Greenville County Republican Party “splinter group faction” called for a special meeting last week … and below is the Special Chairman’s Letter sent out with her perspective of said gathering. Read, Learn & Enjoy …

September 17th, 2023

Members of the GCRP Executive Committee & Friends,

This is a special edition of From the Chairman’s Desk offering my perspective on our GCRP Special Called Meeting this past Thursday. I feel compelled to weigh in as former GCRP Chairman Nate Leupp has opined via this 4th District Club newsletter.

Our Thursday September 14, 2023 special called meeting may be forever known as the “Sauna Meeting” for many of us because we sat for 3 hours in a room where the temperature got to 79 degrees because of an AC failure. As you may recall, we had proposed that this meeting be done by Zoom, which in retrospect would have clearly been more comfortable for all attendees. However, after some of the theatrics (I was a little concerned that a few of the speakers might get attacks of the vapors!) and expected theatrics (why on earth was some guy who is a blogger from Charleston be invited to a GCRP meeting), I understand why the offer of a Zoom call was not accepted.

To start, I would like to thank everyone who has complimented me on how the meeting was chaired, and to give special thanks to those that made my job easier – our credentialing and teller team under the leadership of Joe McLaughlin, Tony DiLorenzo who loaned me a very effectively annoying whistle that is a special gift from his father, Nate who got me a better microphone, and last but certainly not least parliamentarian Greg Peck who kept us on track during the long evening.

I also must thank the core group of party volunteers who today are not focused on gaining or regaining some perceived power but instead on the work of the party and supporting it financially. I just got an email from Chairman McKissick’s political consulting company and the subject is Candidate Recruitment – our GCRP recruitment committee has been incredibly busy lately and done an amazing job as they had to start from scratch since this was not a priority for administrations prior to 2021. Scott Crosby, former GCRP EC and Mauldin City Councilman, who is active in protecting 2A rights and spoke at Coffee and Politics on Friday congratulated us on our focus on boards and commissions and said he has been preaching this for years! The night we received the special call meeting email (which we now know had been planned for weeks now), many of us were at HQ watching LifeMark, a real tearjerker about choosing adoption over abortion. This is one of 4 movies in a series the Pro Life committee has arranged – another of the committees working tirelessly to make a difference on a critical and, in this case, fundamental issue – LIFE.

It is easy for those of us new to politics and who really don’t want a career in it but are fighting for better governance and to save our Country, to forget the bigger battle within the GOP that filters down to local county parties like Greenville. There are huge fault lines within our party – think Americans for Prosperity / Romney / Cheney establishment vs MAGA grassroots, and smaller ones – think SC Freedom Caucus vs SC Republican Caucus that are all influencing our dynamics in the GCRP. After being elected your Chairman, I spoke with Vickie Tonkins, pictured here,

https://gopelpaso.com/38219-2/

about her experiences being chair of the Republican Party in the largest county in Colorado (another state the GOP is losing to Democrats). Her experiences as do those of other grassroots conservative led parties across the USA, and within our state, reflect the consistent narrative of “incompetence”, hints of corruption, “Democrat plants” as well as the personal attacks that the political establishment is using as tools to retain power. You might question whether Greenville, SC is really noticed by the nationwide political establishment. But remember our State Chairman is second in command at the RNC, and grassroots conservatives here in Greenville have the unique advantage of the educational non-profit mySCGOP that is a real thorn in the side to the kinds of Republicans that would rather work with Democrats than Constitutional Republican Platform Conservative elected officials and grassroots activists. mySCGOP filled an education gap for citizens who want to get involved in governing themselves, but populism is a threat to self-serving career politicians.

At the local level the primary control tool the political establishment uses is the threat of the GCRP being dissolved. Many of us that have learned firsthand how party rules can be bent to serve the establishment have realized that is a possibility from the beginning. Our passionate, patriotic Christian Constitutional Conservatives are not going to stop fighting for their children, grandchildren and our country because we are tossed out of a political organization. In fact, I have had to talk some Conservative Christians into remaining with the GOP. Many are increasingly disillusioned by the lesser of two evils choices they have when voting. They are also very angry with leadership that does not adhere to the Republican Platform and that has allowed our party to lose so much market and mind share to an amoral, secularist and foreign interest dominated Democrat Party.

