Story Update: On the morning of December 4, after this post had been written and published, Mr. Sack aborted the plan to hold the political party meeting at the brick house on South Main Street, blaming the Super PAC. He wrote: “Attention [Bulloch] County Committee: I am updating you on the County Committee meeting to be held on Thursday, December 7, 2023, at 6:30pm. The location is changing back to the headquarters. Due to federal regulations and the Citizens for Free Enterprise being a 527 organization (Super PAC), it appears that we will not be able to utilize the building that was previously offered to us. There was a miscommunication at the local level on their part…” – Lawton Sack, Bulloch GOP Chair

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Statesboro, Georgia is one of those growing southern cities that still has the heart of a small town. Every “First Friday,” hundreds of people meet on Main Street to peruse the line-up of local businesses, listen to a band, and sometimes even compete in a chili cook-off. Some months, depending on the season, politicians will be out campaigning for the next election. 

Photo from visitstatesboro.org

The Brick House on South Main Street & “The Coalition”

Citizens tend to notice when a new business moves in or a building changes ownership. Recently, some have been receiving invitations to meetings at a brick house on South Main Street from a new group called “Bulloch Taxes.” To ride the energetic movement to oppose property tax hikes, Republican Party chairperson, Lawton Sack, along with his loyal Treasurer, Cassandra Mikell, have been attempting to enlarge the group. In October, they claimed to have renamed the group and “formed a 501(c)(4) organization called the Bulloch Action Coalition,” and held their October 24 meeting at the brick house on South Main Street. In November, they made signs to saber-rattle the defeat of each county commissioner by name and even thanked their “sponsors and donors” on social media for the funding. They remembered to place these signs in front of the brick house on South Main Street and take more photos.

The Brick House on South Main Street & “The Party”

The chairmanship of the Republican Committee in Bulloch County is an important public interest role to all county citizens. Unbeknownst to most, political party committees have responsibilities mentioned in over 90 sections of Georgia Election Law. Concernedly, Sack plans to hold yet another unannounced meeting of the Bulloch County Republican Committee at the brick house on South Main Street this Thursday evening, December 7th. At the last meeting, it was Ms. Mikell who moved to discuss the possibility of moving, not only this December meeting but ALL PARTY MEETINGS to the brick house on South Main Street, which would likely involve forfeiting their current independent location near Ogeechee Technical College. He might encourage a vote this Thursday.

There are more dubious issues. For example, Ms. Mikell and Mr. Sack promoted the move to the brick house on South Main Street to save money, as they claimed that the sub-usage would be “no cost” to the party. When asked who was leasing the building, Mr. Sack denied the information, only saying that it was leased by someone “out of state” and that a good political friend from Bryan County, Celestine James, was the local point of contact for property access.

Despite this lack of information, Sack led the committee to “Hold the December 7 meeting at … South Main Street with no guests in attendance due to space constraints.” This is the excuse Sack has leveraged to keep the meeting notices from reaching the broader membership and the public. And, he has used “his” majority to vote down the process of obtaining a larger location for meetings.

Uncomfortable with Professional Accountability & Fair Majorities

He has preferred these closed meetings since a contentious meeting in March when he overruled more than 20 assertive and well-researched party members, including the majority of executive officers, who called him “out of order” for violating the Rules of the Georgia Republican Party, Inc. Knowledgeable citizens were livid that he had packed the committee with a full voting quorum of personal appointees after the biennial elections to shift the majority to his benefit. This meeting began the cancellation of the representative votes of thousands of Bulloch Republican citizens, as the votes of extra members counteract those of the elected Precinct Chairmen.

Many educated citizens believe that he has also perpetuated harm to the party by ignoring parliamentary reports from six of the highest-credentialed professional parliamentarians in the United States, including the Parliamentarian of the Republican National Committee, Al Gage. Georgia State Committeewoman, Susan Opraseuth, and duly-elected Bulloch Committee Secretary, Sarah Thompson, sent an assertive letter and professional reports to Josh McKoon, Chairman and CEO of the Republican Party, Inc. in August detailing significant compliance problems within both the State and Bulloch County Committees that require immediate remedy. Mr. McKoon has presented no known indication of attaining any of the compliance, to the detriment of Republicans in Bulloch County and statewide.

Additionally, Sack is using his swayed majority power to avoid granting organizational resources to elected members of the committee, Precinct Chairmen representing nearly every area of Bulloch County, and nearly 20,000 Republican voters. He claims a need to further personally “vet” elected people before they can receive basic party data. In October, Sack also led the committee to reverse and rescind a significant resolution on Election Integrity that had passed the Bulloch Executive Committee. Needless to say, donations are down.

Imagine the surprise when, last week, members of the local party committee discovered that a Super PAC had leased the brick house on South Main Street! Super PACS nationwide are positioning themselves to raise and move significant political money in the upcoming election.

Ducey and Kemp

This Super PAC, registered with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) as Citizens for Free Enterprise, is run by none other than the former Governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, as described by the National Review. Ducey was termed out of office in November 2022 after the highly contested election between his Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, and popular Kari Lake. During the election, Ducey attended endorsement activities for Lake’s Republican challenger, while splitting his time in Georgia campaigning for Governor Kemp, as The Hill explains.

