KANSAS CITY, Mo. — No one blinks when Republicans and Democrats go to battle with each other. But eyebrows and tempers rise when the fight turns inward.

That is precisely what is happening now in rural Vernon County, Missouri, some 90 minutes south of Kansas City, where the Vernon County Republican Committee is headed to circuit court on Tuesday against the county clerk — a Republican — over who gets to determine who runs for office and call themselves a Republican.

As fights go, this one has turned nasty.

Leading the charge on one side is Cyndia Haggard, a self-described pro-Trump, MAGA Republican and election denier who in 2023 appealed to the court for clemency for a Vernon County man convicted of breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2020, dressed in a Revolutionary War costume.

“One hundred percent,” Haggard told The Star last week, “the 2020 election was stolen.”

The chairwoman of the county’s Republican Committee, Haggard is also president of another organization, the Republican Association of Central Committees of MO, which holds that too many “fake Republicans” or RINOS (Republicans in name only) are being allowed to run for office under the Republican banner.

“RINOs,” the organization’s website states beneath a photo of a rhinoceros in a suit, “are like a virus that infects & destroys our party’s values.”

As such, the group has been promoting extensive vetting of prospective candidates before they are allowed — by a county’s Republican party committee — to run as a Republican. The vetting includes a 25-question “values survey” to be graded on a pass/fail basis.

“We are at war to save our party,” says the group’s website, which bears Haggard’s name. “That’s not an overstatement.

“Legislators ignore us. They kowtow to lobbyist interests. Fake Republicans have filed under the Republican banner for years. No one in the Republican leadership says a word. No one stops them. WE. WILL.”

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