Someone shot at local GOP office. Now, SC party leaders are pointing fingers
The leaders of the state’s Republican and Democratic parties are trading partisan jabs after the Lancaster County Republican Party building was hit by a bullet, breaking a window, earlier this week.
Both state party leaders indicated, without evidence, that the other’s party may be to blame for the incident, with GOP leader Drew McKissick calling the shooting “a direct result” of political unrest surrounding law enforcement and Democratic leader Trav Robertson tweeting that he wouldn’t be surprised if Republicans vandalized the window themselves.
Lancaster County sheriff’s deputies are still investigating the incident, and no suspect has been identified in the case. But investigators did say they have no reason to believe the office was targeted.
The shooting occurred Sunday night between 7:15 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., according to a police report. Local party chair Sandy McGarry reported the incident to police Monday morning.
Deputies checked surveillance cameras in the area, but did not find clear footage of the shooting, according to the incident report. Police also found a spent bullet inside of the GOP offices.
“At this time we do not have information to indicate whether the location was targeted or whether this was an errant shot from a relatively distant location,” Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office attorney Douglas Barfield said in a statement to The State.
The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office told The State the Republican Party office is located off of a busy bypass and that it’s not rare to see shootings in that area.
On Monday afternoon, the state Republican Party put out a statement about the shooting, which also included information about some political signs that were recently vandalized in Spartanburg County. The emailed statement was titled, “Radical Left Encourage Attacks on SCGOP Office.”
“Mob like violence is spreading, and the radical Left is letting it happen,” the statement read.
In the statement, party chairman McKissick said the “radical Left” is “completely unbalanced.”
“Whether it’s tearing down statues and burning police cars or attacking free speech and destroying political signs, violence is never okay and we have crossed that line,” McKissick said in the statement. “Politicians who don’t forcefully condemn such behavior, or those who take money from these radical groups, give license to the idiots who want to go even further. What happened to our Lancaster Office is a direct result of that.”
McKissick was also quoted in a Lancaster News story about the incident.
Thursday, Democratic Party chairman Robertson tweeted at the Lancaster News about their story, in which he and other state party officials were not quoted. Robertson claimed that his office was not called to comment on the story, and he took issue with accusations made by McKissick in the News’ story.
Robertson tweeted his own comment at the newspaper.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Sandy and Drew McKissick paid somebody to shoot out their windows,” Robertson tweeted.
“They’re trying to create fear and panic because they’re losing their campaigns,” he added on Twitter. “It is a play out of Donald Trump‘s playbook in which he attacks people of color in Democratic cities across this country. Plain and simple. They probably orchestrated the entire situation to make voters feel sorry for them.”
About an hour later, the state GOP’s twitter account fired back, including a screenshot of Robertson’s tweets.
“Our Lancaster County office was shot at Sunday night. Local Democrats were respectful & condemned the act,” an official tweeted from the account. “But SCDP Chairman had a different take. We’re not going to engage in his outrageous allegation. We’re just going to let his words speak for themselves.”
Then a short while later, in a subsequent statement, McKissick called Robertson’s statement “outrageous,” “dangerous” and “absolutely uncalled for.”
“We are so far past the line of what’s accepted that instead of condemning what happened, Trav suggested that we are evil masterminds, orchestrating shootings on our own office,” McKissick said in a statement. “Since he didn’t condemn what happened, he is by default condoning it.”
Maayan Schechter contributed to this report.
