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The leader of South Carolina’s largest crony capitalist advocacy organization – the left-leaning S.C. Chamber of Commerce – was ousted from his post this week, sources familiar with the situation have confirmed to this media outlet.
Bob Morgan took over as president and chief executive officer of the scandal-scarred organization in April 2021 after the group’s previous leader, former state representative Ted Pitts, was ousted. Prior to his three-year stint in the Palmetto State, Morgan led the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce from 2005 – 2018 and the Gaston Chamber of Commerce from 2002 to 2005.
No reason was immediately provided for the decision.
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According to an email from the chamber’s board chairman, Will Whitley, Morgan tendered his resignation shortly after noon on Monday (June 24, 2024).
“It goes without saying that we are grateful for Bob’s time in South Carolina and his contributions to our state’s business community,” Whitley wrote. “The Chamber and its members are better represented at the State House because of his three years here.”
According to our sources, the group will reportedly be run on an interim basis by Michael Brenan – the regional president of the Truist Financial Corporation.
Whitley’s email confirmed as much, saying Brenan had “agreed to offer his experience and guidance as interim president and CEO as we conduct a thorough search for Bob’s permanent successor.”
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“Mike is the right person to build on the momentum we have as an organization following an extremely successful two-year legislative session, and I look forward to spending time with him as a group during which he can articulate his vision for his tenure as interim president and CEO,” Whitley continued.
Is the chamber really enjoying a surge of momentum at the State House?
Establishment “Republican” candidates lost several key races during the recent partisan primary – and an establishment-funded effort to defeat multiple conservative GOP lawmakers came up short.
Was the chamber part of that failed establishment effort?
Other sources suggested internal turmoil at the organization was to blame for Morgan’s ouster.
“That organization has had tremendous staff turnover in the past few years – that’s a sign something was wrong,” one State House insider told us. “The organization has almost no support in the General Assembly these days.”
This is a developing story … please check back for updates.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina and before that he was a bass guitarist and dive bar bouncer. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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2 comments
These chambers need to get back to the business of broadly advocating for pro-business environment policies that are also embued with a broad-based sense of patriotism and loyalty to our country. Instead they have become a greasy insiders club of mediocre, grifting glad-handers who are constantly seeking cherry-picked tax, labor, and regulatory policy that wastes tax dollars, hinders competition, squeezes out the middle class small business owner and thus only benefits an elite few – who are often foreign-backed competitors of domestic industry. The elite grifters have little to no love of country and their countrymen, and they have become too cowardly to stand up to the marxist-leninist-socialist left who simply seek to crush honest, fair free market competition in favor of a stifling central command economy run by a so-called expert class.
The Chamber remains a corporate welfare queen. They are more woke than ever, and worse, they have signed on to all of the Biden radical regulations in order to receive the zillions the Biden administration offered.
Certain corporations are just now realizing how onerous those Biden regulations are and are regretting the decision to accept the money.
Of course, their cure is disastrous—they have put a corporatist BANKER in charge. The very people who sold America out to the globalist, woke agenda in the first place!