Greenville Democrats remove official from leadership, say he supported GOP candidate

The Greenville County Democratic Party removed Kwadjo Campbell from his role as the state executive committeeman on Monday.

The move came after Campbell served as the media contact for six prominent, non-partisan Black pastors who endorsed a Republican candidate against a Democrat in the Nov. 7 municipal elections.

In a meeting that lasted under an hour, 14 of 27 eligible voting members said yes to removing Campbell from his position, nine voted against the measure and four abstained, citing a lack of clarity of how the rule was being interpreted.

GCDP Chair Amanda McDougald Scott said Campbell violated a state party rule prohibiting party workers in leadership positions from publicly supporting, endorsing, or working for a candidate in opposition to the Democratic candidate.

"People can voice frustrations, opinions, votes or support however they like unless they are elected as GCDP or SCDP (South Carolina Democratic Party) leadership," McDougald Scott said at the beginning of the meeting.

"And if you are in that leadership position, you have a choice. The choice is that you can stay in a leadership position and not support Republicans. Or you can choose to promote, support, endorse or work against a Democrat or Republican, and then in doing that, you're vacating your position as of the rules."

But Campbell, who runs a consulting firm and has run prominent state and local campaigns, said he did not recruit or organize the pastors. He claimed he had not composed the endorsement letter issued and did not benefit monetarily as he represented the pastors pro bono.

"It's really insulting they would think that I would tell these African-American, educated spiritual leaders what to do," Campbell said. "Since the Democratic Party knows it's just straight suicide to attack the ministers directly, they came for the next best thing and attacked me."

Campbell has said the party has been ignoring the concerns confronting Black voters. "As a Democrat, I want to bring us together to find out what (the pastors') grievances are, and I think that this is an opportunity for us to do that," Campbell said. "I don't think we should continue on this path that we're on. I think it only wedges us further apart."

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The letter that started it all

On Nov. 3, days before the municipal elections in Greenville, six prominent Black pastors— Pastor Curtis Johnson, Rev. Stacey Mills, Rev. James Nesbitt, Rev. B.L. Battle, Rev. Vinson Royal and Rev. Phillip Baldwin, endorsed the Republican At-Large City Council candidate Randall Fowler against Democratic incumbent Dorothy Dowe, and said Black voters in Greenville were unlikely to benefit from being a reliable base for any one political party.

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"In making this endorsement we have evaluated the long history of patronizing promises made and broken, of empty gestures made without substance, of spoken good intentions that ultimately rang hollow, and concluded that the change we need will not come by supporting the status quo," they said in the press statement.

The letter sent reverberations through the echelons of the local Democratic Party. The pastors were influential in majority-minority precincts that trended Democratic in the past and several party workers began wondering if this was a new chapter in the city's politics.

Amidst the stir, Campbell's name in the email drew attention.

Johnson, who was one of the six pastors, and wrote the letter at the center of the issue, defended Campbell.

A conflict of choices: Obligations as a party official vs. serving as a consultant

The question before party officials was whether Campbell providing resources could be seen as a violation of rules.

Board member Kirsten Pruitt spoke in favor of removing Campbell from his position. "Even though it's not directly endorsing a candidate, attaching your name like that does carry some persuasiveness and does appear that you are throwing weight behind the Republican candidate," Pruitt said.

Could the firm have sent out the email without Campbell's name attached to it? Could there have been another way for pastors to articulate their concerns? Pruitt said officials needed to keep their business relationships separate from their work in the party.

Another member, Shawn Trapp, spoke against the measure and said he could see a rule violation if Campbell used his consulting firm for Fowler directly. But since Campbell was assisting the pastors, his involvement seemed far removed. "I think that we can't really use this rule to punish Mr. Campbell," Trapp said.

Lee Turner, who ran against U.S. Rep. William Timmons for the 4th Congressional District seat through a write-in campaign, said Campbell had to make a decision. Did he want to serve as a political consultant and have the flexibility to offer services to any number of people? Or did you want to be on the state executive committee of the Democratic Party?

