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 Can County’s GOP
Get Its Act Together?
When you look up
“disarray” in the dictionary, there’s a picture of the Moore County
Republican Party.
Consider recent
developments:
Matt McWilliams, county GOP vice chairman, an announced and
much-ballyhooed candidate to oppose Moore County’s own House Co-Speaker
Richard Morgan in the primary, skips town. He leaves amid bitter
allegations that he misused the party’s Web site for his own purposes and
otherwise abused his position.
Mysterious party emissaries from Raleigh surreptitiously infiltrate
Moore County in hopes of finding somebody to oppose Morgan, whom they
detest for “selling out” to the Democrats.
Peggy Crutchfield, president of the local United Way, assisted by
former Southern Pines Mayor Mike Fields, announces that she will oppose
Morgan in the primary. Though she says she’s not the recruit the outsiders
are looking for, she accuses Morgan of being a “Benedict Arnold.” She says
he does nothing but sit around Raleigh “awaiting his marching orders” from
“the liberal tax-and-spend crowd.”
George Little, one of the two most prominent Republican activists in
Moore County, holds a rally in Raleigh to announce some big-gun support
for his candidacy for governor. The other most prominent Republican in
Moore County, Morgan, isn’t there.
And now, long-simmering tensions within the local GOP organization
erupt into open, unseemly warfare. A splinter group within the leadership
calls for the ouster of Elizabeth Kelly, Moore County Republican
chairwoman. They say she played so fast and loose with party finances that
she is incapable of “making a truthful filing for our organization either
as to funds received or funds disbursed.” The insurgents also accuse Kelly
of favoring specific candidates in the coming primaries, flouting various
procedural rules during meetings, and other irregularities.
With the eclipse of the Democratic Party over the years, observers have
long noted that the closest thing Moore County has to a healthy two-party
system has been the Morgan and Little factions of the local GOP. Now the
question becomes: How many Republican parties are there? John Dempsey,
president of Sandhills Community College, joked at a recent function that
the county has more GOP factions than Democrats.
Part of the problem may be that the Republican umbrella has to be broad
enough, especially at the local level, to take in a wide variety of
elements. They include longtime, moderate party members like those in the
camp of former Gov. Jim Holshouser; Democratic retreads who have switched
parties out of convenience; newcomers from outside, often from the North,
who come with their own traditions; philosophical conservatives whose
views tend to be thoughtful and academic in nature; and the group that
seems to have gained ascendancy here in recent years: the social
conservatives and fundamentalist Christians who inhabit what has come to
be called “the Christian right.”
It comes as no surprise that disputes and resentments and rivalries
would develop under such a diverse tent. But a little healthy debate is
one thing; total meltdown is another — especially one that is so
embarrassingly public.
Some local Democrats, no doubt, are drinking to each other’s health
with the old toast “Confusion to the enemy.” But it is not in the public
interest for the political organization that supposedly represents most of
the registered voters of Moore County to be caught up in such demoralizing
and counterproductive turmoil.
A thorough housecleaning, reorganization and rededication to the
principles of open, professional, broad-based party administration seems
long overdue. |