A deep fissure within the Palm Beach County Republican Party is leading to questions about its ability to mobilize voters and help its candidates in the 2024 elections, two years after it won several midterm victories.
More immediately, hundreds of Republican precinct committeemen and committeewomen from around the county have been summoned to a special meeting Thursday night in West Palm Beach, called by the party’s vice chair. The first item on the agenda: a “no-confidence” vote on the party chair, Kevin Neal, who was elected to the post just seven months ago.
Internal party fighting isn’t unique to Palm Beach County or the Republican Party. It flares up periodically across the state and country, and in both parties, often having little or nothing to do with policy and ideology.
Longtime Republican Party insiders — and Neal himself — along with emails and documents suggest a swirl of large and small controversies.
Besides the no-confidence motion, a committeeman has filed a lawsuit in Palm Beach County Circuit Court against Neal and the Republican Party alleging the chairman slandered him at a public meeting. The longtime party secretary resigned, and Neal removed the longtime events chair, who was largely responsible for orchestrating the big, annual Lincoln Day fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago.
Neal’s critics said they’re especially alarmed over fundraising, concerns that the chair says are misplaced.
Complaints
Sid Dinerstein, county Republican chair from 2002 through 2012, is one of Neal’s most outspoken critics. He said Neal’s leadership threatens the party’s ability to mobilize voters through get-out-the-vote efforts — and may doom its ability to financially support candidates for local offices.
Neal said he’s been acting in all those areas, starting with organizing efforts to help Republicans who are running for city, town and village elections in March. He said the complainers waited only a few months into his tenure — before he could show results in fundraising and before any elections to show whether his approaches work — before beginning their criticism.
State Rep. Rick Roth, of northern Palm Beach County, the party vice chair, said, “There’s no doubt the chairman has a different philosophy of how to run a board and how to run an organization. This is a membership organization, which requires the chair to provide leadership and direction so that the members can support a plan. Unfortunately there’s been no plan.”
Response
The people complaining are vocal, Neal said, but that doesn’t mean they’re accurate — and doesn’t mean they reflect the views of most committeemen and committeewomen. He attributed the discontent to the changing of the guard he represents after two decades with little change in the party’s leadership.
“Our party has had a small group of leaders for the last two decades,” Neal said. “This is a small, vocal minority in our membership who is resistant to change.”
The Palm Beach County Republican Party has had relatively steady leadership for most of the last two decades. Neal is the fifth chairman since 2002. Broward by contrast, is on its 12th county party chair since 2002.
There’s a major undercurrent of old-guard leaders versus newcomers.
Dinerstein said there is “a split between the young and the old. We affectionately refer to them as the ‘freshman class.’ They not so affectionately refer to us as the legacies.”
Neal said it was less an age-related split and more of a difference between people who have led the party for most of the last two decades and people who were inspired to get involved in the party organization by former President Donald Trump.
Neal, 45, is a real estate developer who develops apartment buildings. He said he was drawn to politics because of his admiration for Trump as a businessman. He said he became a committeeman after the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost (Neal echoes Trump in calling it “the stolen election”) along with many other newcomers.
“We’ve only a handful of chairmen. There’s been very few, very little change in leadership,” Neal said. “Anyone who is in my position now as a new leader would have these problems. I don’t think it’s personal actually. It’s the nature of the situation. There is new leadership. Some people don’t like it.”
One thing that isn’t causing the rift, said people on both sides, is competition between Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. People active in the county party overwhelmingly prefer Trump.
Republicans’ performance
It seemingly should be a triumphant time for Republicans in Palm Beach County.
Most of the county’s activists support former Trump’s candidacy to return to office, and he’s the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
In 2022, Democratic fortunes in Palm Beach County plummeted and Republicans did well.
- Though Democrats were far ahead in voter registration, Ron DeSantis won the county, with 51.2% of the vote. DeSantis received 15.5% more than the number of votes he received in 2018.
- A Democratic county commissioner lost reelection. An open County Commission seat held by a Democrat who was term-limited was picked up by a Republican. And a closely contested district for the state House of Representatives went Republican.
- In a congressional district and a state Senate district that include southern Palm Beach County and cross county lines to take in northern Broward, the Democrats lost the Palm Beach County parts of their districts, and won on the strength of Democratic votes in Broward.
Neal said Republicans should be doing much better.
Since 2008, he said, Republicans have won only 30% of the contests in congressional, state Senate, state representative, County Commission and Port of Palm Beach districts that lie all or partially in Palm Beach County.
He said that shows the party needed shaking up — something he was willing to do.
