In 2010, the Greenville County Republican Party, and the South Carolina Republican Party, filed a lawsuit to enable the party to limit voting in its primaries to only party members. Earlier this month the state Republican Party withdrew from the lawsuit. However, according to this story, the state party’s Executive Director, Alex Stroman, says the state party still supports the lawsuit, and the state party will simply let the Greenville County Republican Party carry on by itself. The state party says it withdrew from the lawsuit to save attorneys’ bills. This seems odd, because there doesn’t seem to be any logical reason why the Greenville Republican Party and the state Republican Party needed separate attorneys in any event.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
During the 2012 SEI fiasco, there was a primary contest for a legislative seat between Ed Harris and an incumbent representative, BR Skelton. Harris won the primary by 73 votes. Skelton then sued Harris for fraud over the filing of the SEI. The state party then refused to certify Harris’s nominations saying that he had not properly filed an SEI.
Harris petitioned to get on the general election ballot, but lost to Skelton 53% to 47%.
Harris’s attorney is Stephen Brown, who is also an attorney for the Greenville GOP in the lawsuit over the primary. In his counterclaim against Skelton, he included the SC State party.
Brown also recently lost a bid to become state party chair.
For the state GOP and the Greenville GOP to share a lawyer would likely require Brown to withdraw as the attorney, or for the SC state party to pay for a lawyer who included them in a lawsuit, and recently tried to oust them from party office.
South Carolina law currently provides a procedure for a party to nominate by convention, but the lawsuit claims that it is too hard. Given that South Carolina election laws are a mess, the lawsuit is likely to go on and on.
Summary: Bad blood and the SC state party is not discontented with a system where they control state government.