Tag: Republican primary election

Is Fry Sandbagging Rice’s Reelection Effort Because of Special Interests?

(Above picture L-R: Tom Rice, Heather Crawford, Seth McKinney, Brenda Bethune, Mark Lazarus, Cam Crawford and Russell Fry)
Ever since Tom Rice cast his vote to impeach President Donald Trump last January, political talk around Horry County has been about whether Rice could survive a challenge to reelection next year.
Almost immediately nine challengers announced they would challenge Rice in next year’s June Republican Primary for the nomination for the SC 7th Congressional District seat. Eight of the original nine remain to date.
Tomorrow night, another challenger, Russell Fry, long expected to throw his hat in the ring, will hold his campaign kickoff event.
Fry’s entry into the race is probably a signal that at least some of Rice’s past supporters no longer believe he is electable.
Both Rice and Fry have drawn from the same base of support in the county during past elections – the Chamber crowd and associated PACs (the special interest crowd), local business owners and the ‘old guard’ members of the HCGOP.
A number of the names listed as sponsors for Rice’s September 14, 2021 Campaign Kickoff event at the Dunes Club also show up as donors to past Fry campaigns, according to filings with the South Carolina Ethics Commission.
The close ties between past Rice and Fry campaigns are best demonstrated by two of Fry’s initial donors in his first special election for the SC House District 106 seat in 2015. One of those donors is none other than Wrenzie Rice, wife of Tom Rice. The other is Doug Wendel, the man probably most responsible for Rice first running for the new 7th Congressional District seat in 2012.
Both Rice and Fry have been strong supporters of Chamber’s number one goal the Interstate 73 project, although neither has been able to bring any significant funds, federal or state respectively, to the project. Both attempted to pressure Horry County Council to provide funding from local hospitality fee collections to completely fund construction of the road to the county line (approximately $500 million additional funding).

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Incumbents Rule Primary Elections

Primary election night was ruled by incumbents at all levels.

Only one incumbent lost, Janice Morreale in the District 5 school board race, and that was not a loss to a newcomer. Former county councilman for that district, Howard Barnard, defeated Morreale. Barnard gave up his council seat when he unsuccessfully ran for council chairman 10 years ago.

There will be newcomers to the county council District Nine seat and Horry County Auditor as incumbents Paul Prince and Lois Eargle, respectively, did not seek reelection. Both races will go to a primary runoff in two weeks with Mark Causey and Terry Fowler squaring off for District 10 and R. A. Johnson facing Beth Calhoun for Auditor.

One other incumbent, Sen. Luke Rankin, was forced to a runoff with challenger John Gallman in two weeks as either failed to get over 50 percent of the votes cast.

The victories by the incumbents effectively guarantee that the special interests in the county will play a big role over the next several years to the detriment of average citizens.

There is no doubt there will be a renewed effort to use county tax revenues, not state or federal dollars, to construct the Interstate 73 section in Horry County.

Likewise, developers will continue their push to build anywhere they wish, as much as they wish without any consideration for existing infrastructure and public safety needs of the areas to be developed.

Expect any county council attempt to pass impact fees on new development to be foiled and flood mitigation to be put on the back burner as special interests strive to make as much profit as possible.

There is no doubt that the Covid 19 epidemic played a part in the loss of the challengers as they were restricted in any ability to address groups of voters. Incumbents already had familiarity and name recognition going for them.

However, the basic fault lies with voters, or rather lack of them.

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Arrest Clouds Horry County Council District 6 Primary – Updated

Voting Tuesday in the Horry County Council District 6 Republican primary runoff is clouded by the recent arrest of a one-time Hanco of SC employee.

Runoff candidate Kirk Hanna is the founder and president of Hanco of SC.

According to Horry County court records, nine arrest warrants for forgery, numbers 2015A2610700601 through 2015A2610700609, were served on Peter Bishop on June 11, 2015. Bishop is currently out on $45,000 bail.

The sworn statement on each of the warrants reads in part, “On (date of incident), while employed by Hanco of SC and working at (location of construction) the Defendant, Peter Bishop, did submit to Horry County Code Enforcement a fabricated soil compaction report on Applied Geotech, LLC letterhead and bearing the forged signature of Technician Michael Hayes.”

According to the warrants, nine separate instances of fabrication and forgery of a soil compaction report occurred at nine construction locations over a 10 month period between August 2012 and June 2013.

Horry County Police Detective Marcus Rhodes, the investigating officer, declined comment on the case because it is still in the legal process. Rhodes did say the initial incident report for the case was filed approximately one year ago, with a supplemental incident report filed later.

Horry County Infrastructure and Regulation Division Head Steve Gosnell said he was not familiar with the particular documents involved, but did say, “Horry County takes very seriously any testing that involves the structural integrity of a project.”

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