THE CHAIRMAN WHO COULDN’T
DUMMY OF THE WEEK: STEVE HICKEY
📍DATELINE WILLIAMSON COUNTY, TN: THE CHAIRMAN WHO COULDN’T
Welcome back to Dummy of the Week — the part of the show where we highlight local leaders doing the most damage with the least awareness. The bar is low, folks. But somehow, they still find ways to trip over it.
This week’s dishonor goes to Steve Hickey, chairman of the Williamson County Republican Party and repeat performer in the theater of civic absurdity. And we’re honestly a little shocked it’s taken this long to give him the award. After all, he’s no stranger here.
So congratulations, Steve. You’re not just chairman — you are Dummy of the Week.
🎤 HICKEY’S GREATEST HITS
Hickey didn’t rise to power through competence, vision, or leadership. He rose through complaining. His origin story is classic — a loud guy outside the tent, lobbing rocks at the people actually running the show. He accused previous GOP leaders of being too establishment, too scripted, too soft. A bureaucratic beta uprising. His promise? To save the party from itself.
After years of heckling, Hickey finally seized the tent. He won the WCRP chairmanship by a much-disputed razor-thin margin in March, backed by the "Elevate 2025" slate — a group with big grassroots rhetoric and even bigger ambitions to control the future nominating process.
After winning, what did he do? Right on cue, Hickey floated the idea that opponents of his Elevate slate should lose their bona fide Republican status — a tantrum disguised as party discipline.
The irony? Just two years earlier, he had accused the previous GOP leadership of attempting a “mid-summer Soviet style purge.” Want proof? Here are his exact words from a 2022 Tennessee Conservative op-ed:
“The mid-summer Soviet style purge of the lone conservative voice on the WCRP’s Executive Committee further left local conservatives tasting bile… This all appeared to be the antithesis of what Republicans stand for—truth, freedom, and a fair fight in the arena of ideas.”
He also accused the WCRP of:
“Weaponization of rules [that] effectively shut doors for citizen participation in the electoral process,”
and claimed the GOP was:
“Actively weeding out the electorate, perhaps purposefully and with forethought.”
Then came the fight to preserve the caucus system — the very closed-door, insider process the General Assembly was moving to abolish. While the state moved toward transparency and actual Republican voter participation, Hickey’s crew doubled down on exclusion. They claimed it was about preserving “party integrity.”
The legislature called it what it was: disenfranchisement.
Once HB855/SB799 passed, Hickey didn’t recalibrate. He doubled down on grievance. Everyone who disagreed with him was a RINO, a sellout, a Democrat sympathizer.
And fast forward to now, after months of drama, he’s on a “unity tour” sipping coffee and asking for civility from the same people he tried to purge… because nowadays, it’s all about the olive branch.
Okay, Steve.
📋 REMEMBER THE JOB DESCRIPTION
Let’s be clear about what the chairman of a county GOP is supposed to do:
Promote Republican values
Support Republican candidates
Expand the party’s reach
It’s not hard. You don’t need a fighter pilot background to understand it (though Hickey has one). But somehow, he still can't stick the landing.
What you definitely don’t do is platform speakers who openly torch the Republican Party from inside the tent.
Which brings us to his ongoing experiment in political malpractice: the WCRP Mix & Mingle series.
🔥 FROM STRANCH TO STRANGE
You’d think by now they’d know how to run a speaker series. But no — the Williamson County GOP can’t even get that right.
A couple of months back, they invited Grace Stranch, a BLM-aligned environmental activist who campaigned for Democrats and praised radical leftist groups — to speak at a party event. Why? Because she talked about clean water.
Sorry, folks. You don’t get to launder leftist activism with a Brita filter. That’s just dumb. What’s next? Pancake breakfast with Antifa?
But last week’s Mix & Mingle was no better as the pendulum swung to the other side of crazy.
Enter John Harris — head of the Tennessee Firearms Association and a man with a long, documented history of scorching Republican leadership at every level.
They didn’t just hand him the stage — they invited the guy, clapped for him, and then watched him nuke the GOP from orbit.
And within 90 seconds, Harris declared war:
“Leadership in the General Assembly doesn’t necessarily support the Second Amendment. And neither of the last two Republican governors have truly supported the Second Amendment.”
Then:
“The problem is leadership… Randy McNally, Cameron Sexton… Jack Johnson and William Lamberth — they don’t want that law to pass.”
On Governor Lee:
“Bill Lee sends his spokesperson… into these committee hearings to say that the governor’s preference is that we don’t change this law.”
Still going:
“We don’t have a supermajority of conservatives. There’s a big difference.”
And the parting shot:
“About a third to not quite half of the Republican caucus [is] ready to fix things… But they’re not going to buck leadership.”
This wasn’t a policy presentation. It was an artillery barrage against virtually all of our sitting Republican officeholders.
And what did Hickey’s WCRP do afterward?
They uploaded the podcast. Promoted it. Featured it. Encouraged others to listen. Not only did they fail to distance themselves from the message — they endorsed it.
“Hey y’all — come see what we did!”
Just to recap:
Hickey was against purges, until he got the chance to do the purging.
He was against disenfranchisement, until he could engineer it himself.
He was against name-calling and character assassination, until he handed the mic to a grenade-thrower who does it for a living.
💸 AND NOW, THE MONEY
The latest finance report dropped yesterday. What did we learn?
Let’s just say fiscal conservatism isn’t part of WCRP’s mix either:
Starting cash: $150,504
Raised: $74,803
Spent: $115,756
Ending cash: $109,551
So under Hickey, more has been spent than raised — $41,000 lost in net cash, and nothing to show for it except bad speakers and worse judgment. So much for fiscal conservatism.
The WCRP isn’t just rudder-less. It’s upside down and cash-poor.
Take this mismanagement of funds and stack it on top of the BLM speakers, the GOP-bashing gun lobbyists, and the party purges—and it’s very clear:
Under Hickey, all is headed straight into the dumpster fire.
🪞LOOK IN THE MIRROR, STEVE
Let’s close with Hickey’s own words — just to savor the irony:
“Calling your fellow Republicans names and engaging in unfounded character assassination is not the way to build the party.”
“Shrouding an election in secrecy and not allowing outside visibility of its processes is not the way to build nor engender trust in that party.”
Every single sin he condemned? He committed.
Stripped bona fides? Check.
Closed elections? Check.
Attacked fellow Republicans? Check.
Said one thing, did the other? Oh, big check.
No wonder he keeps handing the mic to BLM activists and fringe lunatics. They operate just like he does: light the match, blame the smoke.
Steve Hickey didn’t just break the promise of Elevate 2025 — he dropped it off a bridge, filmed the splash, and uploaded it to the county party podcast.
Williamson County deserves better. Not just better ideas — better adults.
So congrats again, Steve Hickey. You are a dummy.
You’re not leading a party. You’re emceeing its funeral — with open mic every happy hour.
For your next event, just be honest and hang the banner:
“ATTACK THE GOP — MIC PROVIDED.”