News stories featuring a state legislator or state legislative candidate seldom go national. Usually, national claims to fame (or infamy) on the state legislative level come from notoriety, and current State Representative RJ May III certainly fits the ‘notorious’ bill. On June 11th, May was arrested at his home after federal agents had begun investigating him for child sex abuse material (also known as child pornography) in August 2024. May, who has served in the South Carolina House since he was first elected in 2020, is a co-founder of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus (part of the nationwide State Freedom Caucus Network) when it was founded in 2021.
May’s investigation and subsequent arrest have further deepened the divide between Freedom Caucus members and the Republican establishment in the legislature, particularly in the House, where the Freedom Caucus has a notable presence. Opponents of the Freedom Caucus, including State Representatives Brandon Guffey, Micah Caskey, and House Majority Whip Brandon Newton, have been exchanging a near constant barrage of barbs over social media with several members of the Freedom Caucus such as State Representatives Josiah Magnuson, April Cromer, and Jay Kilmartin following the news of May’s investigation and arrest.
On December 10, 2024, South Carolina Freedom Caucus Chairman Jordan Pace went on the record to confirm that May had been suspended from the caucus. This announcement came after a statement on December 3rd concerning May’s Freedom Caucus membership, when he said that his status as a Freedom Caucus member would be dependent on “how the votes play out.” However, an anti-Freedom Caucus organization, the South Carolina Growth & Freedom Alliance, noted that May collected Freedom Caucus dues on December 17th, 2024 from Chairman Pace, according to the campaign finance reports. Pace sent his dues to the same home address that May used in his candidate filings– the same Lake Frances Drive address at which May would eventually be arrested in June.
Most members of South Carolina’s Republican party who possess insight into May’s status as a Freedom Caucus member have maintained that he has been persona non grata since December. With the December campaign finance reports muddying the timeline’s waters, however, there is room for suspicion regarding when exactly he was ousted from the group. Cromer, the most conservative member of the South Carolina House in the 2025 legislative session according to State Navigate’s W-NOMINATE data, says that May has not been involved in the operations of the caucus since August of 2024; however, comments and caucus dues from Chairman Pace suggest that this is not the case. At best, this would place May’s exit from leadership sometime in mid-to-late December.
May’s voting record this year compared to the last legislative term may potentially back up the claim that he hasn’t been a member of Freedom Caucus leadership for some time. Typically, leadership in Freedom Caucuses in state legislatures is to the utmost right of the first dimension in W-NOMINATE, according to a draft for an academic paper authored by myself and Political Science Chair Nick Goedert. While Cromer may be the most conservative member of the House now, it was May who held the title in the last legislative term (2023-2024). Freedom Caucus co-founder Adam Morgan was ranked as the second-most conservative member of the chamber in that same year, so the South Carolina House tracks close to other states with a Freedom Caucus (or equivalent) faction; the most conservative members of the legislative chamber(s) are members of Freedom Caucus leadership.
In the 2025 legislative session, May’s ranking on the first dimension dropped from #1 to #13, putting him in the ‘lower half’ of the Freedom Caucus in conservative voting records; there are 20 members of the House Freedom Caucus based on the 2025 legislative session. In determining the members of the House Freedom Caucus, a legislator must have a 1st dimensional score of 0.4 or more, and a positive 2nd dimensional score. The higher each of these numbers is, the more conservative they are. We have included the roster of the 2025 House Freedom Caucus. To our knowledge, the Freedom Caucus has not published a list of its members for the current legislature thus far, but we can tell by W-NOMINATE who in the House is a member or not.
The drop in May’s 1st dimensional score (down 0.33) this year likely indicates he has, in fact, not been a member of Freedom Caucus leadership since at least the beginning of the session on January 14th. Alan Morgan, who stepped down from Freedom Caucus leadership last year and is in the middle of an ethics investigation, has also taken a noticeable dive in his consistency with voting with the arch-conservative faction. As noted, Morgan was the second-most conservative member of the chamber in the previous term, but he’s now dropped down to the 14th-most conservative member of the chamber, right behind RJ May.
The embattled South Carolina House Freedom Caucus’s situation is ringing a particular bell to those who have studied anti-establishment, conservative factions in state legislatures through the 2020s.
The growing ideological infighting between Republicans across various state legislatures perhaps owes its start to former State Representative Rick Becker, the founder of the “Bastiat Caucus” in the North Dakota legislature. Becker founded the Bastiats, named after 19th-century French National Assembly member and author Frédéric Bastiat, as a freshman legislator in 2013. Through the 2010s, the caucus grew in membership and influence, but it was formally stamped out by the establishment in the 2021-2022 North Dakota legislative session.
The Bastiats’ downfall came from several factors. The beginning of the 2021-2022 session started with fewer Bastiats after a successful 2020 Republican primary season for the establishment Republicans, and the weakened caucus had to immediately reckon with one of its own. Then-State Representative Luke Simons, a Bastiat member, was accused of threatening and sexually harassing women at the North Dakota Capitol and was ultimately expelled from the chamber by March of 2021. Strong members of the caucus started to disassociate themselves as Bastiats, and the term became a pejorative by 2022; Becker decided to retire from the legislature that year.
While the South Carolina Freedom Caucus is united in condemning May at the current moment, its members have struggled to get their stories straight on when exactly May was no longer a part of leadership and/or the caucus, and comments like this one from April Cromer, who said that “Anyone who weaponizes the pain of child victims for political gain is as wicked as the predator themselves,” is likely damaging to the group’s image. It’ll be worth watching to see if members of the caucus, like in North Dakota in 2021, decide to distance themselves from the group.
If they do choose to distance themselves, it’s worth watching whether former Freedom Caucus members will start a new quasi-Freedom Caucus (whether using a similar name or something else). Last year, the Idaho Freedom Caucus split into two factions: One associated with the nationwide State Freedom Caucus Network, and one independent Freedom Caucus. South Carolina legislators could follow suit if members of the Freedom Caucus feel that being associated with the group does more harm to their re-election chances than good. We’ll have to wait and see.