“We are the Republican Party of Palm Beach County,” he said. “We need Republicans in office. Our job is to get Republicans elected. That’s what we do. That’s what we have not been doing. I was elected on a platform to win more elections, including municipal elections.”
Money
Spending generally ramps up significantly during election years as the organization attempts to register and mobilize voters and help its candidates.
The party’s most recent quarterly finance report, filed earlier this month with the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office, shows just $300 in contributions, which isn’t enough to cover the cost of meeting refreshments or water and coffee service at the party office.
Total expenditures from October through December, the report showed, were $43,199.
County party finance reports show income and expenses, but don’t reveal how much was in the bank on Dec. 31. Dinerstein said he’s concerned “because I actually believe we’re going to run out of money in March.”
Neal said that’s wrong, and that the Lincoln Day fundraiser in March would fill the party’s coffers.
Dinerstein and Joe Budd, the county’s state Republican committeeman, said Lincoln Day preparations are far behind.
Lincoln Day notices were emailed to Republicans on Tuesday, something they said is usually done in November.
The event is often sold out by the end of the year.
They faulted Neal for removing Linda Stoch, who for years has orchestrated the annual event at Mar-a-Lago.
“She’s probably the most prolific fundraiser-event chair in the whole state,” Budd said.
Roth said removing Stoch “is a major problem.”
Neal said Lincoln Day would take place on March 15, and he said it would again bring in large revenue.
He said a conscious decision to start ticket sales later than in previous years is the reason the quarterly revenue for the final months of 2023 was so low. This year, even more will come in during the first quarter of 2024, he said.
Neal said he didn’t want to comment on individual people, including Stoch, or party secretary Cheryl Mullings, who resigned last year.
A December Facebook post describes a tribute Neal gave to Mullings at a county party meeting. Earlier this month, when someone on Facebook listed complaints about Neal and said he should resign, Mullings responded with the comment “thanks for posting this.”
Mullings declined to comment. Stoch didn’t respond to a text message seeking comment.
Challenges
Some discontent was bubbling soon after the 2022 elections.
Neal, a newcomer to the Republican Executive Committee, challenged Michael Barnett, the longtime county party chair.
Barnett won. Neal then ran for vice chair, defeating Tami Donnally, a Barnett ally who had long served in the role.
Weeks later, DeSantis appointed Barnett to fill a vacancy on the Palm Beach County Commission. In April, Barnett resigned the party role to focus on his county job and running to hold the office in 2024.
After serving as acting chair, Neal was elected in June to finish Barnett’s term.
“There is an issue in Palm Beach County with the new chair,” said Budd, serving his second four-year term as state Republican committeeman, a position elected by primary voters in August of presidential election years.
Budd said Neal was elected by the bare minimum number of votes “and then acted and governed” as if he “had some type of major mandate.”
Illustrating the different perspectives, Neal said he was elected on the first ballot with no runoff required in a multi-candidate field. “It was not a close election,” he said.
Neal said he didn’t remember the vote total. Dinerstein said he received votes from 120 of the 238 people present.
One of the people he defeated was Roth, who then ran and was elected vice chair.
Lawsuit
Anthony Ruffa sued Neal and the party in late November accusing him of “slanderous statements.”
Ruffa, a physician, said in the lawsuit he is a Republican committeeman. The lawsuit alleges that in front of “dozens and dozens” of people gathered at the party’s Oct. 19 meeting, Neal made multiple “false statements of fact.” Among the statements Ruffa said Neal made (that Ruffa said were false): that Ruffa sent more than 75 unwanted emails to Neal’s personal email account and in them threatened Neal and his family.
The lawsuit said the statements falsely accuse him of felony criminal conduct and paint him “as a stalker” and “infer that Ruffa threatened to do bodily harm to Neal and his family.” Ruffa’s suit said “Neal’s primary motivation to publish the statements was to harm Ruffa.”
Neal said he couldn’t discuss the litigation. On Jan. 2, the party’s general counsel, Carl A. Cascio, filed a motion for an extension to submit a response.
Non-binding vote
What, exactly, will happen Thursday is uncertain.
A vote of no confidence, if it passes, isn’t binding. People on both sides agree that a county Republican chair, once elected, can’t be removed by the county party via a vote of no confidence under current state party rules.
Dinerstein said he expects the motion to pass narrowly. Neal said he expects to prevail.
Budd, who supports the no-confidence effort, said he thinks Neal is likely to survive. If the chair changes his style, Budd said it could turn out OK.
“Hopefully we can work together going forward,” Budd said. There could be some continuing divisions “until we get all this dust shaken off. This is a new marriage.”
Anthony Man can be reached at and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Post.news.
