GOP leader who opposed COVID vaccine dies after battling virus for several weeks

Pressley Stutts, a Republican Party leader in South Carolina, passed away due to complications of COVID-19 after adamantly pushing back against the COVID-19 vaccine.

According to The Greenville News, Stutts' passing on Thursday, August 19 comes after a weekslong health battle he endured after contracting COVID-19. Stutts' death was confirmed by Dan Harvell, an Anderson County Republican Party representative who serves on the South Carolina Republican Party's executive committee.

Speaking to the publication, Harvell said, "I really don't have words to say about the imprint that he left on the political landscape in South Carolina," Harvell said. "He had the kind of personality that enabled him to get done what others couldn't do.

"He was like the brother I never had," he added.

Stutts, who served as an executive committee member for the Greenville County Republican Party and leader of the Greenville Tea Party, had a history of sharing conspiracy theories and seeds of doubt about the coronavirus, the COVID-19 vaccine, and the 2020 presidential election.

HuffPost reports: "Last year, he dismissed masks as an 'illusion,' claimed in December that there had been no increase in deaths in 2020, and said, 'the American public has been gaslighted by the medical industrial complex.'"

Vocal about his disdain regarding the pandemic and outcome of the election, the 64-year-old veteran in July shared a Facebook post dismissing the rapidly spreading Delta variant of COVID-19 which is likely the one that ultimately claimed his life.

However, Stutts offered a different perspective on the virus August 1 when he reportedly entered the intensive care unit (ICU), HuffPost reports. At that time, Stutts "'always contended that COVID was very real' and called it 'a deadly bio-weapon perpetrated upon the people of the world by enemies foreign, and perhaps domestic.'"