After several years of inactivity, Screven County’s Republican Party has reorganized, with Osal J. Evans returning as its chairman.
A small group of party leaders met Monday evening at R&D’s Seafood restaurant in Sylvania to make the reorganization official.
Evans had served as chairman of the local party for at least six years when health problems forced him to step down about four years ago. Then another chairperson moved away, Evans said, and at some point the party stopped holding meetings. With his physical condition now improved, he answered a request from state and district GOP leaders to lead the party’s rebirth.
“We’re not in the same ballpark as Bulloch County, populationwise, so we don’t have as many people to draw from, but I did have lots of interest from people wanting the organization so that we would be identified as a two-party county, which I think every county should have,” Evans said.
Screven County, with 14,202 people by the most recent census estimate, does not toe either party line in elections. Last November, 53.9 percent of Screven voters chose Republican nominee Mitt Romney, while 45.5 percent agreed with the national trend in sticking with the Democrat, President Barack Obama. But 60.7 percent of Screven voters chose U.S. Rep. John Barrow, the 12th Congressional District Democrat, over Republican challenger Lee Anderson.
Most of Screven’s county-level officials are Democrats, although Evans asserts that many are Republicans at heart.
“You know the old rural opinion that if you’re going to be elected to county office you need to run on the Democratic ticket,” he said. “That’s what these people are still doing to a great degree.”
Evans, 77, who retired as commander of the Georgia State Patrol post in Sylvania after 32 years with the agency, has never held elected office. Instead a grassroots organizer and campaigner, he traces his Republican affiliation back almost 50 years.
via Screven County GOP reborn with familiar chairman | StatesboroHerald.com.
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