These Republicans supported Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It cost them their positions. (2024)

COLUMBIA — The South Carolina Republican Party has disqualified five of its members — including two delegates to the national convention in Milwaukee this summer — from voting after revelations they contributed hundreds of dollars to independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign.

According to SCGOP leadership, the five members — Keith and Olga Blandford, John and Mamie Rand, and former attorney general candidate Lauren Martel — were told they were no longer eligible to vote at the party’s May 4 convention following revelations each had paid $500 to attend a dinner at a private residence last July where Kennedy was speaking.

At the time, Kennedy — an heir of the Kennedy political dynasty — was running as a Democrat seeing his stock rise as an anti-establishment figure with policy positions favored by liberals and conservatives alike.

He was also seen as a potential spoiler to President Joe Biden — talk that escalated after Kennedy decided to withdraw from the Democratic primary to run as an independent.

That has changed in recent weeks. Boosters for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, including Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., have begun to rail against Kennedy as a possible siphon of Republican votes after the candidate came out in favor of a ban on puberty blockers favored by Republicans. Others were angered by a recent proposal by the Kennedy campaign to join with Biden on a “no spoiler” pledge to try and deny Trump the presidency.

Martel, in an interview, said she was not aware she was donating to Kennedy’s campaign when she paid to attend the dinner, and that she mistakenly believed the ticket price was intended to cover the cost of food and drink.

Each of the donors have since been granted refunds by the Kennedy campaign, with each claiming their donations were misunderstandings.

“To our knowledge, it was not a donation to a political candidate,” Olga Blandford, a member of the Charleston County delegation, said in a video interview on Rumble with conservative activist Laura Scharr.

State GOP Chairman Drew McKissick said the rules are clear. Under the party code of conduct, any officer, delegate or alternate who publicly endorses or financially supports a candidate for partisan office other than a duly nominated Republican candidate “shall immediately vacate their Republican Party office.”

“I just find it just hilarious that these folks would claim that they were just too naive to understand that they were actually giving money to the candidates’ campaign that they were going to hear,” McKissick told The Post and Courier.

But the rule also states an exemption for donations made when there is “no Republican nominee in the relevant race” — a provision Martel argues exempts them from punishment.

While Kennedy was still a Democrat at the time, Trump was still actively involved in a competitive primary election, meaning there was no clear Republican nominee. Though Martel said she never supported Kennedy for president, she appreciated his ideas and thought he could potentially serve as an official in a future Trump presidency.

“I couldn’t see (Kennedy) as president,” she said. “But attorney general? Maybe.”

McKissick laughed off that argument, calling Martel’s stance a “twisted, exaggerated reading of our rules.”

While there is a clear exemption for what Martel and the other delegates did, party rules also state “the spirit” of the rule, rather than “the letter of each rule,” shall be controlling.

“The spirit of the rule is, obviously, you do not support people who are going to be running against our nominees,” said McKissick. “That applies to independent or write-in candidates, and that applies to Democrats. It’s not as though the Republican Party was not going to have a nominee for president, for goodness sake.”

To those disqualified members and their supporters, the party’s decision to rob them of voting power was little more than retaliation for opposing the status quo within the party.

For years, the SCGOP has been rocked by internal turmoil between traditional conservatives and a more hardline, populist wing that has waged open war against party leadership.

In Horry County, a rogue organization made up of former party leaders had refused to turn over control of the party’s bank accounts to the duly-elected membership of the Horry County GOP while, in Lexington County, the membership spent months split between factions loyal to former chair Pamela Godwin and new Lexington County chairman Mark Weber.

Each of the disqualified delegates have engaged in similar activism.

Martel notably led an unsuccessful effort within the party to overturn the result of a 2022 primary election she lost by more than 109,000 votes after it was found election workers did not fill out the proper paperwork.

The Blandfords both won their seats as so-called “America First” candidates who were ideologically opposed to the party’s more traditional leadership, while the Rands both represent a hardline faction of the Charleston County Republican Party.

Ahead of the state party convention, each said they intended to support alternative candidates for party leadership who were seen as diametrically opposed to the purportedly more moderate incumbents.

Disqualifying them, they said, was tantamount to alienating the voters who supported them.

”That is interference in our elections,” Blandford said last week.

McKissick said the rules exist for a reason. And they are ultimately larger than the whims of one chairman.

”The people in the party who elect other individuals to leadership positions have a right to expect those people to actually reflect the purposes of the party and obey the rules of the party,” said McKissick. “These individuals openly flouted those rules. And if those rules don’t apply to everyone equally, they’re not rules at all.”