the position.

“It’s very important that we hire someone that knows what they’re doing,” Leyshon said.

The veteran initially didn’t plan to run for the District 3 seat. He was hoping some other candidates would step in. But when he saw the current slate, he figured he would take a shot.

Although he’s a transplant, Leyshon said the Grand Strand is home.

“For a small town poor boy,” he said, “this was always paradise.”

Bubba Owens

Owens, 48, is the lone Myrtle Beach native in the race. He’s also the candidate who has faced the most scrutiny because of his criminal record.

Horry County court records show Owens was found guilty of criminal domestic violence during a bench trial in 1993. He pleaded guilty to unlawful use of a telephone in 1997.

His record also includes harassment, open container, business license and hospitality fee violations.

The most serious charge Owens faced came two years ago when he was accused of pointing a handgun at his longtime girlfriend and three other people during an argument and threatening to kill them, according to an Horry County police report.

Owens was charged with criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature, but the police report indicates those involved did not want to press charges. The case was dismissed in December 2013, according to court records.

Owens called the 2013 allegations unfounded.

“It never even made it past the courthouse steps,” he said. He is now engaged to his girlfriend.

As for the other cases, he said some of them stemmed from a previous marriage.

“Everybody’s got a past,” he said. “I went through a bad divorce. A lot of stuff on the public index, I was never tried for it or I was found guilty for it. ... I knew it was there. I knew it would come out. I know the truth about it. And if I had to sit down and explain it [to] somebody, it would take hours and hours.”

Owens insists he’s learned from his errors. He also noted that his record hasn’t prevented him from obtaining a license to sell liquor or qualifying to serve on a federal grand jury.

“We all make mistakes,” he said. “If [I knew] that would cause me problems, I never would have applied to run for this council seat.”

Owens said he’s wanted to run for County Council for years but didn’t until now because he supported Foxworth. He said the district doesn’t need an outsider representing the area.

“They need somebody that knows about the community and knows about what’s going on around here,” he said. “I’m the only one that’s originally from here and born and raised here.”

Owens makes his living repairing pool tables, arcade games and jukeboxes. His family roots run deep in the city. He grew up around Pine Island Road in south Myrtle Beach and has never ventured far from home.

Like the other candidates, Owens’ campaign focuses on reducing crime.

“I see these kids — I remember when they were born — I see them on the side of the road selling drugs in the Racepath area,” he said. “I’ve never seen so much crime and stuff that’s going on in Myrtle Beach. ... When I was younger, you didn’t see all this stuff.”

Owens wants to foster better relationships between Horry County Police, the city’s police department and area residents.

“I support the police department 100 percent,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure that we keep the morale up and keep the funding.”

Owens, however, isn’t sure how the county can put more money into its police department. Any enhancements, he said, should not come with a tax increase.

Apart from public safety, Owens said he would push for road improvements in Carolina Forest and the building of a multi-purpose government building in Myrtle Beach.

“We need a new government building,” Owens said. “The building on 21st Avenue [North] is run down. .... Creating a new county building right in the heart of Myrtle Beach, that would spur the development of downtown.”

Keith VanWinkle

Like Owens, VanWinkle is campaigning on his local ties.

His family moved to Horry County when he was a teenager and he graduated from Conway High School.

“I grew up here,” the 36-year-old said. “I have a vested interest in this community.”

Long a political junkie, VanWinkle mounted his first County Council campaign in 2008 and lost to Foxworth by 81 votes. Since then, he’s unsuccessfully run for seats on the Horry County Board of Education and Myrtle Beach City Council. Those past defeats have not deterred him.

“My family didn’t raise a quitter,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with failure because it’s not really failure. It’s only a setback. ... Sam Walton or Walt Disney [or] Abraham Lincoln, they all failed but they kept fighting for what they believed in and eventually they were successful.”

Although this is his most recent campaign, VanWinkle said he’s long argued for better roads in Carolina Forest and improving public safety.

“If we don’t get those right, nothing else matters,” he said. “That’s why I’m running. I’ve been fighting for this since 2008.”

VanWinkle said the salaries for county police must be increased to avoid losing good officers to other agencies.

“You have to pay the men and women that protect and serve our citizens a living wage that is comparable with surrounding police departments,” VanWinkle said. “We have a great police department. We have made great progress. We have a great chief. We need to get behind them and let them know that council has their back.”

Along with public safety, VanWinkle said if elected he would continue pushing for the completion of International Drive.

The county plans to pave a 5.6-mile stretch of the road but has faced opposition from conservationists who want the county to build tunnels for black bears along the thoroughfare.

“It’s absurd,” VanWinkle said. “If I was elected, I can tell you not one more penny, not one penny, of the taxpayer money would go to that.”

VanWinkle also said he plans to improve relations between city officials and the county.

“I want to bring a unity between councils and build bridges,” he said.

When asked about the $60,800 in fines he owes the State Ethics Commission, VanWinkle insisted the penalties were for not filing paperwork on time. When he tried to seek a lower fee, he said, it was too late. He said he can’t and won’t pay the debt.

“It has nothing to do with ethics,” he said. “If $60,800 is not extortion and theft over failing to file a piece of paper on time, then I don’t know what is.”

In May, the commission filed a judgment against VanWinkle at the Horry County Courthouse.

The winner of the District 3 seat will hold the post for the remainder of the term, which runs through next year. County Council members are paid an annual salary of $15,966 for their service.

This story was originally published October 31, 2015 at 6:59 AM with the headline "Despite similar campaigns, Horry County Council District 3 candidates try to set themselves apart."