Spartanburg County Sheriff's candidates sharpen messages ahead of August 19 runoff

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6 hours ago

With only days to go in the Republican Party primary campaign, the two remaining candidates in the race to become the next Spartanburg County Sheriff are sharpening their respective messages to voters.
For Rusty Clevenger, the message is all about experience. He has worked as a deputy in the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office and held the elected position of Spartanburg County Coroner since 2009.
Bill Rhyne's message focuses on change. He, too, has been a sheriff's deputy, but Rhyne spent much of his career with the South Carolina Highway Patrol, where he served as the lead public information and community engagement officer.
Following the resignation of former Sheriff Chuck Wright in May, Clevenger and Rhyne were among nine candidates to file for the Republican nomination for November's special election.
They emerged from the crowded field with the most votes – 7,277 for Rhyne, 6,596 for Clevenger – and are now in a runoff to be held on August 19. The winner will run unopposed in November.
Competing messages: Change vs. experience
Both candidates said they have been taking their messages door-to-door and to small groups of voters.
Clevenger, who has won several countywide races since first running for coroner, wants to convince voters that his experience makes him uniquely qualified to serve as sheriff.
As coroner, he has managed a staff, overseen a budget, and worked with members of Spartanburg County Council to plan for the office's needs.
His team must be prepared 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
'I have to be accountable,' he said. 'We provide a service for which there is no downtime.'
Clevenger added that the coroner works closely with various law enforcement agencies – including the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office – to investigate crimes. This includes crimes involving acts of violence as well as the distribution and use of narcotics.
Clevenger said his investigative experience gives him an advantage over Rhyne that he hopes voters will consider.
'Bill doesn't have the narcotics and vice experience, the investigative experience,' he said.
'The expectations are different with the Sheriff's Office than with the Highway Patrol – you're expected to solve crimes and protect people.'
Rhyne said the number one thing he's hearing from voters on the campaign trail is 'people in Spartanburg want change. They believe we need a break from the past and a chance to move forward.'
When there were nine candidates in the race, change was a theme among several who could credibly claim outsider status.
Now, in the two-man race, 'I'm the change candidate,' Rhyne said.
He thinks his experience with the Highway Patrol is especially valuable on a couple of fronts.
Rhyne said statewide law enforcement agencies are rarely the subject of scandal – unlike the issues at the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office that drove Wright to resign and are currently under investigation.
'That has to do with checks and balances,' he said. 'I can bring those checks and balances to the sheriff's office.'
And in his work with community engagement, Rhyne developed strategies for gaining feedback and responding to the concerns of the public.
'Community relations will be important,' he said. 'One of the main things I'm hearing is that people in Spartanburg County want to see officers more engaged in their communities.'
Candidates: Unaware of problems under Wright
Clevenger and Rhyne said they will work hard to rebuild trust among residents and to repair the relationship between the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office and Spartanburg County Council.
But neither said they had been aware of major problems in the sheriff's office during Wright's tenure.
Clevenger said his office and the sheriff's office did 'amazing work collaboratively.' He pointed to investigations of the murders committed by Todd Kohlhepp.
'When we worked together, I never had any indication that there was a problem. The experiences I had were great successes. Nobody interfered with our investigations, and things were done by the book.'
More: 'It's so disappointing:' Spartanburg County residents react to Chuck Wright's resignation
Clevenger added, 'Everything was good until it wasn't good.'
Rhyne said he'd heard that the culture in the sheriff's office was akin to 'the wild, wild west.'
But he knew of no specific claims of malfeasance on Wright's part.
'The first I heard about things was when everyone else heard it,' he said.
Nonetheless, Rhyne had made plans to run for sheriff in 2028 – whether Wright was the incumbent at that point or not.
He said he didn't run in 2024 because he was committed to working for the Highway Patrol until February of this year.
When the unexpected opportunity to run for Wright's unexpired term arose, he decided to jump in.
Support for Trump questioned
Rhyne and Clevenger have known one another for years. They have professional and personal connections.
The race for sheriff had been conducted on friendly terms – until recently.
That's when Clevenger went public with information his campaign obtained from the South Carolina Election Commission, appearing to indicate that Rhyne didn't vote in the 2024 presidential election.
Clevenger took the opportunity to suggest that Rhyne wasn't sufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump. The allegation was at the top of a checklist of issues on a recent campaign mailer.
Rhyne said the claim had made the rounds weeks earlier and that he had discussed the matter with Clevenger and others at the time.
He maintained that he had, in fact, voted in the 2024 election – and, yes, supported Trump.
Rhyne said he was surprised Clevenger went ahead with the attack because 'we had both agreed on running a clean election.'
He said he thinks he has momentum in the race – including recent endorsements from second-place and third-place vote-getters Robert Cheeks and Nick Duncan – and that Clevenger was scrambling for something that might blunt the gathering strength of Rhyne's campaign.
In any case, during an August 13 debate televised by Fox Carolina, he presented documentation from the state election commission that he says indicated there had been a mix-up and that he'd signed in as a voter last November.
'It was a mic drop moment' in the debate, Rhyne said.
On August 14, the Clevenger campaign released a statement saying that it had made a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the report on whether or not Rhyne had voted in 2024. The information the campaign received was 'the official record.'
The news release said that, based on the documentation Rhyne provided during the debate, Clevenger's campaign has been working with elections officials to clarify the situation.
'Keeping with my steadfast belief in ethics and integrity, we have revised our campaign advertising to reflect the new information,' Clevenger said in the news statement.
Retaining deputies a top issue for sheriff's office
Throughout the campaign, candidates have talked at length about the need to recruit and retain deputies – a concern when it comes to response time and overall effectiveness of the agency.
Rhyne and Clevenger agree that increased pay should help – but isn't the only issue.
'If you can work somewhere that's known as the best, then people want to be part of that,' Clevenger said, adding that strong staff policies and training opportunities are part of the equation.
He said his experience managing the budget of the Spartanburg Coroner's Office and collaborating with county council members will boost his efforts to secure better pay for deputies.
Rhyne said changing the culture of the sheriff's office will be essential to maintaining a strong team. 'People don't leave for money alone,' he said.
Still, he thinks staff pay is an issue that must be addressed. 'We can't pay $6,000 less than a county next door,' he said.
Rhyne said he would talk with county leaders to explore the possibility of setting aside a portion of fee-in-lieu-of-tax agreements – incentives that reduce taxes but establish set payments for new businesses to locate in the county – in support of salaries for deputies.
Other issues: Jail overcrowding, traffic safety, immigration enforcement
There are other issues on the minds of candidates and voters alike.
In an interview, Clevenger discussed overcrowding at the Spartanburg County Detention Center. He wants to work with judges and prosecutors to assess whether there are inmates who don't truly need to be incarcerated or whose cases can be adjudicated more quickly.
'We need to take a hard look and break down what people have been charged with,' he said. 'I want to examine what programs might foster some of them becoming productive members of society instead of sitting in the jail.'
Rhyne said he has heard from voters that they see a need for more active traffic patrol.
'It caught me a little off guard how many people talked about it,' he said. 'But as the county grows and there are more cars on the roads, they see it and it's in their face. It's a huge concern.'
Both candidates said they would support federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest illegal immigrants while also working to ensure that Spartanburg County residents who are here legally – or may even be citizens – are not falsely detained as the Trump administration steps up its mass deportation program.
The election of a new sheriff will be a first for Spartanburg in more than two decades. Wright defeated incumbent Bill Coffey in 2004. He was most recently reelected in 2024.
This article originally appeared on Herald-Journal: In runoff for Spartanburg's next sheriff, candidates sharpen messages
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