The embarrassment of two sets of rules
By Observer Editorial Team
During the past six years this entire nation has witnessed the rot inside the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The law is applied zealously to their enemies and not at all to their friends. It will take at least 30 years, after the effort is begun, for the FBI to remold their image into one of truth and justice.
The same kind of situation applies to the two Beaufort County Republican Parties. There is the conservative one and the liberal Republican Party. At the moment, the liberals are in control of the Beaufort County Republican Party Executive Committee. The liberals do not believe in the “big tent theory.” The “big tent theory” tolerates a wide variety of views. Democrats have historically been good at applying the “big tent theory.” Liberal Republicans believe it is their duty to destroy conservative Republicans while they form alliances with Democrats. Independently conservative thinkers like Hood Richardson, Stan Deatherage and Tandy Dunn are outcasts. People working in the Republican headquarters tell the public not to vote for conservatives because they are “liberal.”
The facts support a conclusion that Frankie Waters, and John Rebholz as being the true liberals. They formed an alliance with the Democrats on the Board of Commissioners for Fake Frankie Waters to be Chairman and Democrat Jerry Langley to be Vice Chairman. These four almost always vote together on all major issues. They voted to spend more than one million dollars to replace water meters with no savings whatsoever. They voted to give Fake Frankie’s telephone company--the one he ran into the financial ground--a gift of 4 million dollars of county money. Money that could have been used to cut taxes. Instead they raised taxes and fees. They voted to not support clamping down on drug dealers. They voted to increase the school capital budget one million dollars this year, with the school system rolling in covid money.
Their latest escapade involves Republican Party disloyalty. Fake Frankie and Rebholz posted support for the Republican Executive Committee member Kelly Cox’s FaceBook post supporting the Democrat candidate for sheriff, Corey Rogerson who is running against Scott Hammonds, a Republican. Cox has now resigned from the Executive Committee. Cox did not resign until this newspaper exposed his disloyalty.
If Cox resigned, where does that leave his helpers? They were disloyal too. Will they be allowed to continue to violate the GOP Plan of Organization and continue to support Democrat Corey Rogerson and remain on the Beaufort County Republican Executive Committee? What about Paul Varcoe? Will he be allowed to remain on the Republican Executive Committee and be disloyal to all the Republicans in Beaufort County, too?
The agenda for the next Republican Executive Committee meeting to be held on October 11 at 6:30 PM is available. There is no mention of business having to do with anything other than to pick someone to fill the position of Register of Deeds. Are Fake Frankie, Rebholz and Varcoe untouchable? Can they support Democrats and serve on the Republican Executive Committee at the same time? Or do the rules only apply to conservatives, but not liberals?
There is the embarrassment of the unethical behavior of the Republican Chairman, Carolyn Garris. She sat on the retirement notice presented by the Register of Deeds until she lined up the votes on the Executive Committee to get the job. Carolyn Garris kept the vacancy a secret during the September Executive Committee meeting. This is a serious ethical transgression. Carolyn Garris, then ignored the Executive Committee and made up the rules to fill the Register of Deeds position herself (so she would be sure and get it). Garris had the unethical gall to send her notice of application for the Register of Deeds job with the official notice of the vacancy to the members of the Executive Committee. The implication to all is that she has the job sewed up and no others need apply.
There is the issue of her qualifications to be Register of Deeds. We will save that discussion for another day.
Carolyn Garris has other inappropriate and unethical actions. She failed to send out the resolution by the Beaufort County Republican Party Convention to not allow unaffiliated voters to vote in the Republican primary. This, with her being sent several reminders two weeks before the convention. She told Hood Richardson that she had forgotten to send in the resolution. Richardson says “She did not forget, she disagreed with the resolution and deliberately did not present it to be heard by the Third District Convention”. Several notices are sent by the Third District and someone had to personally tell Republican Officials there were no resolutions. That person would be Chairman Carolyn Garris.
There was the sending of the $14,000 of Beaufort County campaign funds out of the county so it could not be used to support our conservative Republican Beaufort County candidates for the County Commission and the School Board. This was done to protect the darling RINO, Fake Frankie Waters. He is the only liberal running who is opposed. To do that Carolyn Garris violated the Executive Committee Rules by declaring a closed session on her own and demanding that the those who would have spoken against sending the money out of the county leave the meeting. She ejected Commissioner Hood Richardson, who had the right to be there because he is an ex officio member by right of holding public office. A vote of the executive committee is required to have a closed session. Again she ignored the Executive Committee.
