The League authorized the formation of a Southern Party Exploratory Committee (SPEC), which was organized at a later meeting in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which was held in January 1999.
While the SPEC faction continued to enjoy the official support of the League of the South, it appeared to gain little political traction as the date of the SNC-sponsored launch of the Asheville Declaration approached.
In October 1999, the NCSP held a statewide convention in Hillsdale, the first capital of North Carolina, at a colonial inn dating back to before the American Revolution.
Goodson declined to run for re-election citing personal and financial reasons, and claimed that he was not interested anymore in the Chairman seat.
Despite its initial media success at Flat Rock, North Carolina, the SP soon squandered its momentum, falling to the same type of internal squabbling that resulted in the earlier rift within SPEC ranks.
The SNC reluctantly accepted the resignation, though voting to recognize Kalas as "Chairman Emeritus" of the Southern Party in recognition of past services.
Mike Crane, a Georgia activist and SNC member, whose immediate goal was to head the rift, subsequently was elected interim chairman.
Even so, the conflict continued into the early months of 2000, sowing additional disillusionment and leading to a rapid outflow of dues-paying members from the state party organizations.
Many of the other remaining state SPs were, in reality, only "paper parties" led by a few officers and lacking substantial numbers of dues-paying members.
In the Spring of 2003 the League of the South attempted to re-establish its influence in the Southern Party by volunteering to serve as an honest broker to coordinate the reunion of all SP supporters (excluding the now-discredited Baxley faction) under one flag.
By 2003 the Southern Party had lost credibility with many of its erstwhile supporters and had squandered what little political capital it had ever had as a result of its seemingly endless internal squabbles.
[citation needed] The widespread factionalism that derailed the Southern Party's seemingly promising prospects has sometimes been characterized by former supporters as the result of a wide-ranging ideological struggle between "centralizers" versus "decentralizers."
Kalas, the principal founder of the SP, was a committed paleoconservative whose interest in Southern heritage and regionalism tended to constitute more a reflection than a foundation of his core beliefs.
On the other hand, Lancaster, the author of the Asheville Declaration, was a moderate-conservative Republican in many respects who nonetheless harbored strong regionalist sympathies, a fact subsequently reflected in later writings.
Still, despite significant differences in political convictions, the major players in the various SP factions nevertheless professed a strong allegiance to the Southern tradition of decentralized government and localized control.
However, the Home Rule concept and Web site were abandoned in 2003 after Lancaster and Kalas concluded that the factionalized Southern movement was beyond repair.