Myrtle Beach’s candidates in the race for mayor are weighing in on a story that began online about what some called a troubling pattern of political contributions to the incumbents in the upcoming Myrtle Beach elections.
Business Owners Organized to Save Tourism, or BOOST, has now admitted to being behind a Web site that claims that the Myrtle Beach area Chamber of Commerce somehow coordinated the contributions as a kind of "payback" to elected officials for passing the city's one-cent sale tax increase.
Specifically, it cited a series of $1,000 checks to incumbent mayor John Rhodes, and incumbent council members Randal Wallace and Chuck Martino.
The Web site also claims that local companies who make political contributions benefit from the tax and that money allotted for tourism advertising from the tax was somehow diverted to elected officials who voted for the tax.
However, last night, Myrtle Beach area Chamber of Commerce President Brad Dean told News13 that whoever started this online is spreading false information.
Today, three of the mayoral candidates offered their opinion on the issue.
“It’s ridiculous and it's people buying elections,” said Mark McBride.
McBRIDE is calling for an investigation into a total of $24,000 of campaign donations incumbent John Rhodes received some from members of the city's Chamber of Commerce.
In a separately recorded response to those comments, Rhodes said, “Mark, don't come up and start talking about buying elections. All I’m doing is raising money in order to have to campaign it's the tip of the iceberg and when you have an organization putting together money like that, that's improper.”
Rhodes admits Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce Chairman Brant Branham helped him raise money, but Rhodes says Branham volunteered to do so and did not use chamber money to support Rhodes.
“These checks, that we received, came from legitimate corporations that are registered with the state of South Carolina and therefore, what are we supposed to do? Do we question the corporations or do we file deposit money and let the ethics committee question if there's any questions?” Rhodes said.
The state's ethics commission says Rhodes did nothing wrong by accepting the donations.
Beatrice Catalano, who is also running for mayor, says the ethics commission's opinion should count most.
“Are we trying to gain points by doing this? What are we trying to do? Get votes? We can't be talking about things unless we know that this was planned and we don't know that,” said Catalano.
Catalano says she has no problem with members of the chamber making personal political contributions.
Candidates Bill Howard and Matthew McCarty say they need to look at the information more before they go on the record with their opinions.
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