At least 500 people turned out for the Boone County Republicans’ reorganization meeting Saturday morning, where what is often referred to as the party’s liberty wing swept the elections of party leadership positions.
“The vote was overwhelmingly in continuing to the Boone County Republican Party in the right direction of being truly the party of constitutional conservatives, the party of life, liberty and property, and the party of America first,” said Kentucky Rep. T.J. Roberts, whose district includes a chunk of Boone County.
The meeting took place at the Florence Branch of Grace Fellowship Church (Note: the church is not affiliated with the party, does not endorse their platform and allows various community groups to use their space). The meeting was closed to non-party members (including the press), but people who attended said the turnout was one of the largest in the local party’s history. They also said that the election process itself was smooth and relatively quick, in spite of the meeting’s high attendance.
“That’s the most people we’ve ever had participate in this process in Boone County,” Chet Hand, who was reelected to the position of chairman, said. “So, that tells you something; people are getting more engaged.”
Party reorganizations occur the year after presidential elections. Boone County is split into 64 party precincts. 142 precinct officers were elected across the precincts, according to numbers Hand – who also serves as a Boone County commissioner – shared with LINK nky after the meeting.
In the end, the liberty slate of candidates swept the field with an overwhelming majority against somewhere between two to four dissenting votes, according to sources who attended the meeting.
Others elected to leadership positions include Alan Volz, who was elected as vice chair, Jill Huston, who was elected to the position of secretary, Mark Kunkel, who was reelected to the position of treasurer, and Casey Bramer, who was elected to the position of youth chair.
The meeting is contextualized by disagreements between the liberty wing, whom Hand is often associated with, and the party’s old guard, which is often drawn from the party’s legacy leadership. The liberty figures are relative newcomers to the party, proponents of much of the platform of the MAGA movement and have spent a good amount of effort trying to curry on-the-ground support from county residents.
Emily Shelton, the founder of the Boone County Tea Party and sometime critic of the party’s liberty wing, said, “Everything was on the up and up. We just simply got outnumbered.”
“It’s called the Republican Party of Boone County,” said Ed Massey, a former state legislator who lost a bid for reelection to the General Assembly to Steve Rawlings in 2022 and then again to Roberts in 2024. “It’s really a group of libertarians posing as Republicans running Boone County.”
The groups have come to (ideological) blows before. Last year, the liberty wing caught flack for devoting a portion of the party’s operating budget to marketing liberty wing primary candidates.
Although there’s no formal rule preventing them from doing this, it’s unusual and, some argued, unproductive because it can cause rifts in party operations down the line; losers of primary elections may still have to work with the winners in the future. Massey, for instance, would become a target in the party’s primary campaign literature.
Hand claimed that much of the pushback against the liberty slate was largely directed toward himself.
“The reality is that this was a vote for or against myself, is what it came down to,” Hand told LINK nky in a phone call. “The other side showed up with quite a few people. They were passing out flyers and handouts to try to sway the crowd. It was very much a vote against Chet Hand, not necessarily recommending their own precinct officers, but they were saying, ‘Vote against Chet Hand.'”
The dynamic can be difficult to disentangle for outsiders as both factions claim to be the true inheritors of the conservative tradition. The liberty wing, moreover, has had no qualms about leveling criticisms against party establishment figures.
For instance, Hand said, “Our [Boone County Republicans’] position on Mitch McConnell is that he is a communist and does not represent the Republican Party. The body of our membership unanimously passed multiple resolutions stating such. There are some people that don’t feel that way about him, but it’s definitely a very small minority.”
Massey, on the other hand, described Hand as a “bully” and the liberty candidates as “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
One point of agreement? Everyone who spoke with LINK nky was pleased that more people were interested in getting involved.
“The process worked today,” said Phyllis Sparks, who also attended the meeting.
Editor’s notes: The original version of this story contained language regarding the meeting location that was imprecise and unclear about the venue’s relationship with the Boone County Republicans. We have revised the story to more accurately reflect the nature of the relationship. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.–LINK nky editorial, Feb. 26, 2025.