Sunday, April 12, 2009

Changing of the Guard for Florence GOP


Yesterday, the Florence County Republican Party held their Convention. If you pay attention to local politics, you know that locally, a group called the Pee Dee Republicans got together and proposed a slate of candidates to run for all the positions.

This was not exactly an earth shattering development. It is not unusual for factions in a political party to run a slate of candidates. However, it is a bit unheard of for it to happen in a small locale like Florence County. Why? Because one would think that any group of people involved enough to take up such an endeavor would have also been pretty involved in the local party as it was. That means there would be some bad feelings amongst the folk in charge towards such a movement. Why? Because you are basically saying the current leadership blew it. And tensions did run high. Cruise over to Reino's blog and take a look at the comments for his posts on the subject.

Nevertheless, the Convention was held yesterday and the guard was changed, by all accounts, rather peacefully. Not that anyone could think things would get out of hand. If Tommy and Co. were not expecting to get the axe, then they are even worse at reading the tea leaves than I thought. Anyone who has paid attention to local politics realizes as far as GOP matters go, this PDR thing appears to have energized and organized a lot more republicans to take an interest in their party than anything else in recent memory. So it was pretty much a fait accompli.

The PDR swept the races. There was apparently only one contested race: Chairman. For that race, Ken Ard opened up a can on Tommy Phillips to the tune of 105 - 5.

So Congrats to the new officers of the Florence County Republican Party. Listen, it won't take much to make your party better. All you have to do is become a true party, where the party recruits, supports and encourages candidates. If your rank and file have a say in this, I think you can consider yourself a success. Because we all know, that ain't the way things have worked in the past.

As I have said on multiple occasions, I am a big believer in the two party system. A strong opponent makes you better. So congrats to those that won and those that put in work and effort to make the win happen. And here's to hoping your guys really change the way the Republican party in Florence Country goes about doing things.
(hattip to Reino for the pic of the new officers above)

1 comment:

Thoroughbred 401k said...

Thanks for the promo P-Luv. I too believe that neither party has a lock on all good ideas. I have to admit though... Your cousin was a bit nervous about me taking pics! Bad Boy Blogger !!!!