Self-serving members of the political establishment have other tools at their disposal in fighting to regain power from grassroots conservatives in Greenville.

There is an industry around conservatism and in our area an alphabet soup of organizations fighting each other for money, influence and the time, eyes and ears of conservative voters. These fights create hostilities and distract from the bigger mission of fixing government in the “blue” city of Greenville, Greenville County where six Republicans joined with the only two Democrats to unnecessarily raise our taxes, South Carolina and our Country.

GOP Sweep, which started with a splinter group that broke apart from the original Greenville conservatives movement that was able to win only one of three leadership slots at our county convention is clearly disgruntled and not accepting of the election results. A social media post from one of their members said “I stole my election”. There are also deep-rooted hostilities between individuals in the two GCRP factions. People who hunger for power and influence are always looking for ways to get it. That effort can create some, as the saying goes, strange bedfellows. Many of the people who were once part of the Greenville grassroots conservatives movement are now allied with and useful tools for what we think of as the establishment.

Because Nate Leupp was not as involved with the original grassroots group (mainly for reasons listed HERE) he was not able in his missive to talk about relevant permanent hostilities that have come out of the events of: (1) a former board member being asked to resign; (2) an internal fight over school board candidate and state superintendent candidates; (3) an effort by some former leadership to rein in the powers of the Chairman to do FOIA requests; (4) an individual involved with Election Integrity demanding to see the voting record of a member who was up for a leadership position when we know that data hygiene of South Carolina voter files is not a priority for the RNC and we routinely see errors in voting records.

The enmity that is being presented as a question of our budget competence is particularly disingenuous. As you will see from the 2022/2023 budget documents that will be posted on our website and that were approved by the EC body both in March 2022 and January 2023, we presented both expenses and revenue with itemized amounts in pie chart form as an easy way for people to quickly comprehend where our money would come from and how it would be spent. If there was a major concern that the information was not presented in “standard budget format”, could the person in the treasurer’s role have taken the time to present the information correctly in support of the body that approved it? As part of the transparency around budget that NEW members of the EC body may not have had, anyone is invited to arrange a meeting with me, Jeff Davis or Mike Voaden to view a copy of our month to month lease for the space where our headquarters is currently houses. The lease document, which was passed by our EC Body unanimously (except for one nay), was already emailed out by the GCRP to nearly 3,000 people back on March 7th, 2022 and presented on the big screen for review prior to passage. Unfortunately some of our ECs are unable to keep their own records and thought it appropriate to call a special meeting to request another copy.

There are also challenges with a few new members of the EC body who are aligned with the splinter group faction and have been a distraction from our goals of party growth, increased voter turnout and candidate support. One individual’s attorney sent a “No Trespass” letter to our State EC Jeff Davis back in June – wonder how that works when the individual shows up at GCRP business meetings? This individual also seems to think that providing a list of people who attended a precinct meeting meets the SCGOP requirement of providing a list of people who were invited to the meeting. I personally struggle communicating with individuals who seem challenged to understand the difference between archived and active business records, as well as SCGOP rules and regulations around these records and party resources to manage them, and the inappropriateness of giving “deadlines” for completing low value administrative tasks to volunteers. I am sure prior Chairmen would get a big laugh out of us asking for a special called meeting to demand copies of minutes from a 2019 or 1996 business meeting, but then again many are asking that we do so as none of the over 30 years of GCRP records were handed over in the 2021 ReOrg transition to new leadership.

I hope this letter provides each of you a reminder of the bigger picture, to think about some of the things you heard Thursday night with new information, to realize that maintaining the hostilities impeding our work is a conscious choice and that we all could be actively working towards the political improvements so desperately needed in Greenville city and county (it is imperative we protect our library board chair Alan Hill who is the target of a petition by the left and that we work to elect Randall Fowler and Knox White), South Carolina and our Country.

Keep an eye out for my regular newsletter edition coming out mid-week. The topic is Lies and Fear and how avoid being manipulated by them.

Sincerely,