Guest Column: Greenville Republicans Sending Another Message

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Tonight, March 27, at 7:00 pm, Greenville County Republicans have the chance to reiterate to the South Carolina GOP that they’ve had enough betrayal from within their own party.  Ten Republican “ReOrg” meetings, accommodating 10-25 precincts each, will allow registered voters the chance to elect precinct leaders, who think like them, to vote in county GOP meetings on behalf of them and their precinct. Voters who attend can also get elected by their neighbors to be delegates to short convention meetings, where, respectively, county and state GOP leadership is elected by these same delegates.

Many of this year’s attendees are going to be conservatives who are fed up with betrayal in Columbia’s Statehouse. They’ve had it with a party that doesn’t seem to care when its own elected officials clearly violate the Republican platform … just as long as the folks in power are ones they selected and promoted.

Some ReOrg attendees will be “old guard” Republicans either unaware of corruption in their own party, or who just want to “go along and get along, without any messiness.” Then there are the nefarious kind of Republicans, who collude with the SCGOP even when it breaks the rules, like cavalierly changing the ReOrg date that elected precinct leaders across Greenville County voted for.  I firmly believe all three of these “old guard” groups will be outnumbered again in 2023.  Things are changing.

Until two years ago, 99.9 percent of Republican voters in South Carolina never knew that their county and state leadership all stem from a little event held in each precinct, in March of odd years. This two-hour meeting, called “ReOrg,” is the reorganization of the Republican party by precinct … power that definitely bubbles up, and which is ALL about The People. 

Historically, hardly anyone showed up for ReOrg at all: mostly just a few insiders known to the party, many of whom had held their precinct leadership position for years.  This cozy little arrangement kept the state GOP firmly in control of things.

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Then came 2021 and everything changed. Three conservative groups based in the Upstate, including mySCGOP.com, banded together. They began educating conservative voters about the strategy called “the precinct project,” outlined brilliantly by author Dan Schultz.  The weekly audience for these Greenville County sessions grew to standing room only, as conservatives referred their friends and neighbors.  

Fed-up Republicans in other large counties, including Horry and Anderson, organized large groups to learn and teach the precinct strategy.

After correcting the results of some old-fashioned ballot harvesting, an investigative team proved Greenville County GOP leadership had been won by votes from the new county delegates, all of whom stemmed from ReOrg meetings where a whole new collection of people also stepped into precinct leadership roles.  Horry and Anderson County patriots celebrated a change of leadership and philosophy.

SCGOP chairman Drew McKissick was peeved, to say the least, when he lost a third of the state delegate vote for re-election, due to these large counties having exercised their voices through ReOrg.  If he had actually shared the list of state delegates with his Republican opponents, instead of being the only candidate who knew who would be voting that day, he would have had even fewer votes. 

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This year, fed-up Greenville County Republicans will be sending McKissick another message.  They didn’t take kindly to his telling the media he would make Greenville County Republicans “lepers” after this county’s state delegates voted against him.  They didn’t take kindly to their own party’s state chairman withholding data and resources, or to the shadow club he formed, to further discredit voters who had just gotten involved for the first time. They have incurred a veritable tsunami of vicious social media insults from the chair of the 4th Congressional District, all for simply using their voice within their own party. It’s been ugly.

But even if McKissick and the SCGOP decide to disband the Greenville County GOP for “misbehaving” again tonight, it has its hands full of discontented Republicans.  Pickens County, York County, Berkely County, Florence County, and Charleston County have all just ousted old guard precinct leadership in favor of new leaders who come from The People. The trend is sweeping not just our state, but others: even Fulton County, Georgia leveraged the precinct strategy to up-end its organization and start fresh.

McKissick is a virus to the Republican party. This past August he convened an unheard-of second state meeting to push through a quick vote that would allow him to disband any county’s party, at any time, for any reason.  Read that again.  Now grasp the fact that a person who feels this entitled to have his own petulant way – cancelling members of his own party, while hobnobbing with actual traitors to the party – has been promoted to co-chair the RNC with Ronna McDaniel. She says this term will be her last.  McKissick’s commitment to stomping out truly conservative voices who disturb his ivory tower shenanigans is now a national problem.

Because the Democrat and Republican parties are private clubs, rather than government entities bound by all the laws, McKissick and his ilk act as if they are untouchable.  They moved the 2023 ReOrg meetings out of the precincts – breaking one of the few South Carolina election laws that DO pertain to them – and into crowded, more distant locations. They don’t care about disenfranchising elderly voters much more likely to drive over to their nearby voting spot.   

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McKissick and his crew in Greenville County took credit for the massive uptick in ReOrg participation in 2021, leaving out the fact that nearly all the new participants voted against their people. This year, McKissick and his minions were forced to advertise ReOrg much more widely – quite a new look for them – and it will be interesting to see what happens by the end of the evening. 

Nothing can stop the turning of the tide that is sweeping across South Carolina. The strategy to drain the South Carolina swamp is real, and effective.  Voters are realizing that by spending two hours on an evening in March, and two more hours at a meeting in April, they can greatly impact their own state’s party, gaining control over its budgets, and the campaigns it hinders or elevates. 

Conservatives who actually dare to expect conservative values to be upheld within their party are currently caught in a vast cultural and even geopolitical war.  Sadly, war is messy and divisive. This particular war is fairly simply at its core: it’s about Power versus The People.

The People are finding their voices and their true strength. Sometimes it’s as simple as showing up.  If your county has already had its ReOrg meeting, there’s a chance that a “makeup meeting” is still coming, offering a second chance to be a county and state delegate.  CPAC currently ranks South Carolina #28 of all conservative states.  Are you fed up yet? 

For more ReOrg information go to www.mySCGOP.com for information on Greenville County ReOrg go to www.GreenvilleGOP.com/join.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Olga Lisinska is a philanthropist and staunch advocate for educational freedom specifically for students with special needs. Having grown up under communist regime she is a strong voice and advocate against government targeting and overreach. Olga resides in Greenville and is married to Jeff Davis, current Greenville County Republican Party Chairman.

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