Ducey appears to be expanding his “franchise-like” operation throughout Georgia with his Executive Director, J.P. Twist. On LinkedIn, it appears that Ducey has staff nearly exclusively in Georgia and Arizona. Garrison Belk of Atlanta left a position with Kelly Loeffler’s Citizens for Greater Georgia enterprise to become the State Director for Ducey’s CFE operation in Georgia, but has since left.

This is how Open Secrets, which is the nation’s premier research and government transparency group tracking money in politics and its effect on elections and policy, defines a Super PAC:

This type of federally registered political action committee may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations, and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates. Unlike traditional PACs, super PACs are prohibited from donating money directly to political candidates, and their spending must not be coordinated with that of the candidates they benefit. Super PACs are required to report their donors to the Federal Elections Commission…

Ducey and Kemp – The Defense of Fraudulent Elections

Politically speaking, some might say that Governors Doug Ducey and Brian Kemp maneuvered in strikingly similar ways following the 2020 election. This article by Fox10 Phoenix and this billboard dramatically depicts the pushback to their state leadership.

Kemp and Ducey are especially well-known for similar rhetoric concerning the election system they share from Dominion Voting Systems. They publicized nearly the same narratives to defend the security of the electronic system, yet thousands of citizens and election workers informed them of election fraud. In 2021, Ducey was also censured by the Arizona GOP, as described by Politico, and Kemp was booed by Georgia’s GOP State Convention Delegation a few months later.

According to election litigators, (1) both states are permitting federal violations of the people’s right to vote, (2) it has been proven that both states violate federal laws by having their voting systems connected to the internet, through software from Scytl and Smartmatic. (3) Both states also have elections that run on the backbone of the Gems servers, and (4) Dominion machines allow the same ballot to be re-scanned, creating massive problems as we saw in the case of Ruby Freeman, published by The Georgia Record.

Both Georgia and Arizona have proven election fraud. At this moment, Judge Amy Totenberg of the Northern District of Georgia, is preparing for a significant hearing on the Dominion system security as the culmination of nearly six years of litigation in January 2024. American Military News describes the recent ruling and provides a link to the 135-page document. 

Million-dollar questions regarding the brick house on South Main Street:

• Is a shared location arrangement like this between a Super PAC and a political party committee appropriate? It appears not.
• Can political party committees receive cash or in-kind “FREE RENT” contributions from a Super PACS? It appears not.
• Can party committees coordinate with Super PACS to promote, attack, support or oppose candidates? No.
• Are there other federal elections approaching that impact Bulloch County? Yes, of course. U.S. Congress every two years.
• Do Super PACS also spend money supporting and opposing state or local candidates? Yes. George Soros spent hundreds of thousands of dollars advocating for progressive District Attorneys in Augusta and Savannah in the 2020 election cycle through the Justice & Public Safety Super PAC and the Color of Change Super PAC.

Also for your consideration, here is additional public interest information involving elections:

The brick house on South Main Street is a few doors down from GA State Senator Billy Hickman’s accounting firm. Both Senator Hickman and State Representative Lehman Franklin make regular donations to the political party committee, have seats on the committee, and received the minutes of the November meeting alerting them of the closed meeting.

Mr. Lawton Sack served simultaneously as the Republican Party chairperson for Bulloch County and as a public election official on the Bulloch County Board of Elections (BOE) and Registration for several months earlier this year. He received significant pressure from the public and frustrated commissioners regarding his perceptively conflicted public position under GA Law. Seeing the opportunity to run in the Statesboro municipal election, he vacated the public BOE position to qualify for the District 2 City Council position in August. He lost to incumbent, Paulette Chavers, in November, just a few weeks ago. He campaigned for public office while participating in group meetings and working with “sponsors and donors” at the brick house on South Main Street funded by the Super PAC .

Photo from the Statesboro Herald.

To add yet another entity to the mix, Mr. Sack and Ms. Mikell have become Synovus bank account agents for the new Bulloch County Republican Party, Inc., which has the same name as the member-based political party that must be maintained under the GA Election Code. It is a corporation without members that they claim has “become” the political party committee association. To take authority, they converted cash and digital assets to the corporation from within. There is, however, no known official paperwork indicating that the corporation is now the political party committee association and the no known bylaws. Sack and Mikell claim to have “incorporated the committee” with local attorney, Ryan Purvis, and former officers, Reid Derr and Rana Erbrick, on March 6, 2023 – that there is just one entity. A corporate registration of a new entity can be found with the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State, where the articles of incorporation state that the corporation will not have members. This contradicts GA Election Law directly because legitimate representative political party member action defends our republican form of government and is stated in GA Code § 21-2-111.

This shady corporate action was “fast walked,” possibly with help from their friend, Deputy Secretary Jordan Fuchs, just days before the county party officer elections on March 11th. As some may recall, Fuchs is notorious for leaking the critical 2021 “election results” call between President Trump and Secretary Raffensperger to The Washington Post. The transcripts of the call revealed Fuchs’ myriad false statements.

Neither the Bulloch County Republican Party nor Bulloch County Republican Party, Inc. files reports with the Federal Elections Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, nor the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission. They have no public financial oversight.