The returning chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party says the party has to become broader than “the banner” of President Donald Trump and needs new blood.

“We’re kind of fractured a little bit. We’ve got Trumpers. We’ve got never-Trumpers,” Cary Vaughn told a group of 100 in Cordova at the local party’s biennial convention. He was re-elected leader of the local party without opposition.

“We’ve got moderates. We’ve got people that are whole-hearted conservatives. And we all have to live together in the sand box,” he said after he was re-elected by acclamation. “There’s enough common core and there’s enough common ground that we can say, ‘You know what — I can agree on those three things or I can agree on those five things and I will become a part of the Shelby County GOP.’ We have to find a way to do that.”

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Vaughn leads the Republican party in the bluest — or most Democratic — county in a state that is majority red — or Republican.

He said his remarks about Trump’s hold over Republicans was prompted by a conversation he had with a Black voter who agreed with Republican positions on crime and abortion and similar issues. But Vaughn said the voter leaning Republican on those issues said he couldn’t vote Republican as long as the party was under the “Trump banner.”

But talking with reporters later, Vaughn said that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place in an expanded party for Trump supporters.

“I think there’s a seat at the table for everybody,” he said. “I think there’s a place for everybody if we can say let’s not focus on what we disagree on.”

Vaughn said the big field of Republican presidential contenders currently forming is “an integral part” of growing the party’s base beyond Trump and won’t grow without some pain.

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“Anything that moves has friction and there’s going to be a lot of friction over the next 12 to 24 months,” he said. “I think we feed off of that. I think we build off of that. I think we want people excited about elections.”

He also likened the skirmish to “Saturday morning wrestling.”

“I think they are working things out behind the curtain,” he said. “And they are talking and they are going to decide who’s going to run and who’s not going to run. Once they decide that, they are going to go have lunch together.”

Next month, Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Lee will host Florida Governor and likely Republican presidential contender Ron DeSantis at a rally in Franklin, Tennessee.

The event comes 10 months before the Tennessee presidential primaries.

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It’s also a reminder that although Trump carried Tennessee in the 2016 and 2022 presidential general elections, his rise as a presidential contender in 2016 wasn’t welcomed by all of the state’s Republican office holders including then-Governor Bill Haslam.

Two years later, Lee campaigned as a new kind of conservative who wasn’t necessarily rejecting Trump.

But he rarely mentioned Trump as his two rivals in the 2018 Republican primary for governor — Diane Black and Randy Boyd — battled to convince voters they were each closer to Trump than the other.

Lee, when pressed, has said he supported some of Trump’s policies. But he has not been as openly supportive of Trump —especially since Trump left office — as Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty have been and continue to be.

Tennessee Republican Party chairman Scott Golden referred to the “different stripes of Republicans.”

“Let’s fight like heck but then after it’s over with, remember that we are all on the same team,” he told the gathering.

In 2022, Democrats swept every countywide office on the ballot, including Steve Mulroy’s upset of Republican incumbent District Attorney General Amy Weirich — the last Republican holding countywide office. Democrats also improved the Democratic majority on the 13-member Shelby County Commission to nine.

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“We spent many a night, many hours on the phone talking about how we could turn Shelby County a little bit more red,” Golden said. “Unfortunately, elections have consequences.”

“Most of you probably still don’t have your car tags this year,” he added referring to problems the Shelby County Clerk’s office has had for the last year in renewing car tags for vehicle owners in Shelby County under the leadership of Clerk Wanda Halbert.

Halbert, the Democratic incumbent clerk won a second term of office in 2022, despite the backlog of new tags that at one point numbered in the thousands.

For all of the Republican losses countywide, Golden pointed to Republican gains since the last local party conventions in 2021.

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“Most of us had masks in our pockets. Remember that. Abortion was still legal in the United States two years ago. Nancy Pelosi was still speaker of the house two years ago,” he said. “All of that changed in the last two years and it didn’t just happen.”

“Because of Donald Trump and the coalition we have — the legacy of Donald Trump — we have been able to change the way America views life,” Golden said.

Vaughn said he will appoint a committee to weigh whether the local party wants to make a formal endorsement in this year’s nonpartisan race for Memphis Mayor.

In the 2015 elections, the local party issued a statement saying it “highly recommended” Jim Strickland’s successful bid to unseat incumbent Mayor AC Wharton.

Mayoral contender and city council member Frank Colvett was among those attending Saturday’s convention with some of the delegates wearing Colvett campaign stickers.

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The delegates were divided by state House districts to elect members of the local party’s executive committee for the next two years.

Shelby County Democrats completed that part of their biennial convention a week earlier. The new Democratic party executive committee meets April 1 to select a new chairman.

Alvin Crook, Lexie Reed Carter and Jesse Huseth are competing for the chairmanship of the Shelby County Democratic Party.

Current chairwoman Gabby Salinas opted not to seek another term leading the local party.