Exposing the Corruption of the "Family Values" Party
Paris Dennard was a conservative pundit for CNN until 2018 when it was revealed he had been fired at his previous job for sexual harassment, including gesturing as though unzipping his pants and masturbating. He was then hired by the RNC as a national spokesperson until he was fired in August 2022 for unknown reasons.
John McGee was an Idaho state senator who was offered a choice between facing a states ethics panel or resigning after being accused of sexual harassment. He chose to resign.
He’s kind of a “and then there is more” sort of character. He was first elected to the state senate in 2004, winning the primary and thus the election since Democrats did not run a candidate in any of the elections. But things went awry. In 2011, he went to a golf tournament where he got really drunk, stole an SUV and cargo trailer from a complete stranger and in an accident, got it stuck in someone’s yard. His blood alcohol was .15, nearly twice the legal limit of .08. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor DUI in a deal that got the vehicle theft charges dropped. He had 180 days jail sentence, with 175 days suspended.
Bo Dresner was a Republican county official, sergeant of arms, and a precinct chair in Hays County, Texas. He has been charged with aggravated sexual assault of one victim over the course of seven years. The four children in his custody have been removed. Aggravated sexual assault means the alleged assailant caused serious bodily harm, used fear or threats of violence, flourishing of weapons, to coerce them, or gives them something that impairs their ability to resist.
Clint Reed was the Arkansas Republican Party director before he was hired by Sen. Mark Rubio as his Chief of Staff for sexual misconduct. Rubio was made aware of the misconduct, did an investigation with his general counsel, found there were some threats of withholding employment benefits and improper conduct between a supervisor and subordinates. Reed was fired the next day.
Todd Kincannon was the Executive Director of the Republican Party. He was arrested in 2015 for domestic violence when his wife called in fear for her life. He claimed it was a side effect of his cold medicine benzonatate.
In 2018, he was arrested for killing his mother’s dog and terrorizing his mother. His father called the police. He may be mentally ill. He was also a Twitter troll who tweeted things like this:
Elliott Broidy was the Republican National Committee’s Finance Chair until he resigned after a woman sued him and alleged he physically abused her. She also alleged the anti-choice Broidy pressured her to have an abortion. When this became public, he suspended payments to her because they had a nondisclosure agreement, but she disputes that she disclosed the situation. She took him to court and the judge dismissed the abuse allegations because they do not apply to the question of breach of contract.
Roy Bolden was a pastor of the Legions of Christ Ministries in Providence, Rhode Island. It’s a church that happily risks its nonprofit status with openly partisan, pro-Republican teaching. He was also the Chair of the Providence GOP. In 2017, he was charged with child molestation. The case is ongoing and the next pre-trial conference is in late October, 2022.
The accuser was 21 in 2017 when he went to the police. He said the abuse began when he was twelve and continued for six years.
Gary Schaffrick was the Connecticut Republican State Central Committee Treasurer. He also was a paid employee of the party. He often bragged about how much he enjoyed bathtime with a five-year-old victim, a young boy who also slept with him on sleepovers. He was babysitting the child for a relative. He was charged with risk of injury to a child, a broad charge that encompasses offenses from supplying a child with cigarettes, alcohol, adult materials, or inappropriate sexual contact. He resigned after the press sued for release of details of his arrest warrant. He pleaded guilty and was given a ten-year suspended sentence and five years probation.
Rupert Tarsey was elected Secretary of the Broward County Executive Committee. He had worked hard on Trump’s election, registering Republican voters in a liberal county. But he was not who he seemed to be.
He was born Rupert Ditsworth. His family was wealthy and he attended an exclusive prep school near his home in Beverly Hills. One day he invited another student, Elizabeth Barcay, to eat lunch in his Jaguar. He confessed he was feeling suicidal and when she suggested seeking counseling he beat her with a hammer until it broke and then he tried to strangle her. There were forty wounds from the beating. Incredibly, she bit him, broke free, ran away, before collapsing in someone’s yard. She survived. He was charged with attempted murder and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon
Merril Robert Barter was the Lincoln County GOP Commissioner for twenty-eight years and the Town Clerk of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, for forty-sex years. At age sixty-nine he went to the state Republican convention in Augusta and was arrested for having sex with a minor. At first he pled innocent but then changed his plea to guilty on two counts of unlawful sexual contact and sexual assault on a teenage boy was sentenced to 364 day suspended sentence and a year’s probation to serve consecutively.