Saline County Republican Headquarters at Market Street and Sevier Street in downtown Benton. (Photo by Shelli Poole)
Frank Curtis, the local Party Chair for the Republican Committee has issued a statement in response to an occurrence at the Party Headquarters on Tuesday, July 2, 2024. That statement is published below – exactly as submitted – as Mr. Curtis asked us to do.
| For the sake of continuity, this article will use the Chairman’s words here for each side of the discussion.
• Patriots/Committee – The Saline County Republican Committee (SCRC). • Establishment/Owners – Republican Party of Saline County, Inc. (RPSC). |
On Tuesday, MySaline reported that the Establishment voted to remove the Patriots from the local Republican Headquarters building. We also published a statement from them, but had not yet gotten a statement from the Patriots.
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STATEMENT FROM THE PATRIOTS/COMMITTEE:
My name is Frank Curtis, I am currently the Chairman of the Saline County Republican Committee, the only organization connected to the Republican Party of Arkansas.
We were evicted yesterday from the long standing home of the SCRC, by the owner of the building, Mr. Doyle Webb. Mr Webb has been a long standing Republican leader throughout the community & state for many decades. Over the past 2 years, the SCRC was taken over by people that had some differing views than Mr Webb & his followers. I’ll call the new group the Patriots, the old group the Establishment. The Establishment has been angry with the Patriots ever since the takeover, which was all legally executed by majority votes.
We Patriots have had enough of the established “institutionalized” people running the Republican party locally, statewide & nationwide. They believe in power from the top down & love the intrenched self serving career politicians.
We are making an effort to follow the Republican party rules, which subsequently give power to “We The People”
We knew it was only a matter of time that we would be evicted, so we have been on an active search for a newer larger building. We have outgrown this old location.
Our accounting committee did mistakingly miss the last insurance payment. We were notified by Mr. Webb, & we immediately made an effort to pay the bill. At this time Mr Webb notified me that he would discuss the matter with his board that manages the building, & that he’d let us know what they decided.
Yesterday morning, thanks to an indoor camera, we saw Mr Webb in the building with a locksmith. He was set to leave the building shortly after the locks were changed, but some of our members showed up to ask if we could get our belongings. He allowed us to, so by the end of the day we retrieved what was ours.
We received no notice of the eviction until yesterday afternoon, after we were almost completely moved out.
As far as the mention of secret meetings, yes we would occasionally have meetings where the establishment people were not invited. Likewise they did the same.
This is just a plan by Mr Webb to tarnish our good name. He will continue to run a Republican club from his building, but they have no affiliation with the other county & state committees.
MySaline will update with more info as it becomes available.
RELATED ARTICLE – JULY 2, 2024:
Owners of Republican HQ building votes to remove current Committee