Over the last year or so, the Saline County Republican Committee has become more aggressive and divisive in message and action, painting anyone to the left of Vladimir Putin as part of the woke mob.
Now it seems that even other Republicans are growing weary of their schtick. The Republican Party of Saline County voted unanimously last Friday to evict the Saline County Republican Committee and Saline County Republican Women from the county Republican headquarters.
It’s confusing, but the Saline County Republican Committee and the Republican Party of Saline County are two different things. And as of this week, they are officially at odds.
The Republican Party of Saline County is a nonprofit whose stated purpose is to advance and support the Republican Party, its candidates and its principles. Records from the Arkansas Secretary of State show the group’s president is Arkansas Public Service Commission Chairman Doyle Webb. Directors include state Sen. Kim Hammer, former state Rep. Ann Clemmer and District 83 Representative Lanny Fite. It’s this group that owns the star-spangled building in downtown Benton.
The Saline County Republican Committee, on the other hand, is a county committee of the Republican Party of Arkansas. The current chair is Frank Curtis. This crew is aligned with the Saline County Republican Women.
While most (if not all) Republican county committees in Arkansas these days are dyed-in-the-wool MAGA types, Saline County’s still managed to stand out with its embrace of the worst aspects of the far right. Last October, for instance, the Committee made headlines when it ran a billboard on Interstate 30 that said “God created only two genders.” And in May of last year, they paid for a different billboard reading “Warning: X-Rated Library Books” with a web address that pretended to be from the Saline County Library but was actually a list of library books the Saline County Republican Committee deemed offensive.
But these splashy billboards aren’t the reason for the rift between the Saline County Republican Committee and the Republican Party of Saline County.
According to a statement from the Republican Party of Saline County to the Saline Courier, “Over the past year, the current committee has begun to take a strange turn, for example conducting ‘meetings before the meetings’ behind closed and locked doors, where the decisions of the county Republican committee were orchestrated.”
A spokesperson for the Republican Party of Saline County told the newspaper there were two big reasons for kicking out the Saline County Republican Committee and the Saline County Republican Women. First, they failed to pay a property insurance bill. Second, the Saline County Republican Committee’s May no-confidence vote for Senators Tom Cotton and John Boozman and U.S. Rep. French Hill did not go over well with the landlords. The no-confidence resolution earned a written rebuke from Steve Lux, president of the Republican Party of Saline County PAC.
While it’s not mentioned explicitly in the Republican Party of Saline County’s statement, another event that might have spurred on the eviction happened last month when members of the Saline County Republican Committee led a putsch at the Republican state convention.
Jennifer Lancaster is head of Saline County Republican Women and a lawyer known for representing the woman who sued Hunter Biden for child support and for engaging in political activity while on the clock as law clerk for Justice Barbara Webb.
Lancaster ran against state Republican Party Chairman Joseph Wood for chair of this year’s biennial Republican Party of Arkansas convention. She won the convention chairmanship by a vote of 360 to 256.
Under Lancaster’s lead, the convention carried on into the wee hours of the morning, as members considered multiple party rule changes, including several that had not been approved by the rules committee or circulated in advance as required under existing party rules.
When the smoke cleared, Lancaster’s convention had changed party rules significantly. Now, only registered Republicans can vote in Republican primaries, candidates in Republican primaries are required to be registered Republicans, and there are new guidelines for how the party’s platform and rules committees are composed.
The Republican Party of Saline County has owned the building on the Benton square since 1990, county property records show.
The Saline County Republican Committee and Saline County Republican Women were told to be out of the building at 125 N. Market no later than July 7. According to a local source, as of 10 a.m. this morning, “all of the campaign signs have been removed from the windows” of the building and the space appears to be empty.
Curtis, the Committee chairman, told the Saline Courier yesterday his group was not being evicted and had merely “outgrown the building.” Today, he changed his tune and admitted they were evicted, but tried to paint the situation as “patriots” (his term for the Committee) being oppressed by the “establishment” (his term for a group that apparently includes Doyle Webb and the Republican Party of Saline County).