"One's not right, one's not wrong. But the two used improperly, do not mix. And I think that's the real question," Turner said.

The confusion over the state party rule continued toward the end of the vote, and Campbell was ultimately removed. After the vote, Campbell told the Greenville News the optics of the vote were a sign of a racial disconnect within the Democratic Party. The majority of the votes cast in favor of removing him, he said came from white Democrats. He will be appealing the decision at the state level.

"We as pastors are very disappointed that that is the direction that the Democratic Party chose to take," Johnson told the Greenville News. "We think that they made a big mistake because what Kwadjo is concerned about is the same thing that we as pastors are concerned about as it relates to some of the decisions that have been made regarding the Black community."

Johnson said the party leadership had not reached out to any of the pastors after or before the letter was sent out. The pastors, he said, hoped they could elaborate their concerns about a living wage, affordability, gentrification and the continued influence of developers in Greenville in future meetings with leadership.

"What we really don't appreciate is the way some of the people in the Democratic leadership are more concerned about the party platform than they are about the issues of justice that we keep trying to communicate to the party and to the community at large," Johnson continued, adding that it felt like the party was taking Black voters for granted.

The Monday vote reminded Johnson of Dr. Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," where King expressed his concern with the "white moderate" who is more committed to order than to justice.

"For years Kwadjo Campbell has been seen as a disrupter, as like a nuisance to some leadership of the Democratic Party because of his commitment to justice," he said.

The South Carolina Democratic Party declined to comment.

A former Charleston City Council member and a popular political consultant based in Greenville, Campbell served as the state executive committeeman for the Greenville County Democratic Party.

McDougald Scott and Campbell had been quarreling about the rules for days leading up to the vote. In email exchanges spanning key Democratic operatives and S.C. House Representatives, the two Democrats disagreed on whether or not the party was doing enough to represent Black voters. On Nov. 16, Campbell sent a letter that focused on the declining Black voter participation in the past few election cycles. "There is a growing trend for Black leaders and activists to endorse Republican candidates and for Black voters to abandon our party and vote for Republicans and third-party candidates," he said in the letter shared with the Greenville News.Campbell blamed the county party for not adopting the GCDP Black Caucus' "Black agenda" and not allocating funds to protect Greenville lawmaker Chandra Dillard's seat, House District 23, which was no longer a majority-minority district after the last redistricting cycle.

But there's a technical reason why the county party did not formally include the caucus' agenda. Last year, when the Greenville City Council voted to approve the controversial Woven project to build two mixed-use buildings in West Greenville, the council was split 3-4. Democratic Councilman Russell Stall joined his Republican counterparts to approve the project, angering community members and Democrats within the party.

Condemnation and concerns about growing gentrification flooded the county party.

Campbell and the local Black caucus began working with the State Democratic Black Caucus led by Charleston County operative Brandon Upson to criticize Stall's decision-making. The internal conflict reached a flashpoint, three Democrats confirmed.

The state party, helmed by former Chair Trav Robertson, intervened and decided to dissolve all caucuses on the local level. This meant that any agenda item from a non-official branch was not mandated to be adopted or reviewed.

To Campbell, the technicality seemed amiss. "You don't need a chapter to talk about these things," he told the Greenville News.

Meanwhile, McDougald Scott wondered why Campbell had not raised these concerns during leadership meetings in the past.

"It hasn't been a surprise to me that voices of color don't feel like they're being heard, which is exactly why ever since I've been Chair, we've been taking as many steps as possible to try to fix that," she said. The party hosted block parties all summer in low-turnout as well as majority-minority precincts to engage voters. "We still have a lot of work to do, and I'm certainly not shying away from that problem."

Devyani Chhetri covers SC Politics for the Greenville News. You can reach her at @ChhetriDevyani on X or dchhetri@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Greenville Democrats oust local leader, say he supported GOP candidate