- Oct 17, 2011
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‘A Whole Bunch of Crazy’: Inside the South Carolina GOP’s MAGA Coup
When Lenna Smith arrived at her precinct’s annual Republican Party organizing meeting last month, she didn’t expect to be greeted by a dozen strangers.
Smith has been a fixture in GOP politics in Greenville, South Carolina, for 30 years. As a prominent anti-abortion activist, she has in her rolodex nearly everyone notable or influential in conservative circles in the state’s most populous county. She is on a first-name basis with past governors.
But what happened next was totally out of her control. When it came time to elect the precinct’s president for the coming year, one of the newcomers nominated a fellow newcomer, but not a single person nominated Smith.
For the vote on the next most senior office, the same thing happened, and then the next, until there were no more offices left. Smith had been totally shut out.
“I came home, and told my husband, I was just booted out,” Smith told The Daily Beast.
What happened in Smith’s precinct was no one-off oddity; that night, longtime party activists were similarly ejected from their positions at meetings across Greenville County after hundreds of new faces showed up, seemingly out of the woodwork. The GOP loyalists did not know them, but the newcomers seemed to know the process, and they took advantage of it to jettison longtime officials.
“A behind-the-scenes battle is happening,” said a Republican operative in the state, “between establishment forces, such as they are in the current GOP, and the far-right, ▇▇▇▇▇-believing Trump supporters who want to take over this county party.”
“The grassroots activists working the hardest for President Trump’s re-election were the County Party officers and executive committeeman,” Groover said. “So it is disappointing that these same people are being cast aside for precinct and county party leadership roles by individuals who have just recently—many just since November—decided to get involved.”
When Lenna Smith arrived at her precinct’s annual Republican Party organizing meeting last month, she didn’t expect to be greeted by a dozen strangers.
Smith has been a fixture in GOP politics in Greenville, South Carolina, for 30 years. As a prominent anti-abortion activist, she has in her rolodex nearly everyone notable or influential in conservative circles in the state’s most populous county. She is on a first-name basis with past governors.
But what happened next was totally out of her control. When it came time to elect the precinct’s president for the coming year, one of the newcomers nominated a fellow newcomer, but not a single person nominated Smith.
For the vote on the next most senior office, the same thing happened, and then the next, until there were no more offices left. Smith had been totally shut out.
“I came home, and told my husband, I was just booted out,” Smith told The Daily Beast.
What happened in Smith’s precinct was no one-off oddity; that night, longtime party activists were similarly ejected from their positions at meetings across Greenville County after hundreds of new faces showed up, seemingly out of the woodwork. The GOP loyalists did not know them, but the newcomers seemed to know the process, and they took advantage of it to jettison longtime officials.
“A behind-the-scenes battle is happening,” said a Republican operative in the state, “between establishment forces, such as they are in the current GOP, and the far-right, ▇▇▇▇▇-believing Trump supporters who want to take over this county party.”
“The grassroots activists working the hardest for President Trump’s re-election were the County Party officers and executive committeeman,” Groover said. “So it is disappointing that these same people are being cast aside for precinct and county party leadership roles by individuals who have just recently—many just since November—decided to get involved.”