COLUMBIA, S.C. _ A Richland County judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming that the South Carolina Republican Party broke state laws and its own rules by canceling the state's GOP presidential preference primary.
The decision Wednesday came more than a month after attorneys for the South Carolina GOP and for former U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, a Greenville Republican who represented the state's 4th Congressional District, argued in court over whether the contest should be held in 2020.
In her decision, Judge Jocelyn Newman said state law "unambiguously" says that the South Carolina Republican Party has the right to decide whether it wants to hold a presidential primary and that because voters aren't directly voting for a candidate in the contest, state law does not apply to the presidential primary.
"The law does not give Plaintiffs a legal right to a presidential preference primary, and the Court will not substitute its own judgment for that of the General Assembly or the SCGOP," Newman wrote in her decision.
Inglis and Mt. Pleasant businessman Frank Heindel hoped that a judge would force the party into holding the contest.
"We had hoped for an opportunity for all South Carolina Republicans to vote in the First in the South primary in 2020, but that is not to be," Inglis said, according to a statement from Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that was involved in the case.
Lawyers for Inglis and Heindel said they would evaluate their options with the case before moving forward.
"We respectfully disagree with the judge's decision that presidential preference primaries are different than official primaries," attorney Cameron Kistler said, according to a statement. "Party bosses shouldn't be able to cancel elections and deny hundreds of thousands of voters their voice in selecting presidential candidates."
On the other hand, GOP leaders applauded Newman's decision.
"We are pleased that the judge agreed with us that we don't have to waste taxpayer dollars holding a presidential primary to find out what we already know: that South Carolinians support President Trump," South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick said, according to a statement from the party. "We also appreciate that the judge recognized that the SCGOP's State Executive Committee followed the law, its party rules, and historical precedent."
If the case is appealed, it could eventually land before the state Supreme Court.
Newman added that the question about whether parties could cancel presidential preference primaries would likely need to be revisited in the future.
"Few public functions are as likely to recur as the presidential primary and, as defendants point out, political parties have canceled primaries in the past," Newman wrote in her decision. "The question whether South Carolina law permits a political party's executive committee to cancel a presidential preference primary or whether such cancelations violate the law or the party's rules is, therefore, likely to arise again."
State Republican Party leaders voted in September to cancel the primary. About a month later, the party and McKissick were sued by Inglis and Heindel.
Lawyers for both sides gathered in a Columbia court in October to argue over whether the state Republican Party should be forced to hold a presidential preference primary.
Attorneys Bess DuRant, Torwell Sowell and Cameron Kistler represented Inglis and Heindel. In court, DuRant argued that, in canceling the GOP primary, the South Carolina Republican Party broke state law and its own rules.
Specifically, the plaintiff's lawsuit says state party rules require the party to hold a presidential primary, unless the party decides by convention, within two years of the proposed contest, not to hold a primary.
The lawsuit also said state law binds political parties to take similar steps when shifting from a primary to a convention to nominate candidates. They must get support from three-fourths of convention attendees and put the question to primary voters in the next primary election, the lawsuit says.
"When you look at the applicable statutes and the party's own rules ... it's clear that the party had two options," DuRant said in court. "It didn't jump through either of those hoops. It didn't take any steps to jump through those hoops."
The state party's lawyers, Butch Bowers and Robert Tyson Jr., argued that voters don't have an absolute right to vote in a presidential preference primary, and that without one, voters could hold more sway by "lobbying" national convention delegates to cast a vote for their preferred candidate. Bowers and Tyson were joined by attorneys Robert Bolchoz and Karl Bowers Jr.
"If we're talking about a June primary or a general election ... absolutely, the right to vote is sacrosanct," Butch Bowers argued at the time. "Here, we have a (presidential preference primary). ... If a party decides they want to nominate by convention, they can do so. And if they do so, that means that (voters) don't have the right to vote."
Republican Party lawyers asked that Newman throw out the case, arguing the matter was an "intraparty squabble" and that the court did not have jurisdiction in this matter.
