Well, it's been two days since the big convention, and things are calming down for the most part. Our review of it seems to have been met with mostly positive reactions. The only corrections I got were mistakenly putting Kenney Boone as Mayor of Florence and misspelling Carroll Padgett's first name. Our apologies to Boone, Padgett and current Florence Mayor Stephen Wukela... We tried, like always, to be honest and fair in assessing things, and I think we did, and the response from just about all of the people we were running against has been positive...
The point of this post is to show that we all make mistakes. Some are temporary slip ups or errors, where we say 'Oops, sorry' and we correct it and go on. Before I get into this, we will preface it with this statement: Like most critiques, we do it for a constructive reason, and it's usually for that person's benefit.. Whether they don't like that we do it here it irrelevant. Why? Because the mistakes we see are public ones, and public mistakes deserve public corrections. That's just how it goes.. Especially when the mistake you know you make is followed up by a public explanation that is a bigger mistake than the first one. What we are saying is take our excellent advice, don't take it as anything more than that, and move on - just like we do. Posts like these aren't made to split people, it's to mend them..
So, what exactly am I talking about? At the convention, Florence County Chair Bill Pickle on a few occasions referred to the 7th District as 'The Great Pee Dee District'.. The first thought that came to many of us was is Pickle trying to piss off Horry and Georgetown counties on purpose, or is he just not thinking right now? We think we got our first answer, when Tom Grimes got 25 of Carroll Padgett's 29 delegates in the second vote later that day. Our second answer came from Pickle himself this morning...
Bill took the first few minutes to review the convention on his radio show. His first minor error was mention Elijah Jones winning the Chairman race, but forgot to mention Horry County members Jerry Rovner and Cleo Steele's election as Vice-Chair and Secretary. It could have been a mental error, because live radio isn't the easiest thing to do. We guess we weren't the only ones to bring up the 'Great Pee Dee' references, because that was his next topic.. His explanation was that it was done purposefully, in that all eight counties run through, border or confluence the Little Pee Dee and Great Pee Dee Rivers.
While that all may be true, there is a simple fact in politics, and in life - people don't like be called things they don't like being called. In Horry and Georgetown counties, they consider themselves members of the Grand Strand, and that's what they prefer to be called... Even though it may an attempt to try and unify the two areas of the District, Pickle is doing himself and Elijah Jones a disservice by doing this. I wouldn't call it arrogance, but obstinance might be a better term for it.
How? Easy... We were there, and a lot of people from the Strand left that convention with a bad taste in their mouths. They drove a long way, and they spent a lot of money getting there in 15 passenger vans and staying in hotels. See 'Red' from Myrtle Beach's comments from yesterday's post... He/She is pretty much on point. There was a lot of frustration, and Pickle coming out by still refusing to use those two words - Grand Strand - pushed his thumb a bit further into the eye of the Horry and Georgetown contingent. It makes Elijah's job harder when they get the feeling that they're not being respected. It's a bad move, considering they DO have both National Delegates, and a majority of the votes...
I worked in Beaufort County a few years ago, which is actually three parts: Hilton Head, the area west of it, and Beaufort. People on Hilton Head NEVER leave the island, and wouldn't be caught dead in Bluffton. As far as Beaufort, it's 35 miles away, but it may as well be a million.... Try to explain it though he might, there are unavoidable truths Bill would profit from learning: African-Americans don't like being called the 'N' word, there are terms that offend people both North and South, and people from the Grand Strand don't really consider themselves members of the Pee Dee... So be it. Rather than spend endless sentences trying explain it, our County Chair would make things easier by just giving in, and use 'and the Grand Strand' like every TV station does when talking about the area. It would make life easier for a lot of us.. We're in the infancy of this District - let's try to start it off right.
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7 comments:
Whoever from the Florence loser's club that is trashing these guys should note that due to their brilliant leadership, six out of seven counties rejected their Chair candidate and all but one person who won the officer and delegate elections comes from within ten miles of the coast. They sure did a great job of giving the "Great Pee Dee" a strong voice in the new district. They should spend less time getting online and trashing people and more time in the real world actually getting people elected - something they don't do very well.
You know we have a problem in Clarendon as we consider ourselves in the Santee Cooper Country and some even the Lowcountry. Williamsburg people consider themselves in the Lowcountry. I can't for the life of me not understand why some do not want to include the Grand Strand name. I have had several people from Chesterfield tell me that they do not consider themselves Pee Dee.
Elijiah Jones has already started trying to mend some of the fences caused by the "us against them" folks from both camps. In his first email to everyone the other day he suggested we alternate the Distict Convention between the beach and the Pee Dee.
Seems like a reasonable idea to me.
Maybe that should be between the Pee Dee and the Grand Strand or the Grand Strand and the Pee Dee. Also you hold them every four years. That is a long time.
That sounds like an awfully nice way of saying I should mind my own business, and I can respect that! :) But, for years now, that has been my self-appointed job: to advise people when I think they are making mistakes, in what I hope comes off in a constructive way..
I'm not sure if you were there or not, but there were people from Horry and Georgetown who didn't not take the term kindly.. Rather than let it continue on and on, I chose to nip it in the bud, and attempt to let a small thing that could get larger if continued end. That's it. If it's not listened to, then it's not my fault, because I did my part to bridge the gap, though some might look at it as pushing it open. We surely will be meeting in less than 4 years, so I'd hate to see it come up again. Thanks for putting your advice so considerately, and not calling me Horse Manure!
Wow, I never heard of moving convention locations. What a radical new idea! A sign of true genius!
Not a sign of genuis, just a sign of someone who won a close election trying to make sure all bases are covered from one end of the district to the other.
Again, making the suggestion was a good idea --- better than excluding one group (which was Mike's point to start with).
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