Tag: Our American Century PAC

Dark Money in Horry County Politics

An increase of dark money from several opaque political action committees (PACs) over the last couple of election cycles has introduced a new dimension to politics in Horry County.
Dark money is defined as funds raised for the purpose of influencing elections by nonprofit organizations, generally called Super PACs, that are not required to disclose the identities of their donors. The use of dark money allows donors to far exceed normal campaign contribution limits while remaining anonymous.
The 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission gave rise to what are called “Super PACs”. Since that decision, these Super PACs are considered political entities which can raise and spend unlimited sums to influence elections, so long as they don’t explicitly coordinate with a candidate.
However, those lines have become increasingly blurred in recent years. It appears what has emerged in South Carolina are what could be termed ‘PACs for hire’ ready to jump into campaigns when called upon.
Of interest locally are three PACs who advocated in two local elections with negative messages about a specific candidate in each race. The candidates targeted were opposed by candidates who, I would submit, were the favored candidates of the local Cabal.

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Lazarus Drops Appeal, Concedes Gardner Victory

Horry County Council Chairman candidate Mark Lazarus dropped his election protest appeal Tuesday acknowledging his second defeat by incumbent council chairman Johnny Gardner in as many elections.
This is the third election Lazarus lost for county chairman. In all three losses, Lazarus investigated protesting the results, which demonstrates Lazarus’ inability to accept the reality of defeat.
The Horry County Republican Party Executive Committee properly dismissed the Lazarus election protest last week because the initial protest notice was filed one day after the deadline mandated by state law. Lazarus appealed that decision to the South Carolina Republican Party Executive Committee, but apparently had a change of heart as the appeal hearing approached.
Lazarus never had a legal protest because it was filed one day after the deadline mandated in state law and confirmed by the S. C. Election Commission published election calendar. The initial protest was filed on Tuesday July 5 rather than the deadline of noon Monday July 4.
Apparently, someone finally convinced Lazarus and his attorney Butch Bowers that 4 does not mean 5, Monday does not mean Tuesday and there was no way to win the protest appeal. It was time to stop publicly embarrassing themselves.

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Lazarus’ Last Desperate Gasp for a Win

During the last several months the Mark Lazarus campaign has tried everything to change the history of his previous term as county chairman and to present a false image of Lazarus as a successful leader, which of course he was not.
That is unless you count getting the entire county work force mad at you; spending county revenue on a project that should be paid for by the state and federal governments if it is to be built at all and allowing unrestricted development to outpace the local infrastructure in roads, stormwater mitigation and public services as successful accomplishments.
As a last-ditch effort to pull out victory, the Lazarus campaign resorted to a tactic that was successful for Luke Rankin two years ago. It found a PAC to spend dark money for a hit piece on Gardner.
However, instead of the outrageous false and defamatory accusations made about Rankin’s opponent John Gallman two years ago, the one against Gardner is barely a whimper.
It was much less of a thing than the attempt Lazarus, Chris Eldridge and Arrigo Carotti tried to pull to keep Gardner from taking office as chairman four years ago only speaks to how clean Gardner has been.
Four years ago, it was a completely false memo about fictional allegations all, apparently, the figment of Carotti’s imagination. The supposed source Carotti said gave him the initial information for his five-page memo called the memo “mostly fiction” after the Carotti’s attempt at being an author went public and a SLED investigation found no credibility in anything Carotti wrote.

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