Republican Sebastian King officially launched his campaign for the District 27 state Senate seat currently held by Democratic state Sen. Michael Garrett with a press release dated Nov. 12, 2019.
First time candidates often stumble out of the starting gate, which may explain why King’s press release states, “He currently serves as Executive Director of the Guilford County Republican Party.”
King is not the executive director and only served as executive director for a couple of months. He resigned that position in May. Chairman of the Guilford County Republican Party David Gleeson was under considerable pressure to remove King from his position as executive director, which is a voluntary position appointed by the chairman. After having a conversation with King, Gleeson announced that King had resigned.
Gleeson was under pressure to remove King because members of the Guilford County Republican Party Executive Committee were concerned that King was attending events as the executive director and then campaigning for the District 27 Senate seat. Since several other Republicans were considering running for the seat, including former District 27 state Sen. Trudy Wade, the appearance that King was using his party position to campaign raised a considerable amount of ire. Candidates are not required to resign their party positions until they file for office, so technically King had violated no official Republican Party policy.
The fact that King’s official press release states he is the “executive director” might be written off as an oversight, but King also did an interview with WXII in September where he is identified as the “executive director” by Bill O’Neill. When the segment originally ran, King was also identified by the chyron as the executive director, but King said he called O’Neill and had that corrected. However, the audio was not corrected.
On Nov. 19 when the error in the Nov. 12 press release was pointed out, King said, “That’s not accurate. He should have taken that out.”
The press release was sent out on Nov. 12 and no correction has been received by the Rhino Times.
Filing for candidates for the 2020 election opens on Dec. 2.
I guess we should hope someone else files, already starting out his campaign by knowingly lying on multiple occasions…hard pass…
Bob:
This is a letter the chairman immediately wrote in response to this article.
The Rhino Times is a mischaracterization of Sebastian King’s resignation as Executive Director of the Guilford County Republican Party. His resignation was handled in accordance with our County Party’s Plan of Organization & in a professional manner by all concerned. As Chair of the GC-GOP, I was never pressured by our Executive Committee or any member of our County Party to force or ask for Sebastian’s resignation from the appointed position of Executive Director. We have enough false narratives from the MSM media; disappointing we are creating our own!
David Gleeson
Chairman
Guilford County Republican Party
I don’t have a problem with him resigning to run for office, I have a problem with him running around telling people that he is still the executive director of an organization in November when he resigned in May; that is the lying that I a referring to. No one cares that he resigned to run for office, why lie about yourself. A foundation built upon sand will fall into the sea…
This guy has about as many selfies as James Piehole…and it appears he lasts about as long in a job as it takes to snap the shutter. I think he actually makes the “clean your room” kid look good. Guilford needs a far better “conservative” candidate running for this particular office.
As an aside, I’d like to know how he conned Representative Jon Hardister into hiring him as a “Policy Advisor”. Another job he had to resign from.
I was reading this press release by him and it totally sounded inauthentic and uninspiring. If it was supposedly written by him and put out BY HIM then why did it say that “He currently serves as Executive Director of the Guilford County Republican Party.” He put it out and totally sounded like it was written for him and not by him.
OUCH! Seems other times since May he said he was/is Executive Director. What are his qualifications and what job does he have?