In what appears to be the culmination of a strange saga that has played out from Haywood County to Raleigh since last spring, members of the North Carolina Republican Party voted to ban four Haywood County activists from party activity.

Charges of “political party disloyalty” first leveled by the Haywood County Republican Party this past May against a group of local Republican dissidents known as the “Haywood Five” will move forward to the state level, The Smoky Mountain News has confirmed.

Although Haywood County’s municipal elections in Canton, Clyde and Maggie Valley will garner the most attention through November, state legislative campaigns will fire up shortly thereafter — if not sooner.

Allegations made last week by a member of the Haywood Republican Alliance that the Haywood County Republican Party recently passed a resolution charging five local Republicans with political “party disloyalty” shocked and angered many across the region and the state.

Martin A. Dyckman • Guest Columnist

A hero is, almost by definition, someone who didn’t set out to be one. That thought is prompted by the New York Times Sunday page-one profile of our North Carolina Senator Richard Burr. Will he be the nation’s hero in the greatest constitutional crisis since Watergate four decades ago?

According to the article, Burr — a Republican — didn’t want to be assigned to the Senate Intelligence Committee, much less to chair it, as he does now.

The recent tug-of-war for control of the Haywood County Republican Party has left many conservatives cringing and embarrassed over the portrayal of petty infighting, but it has played out like a microcosm of the national political landscape.

A shake up in the Haywood County Republican Party has pitted mainstream party members against an ideological “patriot” faction.

The patriot faction recently lost its grip on the party, following a mass ousting from the party’s executive committee during this year’s annual precinct gatherings. But what drove the two branches of the local party apart and resulted in the patriots’ ousting isn’t easy to sum up.

A power struggle has embroiled the Haywood County Republican Party over the past several months, culminating in the mass overthrow of a conservative “patriot” faction by the mainstream branch of the party.

SEE ALSO: Patriot faction of Haywood GOP blindsided by ousting

The story of internal turmoil within the Haywood GOP is a familiar one. Feuding factions have been at loggerheads for several years running. But the latest commotion is more than just another chapter in the same old tug-of-war.

Eddie Cabe suspected something big was afoot in the weeks leading up to the annual precinct gathering of the Haywood County Republican Party. 

It took Bryson City Republican Mike Clampitt three tries over six years to finally become a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives.