With a new executive committee, the Richmond County Republican Party is looking to expand.
Steve Sanders was elected the chairman in March and said he has been involved in the party for 10 to 12 years, including a stint as the interim board chairman in 2017-2018 when the board chair at the time resigned to run for a commission seat.
“I served out (that) term during the 2017-2018 cycle, including all of those 2018 elections…,” Sanders said. “(There were) a lot of primaries and runoffs (that year). We had four or five or six elections that year. I was burned out and did not want to do it again. Sherry Barnes became the chairman in 2019 and she served until March and did not want to serve again. So, I was, I felt ready to do it again and excited for the opportunity and nobody else ran.”
As the chairman, his primary goal for the next two years is to grow the membership and bring more people into the Richmond County Republican Party. He wants the organization to be seen as having an open-door policy.
“We know that Richmond County is majority Democrat, but there’s still a lot of Republicans in Richmond County and a lot of folks I think should be Republicans or would be open to it if we can just kind of be inviting,” Sanders said. “That means just trying to kind of present a unified front and try and be positive and be a force for good and not let some of the more kind of petty infighting divisive issues, you know kind of try to stay away from those as much as possible. We’re always going to have disagreements about things, and we understand that. But, if we can focus on sort of the common ground and I think a lot of the causes and issues that we know that most people agree on, I think we can grow the party and be a force for good and a positive influence in Augusta.”
The Richmond County Republican Party holds monthly breakfast meetings with the next one taking place this Saturday, May 13. At this upcoming meeting will be Rebecca Yardley and Josh McKoon, both of whom are running for the Republican Party state chairman seat. Sanders said the current state chairman David Shafer, is not running again, so there are three people vying for that spot. Two of them, Yardley and McKoon, have confirmed they will be at the event on Saturday, Sanders said. The third candidate, Dennis Futch, had not confirmed with Sanders as of May 10.
“It’ll be a really good opportunity for our members and our delegates and anybody else who wants to come to kind of get an idea of what those candidates are going to want to do hopefully to try and unify the state party going into the 2024 elections,” Sanders said.
The breakfast meeting will take place at 9 a.m. at 1100 Azalea Drive. The cost to eat is $10, but is free to just attend, Sanders said.
Besides the breakfast meetings, Sanders said the organization is looking at holding other events to bring in new members.
“We are hoping to be able to do some happy hours and just kind of more fun things to reach out to younger folks and different folks that may not know that we’re even here,” Sanders said. “I think that’s been part of the struggle is the communication and the outreach and just letting folks know that we’re here and we’re fighting for common sense causes.”
Besides Sanders, the other new members of the board are William Harris (vice chair), Sherri Brunkow (vice chair), Barbara Shine (treasure) and Brenda McBride (secretary).
Visit the Richmond County Republican Party Facebook page for more information.
Stephanie Hill is a staff writer covering Columbia County government for The Augusta Press. Reach her at stephanie@theaugustapress.com.