Carolyn Garris needs the votes of Fake Frankie Waters, John Rebholz and Paul Varcoe to get the job of Register of Deeds. Because of this, Carolyn Garris is not going to do anything about members of the Executive committee supporting Democrats.
What Carolyn Garris did do was to give a “Tribute to Service “ to Fake Frankie Waters and allow John Rebholz to do the “Event Wrap Up” at the Reagan Day Dinner last week. The conservative Republicans were ignored.
Because of all of the above we believe Carolyn Garris, Fake Frankie Waters, John Rebholz and Paul Varcoe should be removed from the Beaufort County Republican Executive Committee. If these people do not have the character to resign they should be removed by the State Republican Executive Committee.
Comments
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Bubba said:
( October 11th, 2022 @ 2:45 pm )
Frankie Waters keeps doing things like this. The way to deal with him is for the voters to vote him out in the election. Waters may have changed on paper from Democrat to Republican at the Board of Elections but he never has done so in his heart.
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Steve, there is no major rush here; however, let's see how the Nominal Republicans present this issue of "time is of the essence".
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Chairwoman Garris advised me of the Kerry Cox endorsement of the Democrat for sheriff soon after it happened when I called her on another matter. She told me in that conversation that she was going to call Cox and insist on his resignation from the executive committee. Later, she told me Cox had agreed to resign and drop a resignation by headquarters.
Cox dragged his feet on getting the resignation in, but when the BO article was published, he emailed a resignation to chairwoman Garris, and she shared it with the executive commmittee. The issue of the posts of other executive committee members did not come up in our conversation. While some may quibble that those posts are not full blown endorsements of the Democrat, the fact is that the posts create the impression that these executive committee members are supportive of the Democrat. Appearances matter. What is important is that these executive committee members clear up the ambiguity they created by publicly showing that they do actually support the Republican candidate. Attending the Hammonds fundraiser would have been a good way to do it, but for whatever reason, they did not. The best remaining alternative is to do it by Facebook posts, and that would be particularly appropriate since the original questionable posts were made on Facebook. The county commission setting the date that the nomination for the Register of Deeds vacancy had to be in during the critical final weeks of the vital mid-term election campaign has created a major distraction for the local Republican Party at a time when we need to be concentrating our efforts on winning an election. The vacancy does not occur until January and there is no good reason that the county should have not set a date AFTER the election period. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that this timing would be adverse to the Republican Party. I am surprised our GOP commissioners did not push back on this partisan setting of an unnecessarily early date. One wonders who came up with it, one of the Democrat commissioners or one of the liberal upper bureaucracy of county government? |
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Thanks. Correction made of this BO post.
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The Executive Committee meeting for October 11 starts at 6:30, not 6:00.
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I have a most demonstrative understanding of these so-called Republicans' Orwellian antics of professing their Fake News drivel, ad nauseum, in support of "Fake Frankie" to the political exclusion of the Real Republicans for Beaufort County Commissioner; far too many of whom (these naïve Republicans of course) have been registered in Beaufort County for a far shorter period than even the Fake One has been a Secret Sleeper; however, I was not fully aware of the Carolyn Garris affair until NOW, but not despair; Good NEWS!
There is no rush among the county commissioners in selecting a nominee for that fair selection by the local "GOP"; therefore, this executive committee should engage in the right process, and begin that search for applicants /candidates on October 11th, and fairly select that prospective candidate as their nominee in late November before the Commissioners' December meeting, accordingly, for those commissioners to consider the affirmation of that GOP candidate thus fairly selected. |
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Frankie Waters should do the honorable thing and follow Kelly Cox out the door. Cox was obviously promised something, and the rumor is the position of Chief Deputy, for his treachery. What did Waters get out of his? Was it just to satisfy his sore loser chip on his shoulder over his boy Coleman losing the primary? Whatever the party brass does or does not do with Waters, the voters need to remove him from the county commission on Nov. 8. He has been a RINO colluding with Democrats his whole time as county commissioner. Getting Waters off the county commission is far more important than whether he stays on the party committee or not.
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