Penny Swan defected from the rightwing group that captured the local Republican party – and she won’t be voting for Trump
  • neo@lemy.lol
    18·
    5 months ago

    To me the most interesting aspect of the article is kind of fuzzy, namely why she left.

    There’s a hint, but it remains unclear what her concerns about the finances were.

    Swan has a different story. She says she raised concerns about the organization’s handling of finances, which the executives were unable, or unwilling, to address. In a 7 April 2022 email to former chairman Wiseley, Swan resigned.
    “It is with deep regret that I feel the need to step down as deputy treasurer,” wrote Swan.

    Later the article mentions her being slandered for defending a local library that displayed children’s books with LGBTQ+ themes. So maybe that topic contributed to her leaving the group, but all of this seems to have taken place after she already had left the group.

    Am I missing something?

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
      6·
      5 months ago

      I mean… for all their talk about being fiscally conservative, there’s rampant corruption and terrible spending planning in the party.

      You could only look at that, and if you truly looked at it, decide to leave.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    41·
    5 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    While dozens of her neighbors piled into buses bound from Michigan for the US Capitol on 6 January, 2021, Penny Swan, a local Republican party activist and an outspoken Trump supporter, stayed home.

    A decade before 2,000 of Trump’s most diehard supporters stormed the Capitol, Swan, a lifelong Republican and Hillsdale resident, began documenting local government meetings.

    Four months later, as the county party prepared for their annual convention, Swan’s old friends purged dozens of members who they viewed as insufficiently loyal to the Maga right.

    The standoff in the convention parking lot laid bare the divisions that had been festering in the organization for months and set the stage for a protracted legal battle over the rightful leaders of the Hillsdale county GOP.

    “She was kind of brainwashed,” said Gail McClanahan, a Hillsdale county resident who led a successful recall campaign to unseat Stephanie Scott, an election-denying township clerk 2023.

    In an email to the Guardian, Jessica Spangler, a former Hillsdale librarian, said the protracted controversy sparked “a considerable decline in my health, resulting in serious and lasting issues due to the undue stress endured during my tenure”.

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