The three biggest takeaways from SC primary election results | Opinion

Election Day came and went Tuesday in a slew of South Carolina congressional, state and county races, leaving the campaign trail littered with celebratory confetti and its sad counterpart: the torn victory speeches of those who didn’t win. Statewide, candidate signs are suddenly showing their age — or just as quickly being repurposed for a June 25 runoff or the Nov. 5 winner-take-all election.

If you voted, thank you. You did something that the vast majority of your fellow South Carolinians don’t do: Vote in a political party primary. Neither Republicans nor Democrats surpassed 20% turnout in South Carolina’s 13 nonpresidential primary elections from 1998 to 2022, according to South Carolina Election Commission voter participation data. This year, total turnout was less than 14%.

Republican primaries have eclipsed 15% voter turnout in only three recent elections, in 2002, 2004 and 2010. Democratic primaries have been unable to hit that mark, surpassing 10% just twice, in 1998 and 2018. Overall, the best turnout in a nonpresidential primary election was 26.7% in 1998 when nearly three out of four voters chose not to vote for South Carolina’s public servants. Those were the days.

It’s sad because so much is at stake in elections, from health care to schools to roads, and because Tuesday’s winners will surely cast some major public policy votes.

Here are the three biggest takeaways from election night.

3. Nancy Mace had a big night.

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace easily defeated two Republican challengers, avoiding a runoff election that seemed possible because of the millions of dollars being poured into the campaign against her. Now she is all but assured of returning to Washington, D.C., next year to represent her solidly Republican coastal congressional district.

In victory, she survived questions new and old, about whether she had abused a government reimbursement program and whether former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s animosity about the role she had played in ending his political career would now end hers.

None of that mattered. She won on the strength of two years of TV time, an endorsement from former president Donald Trump and last-minute hustle; she posted a video of herself placing campaign signs by polling places in the rain and in heels on Monday night. She is likely to remain the state’s only female member of Congress, which is especially notable when women are so underrepresented at the South Carolina Statehouse.

Mace doubled up the vote count of Catherine Templeton, a former director of two state agencies, and quadrupled the tally of Marine veteran Bill Young in the Republican primary. She’ll face Democrat Michael B. Moore on Nov. 5 because he defeated Mac Deford in the Democratic primary. Of interest, Mace’s district was the only one of South Carolina’s seven congressional districts in which former Gov. Nikki Haley defeated Trump in February’s Republican presidential primary. But there was no Trump fatigue evident in Mace’s race.

South Carolina is still Trump Country, and Mace will still be on your TV for at least two more years.

2. The Freedom Caucus struck back.

Despite the efforts of Gov. Henry McMaster, the Post and Courier Editorial Board and others to get out the vote against hardline Freedom Caucus members, all of the group’s 11 incumbents won their Republican primaries Tuesday night.

McMaster had taken the unusual step for him of endorsing challengers against three incumbent Freedom Caucus members, and the Post and Courier Editorial Board had taken an unprecedented step for it of publishing an “anti-endorsement” against all 32 Freedom Caucus candidates on the June 11 ballot. McMaster’s targets — Reps. April Cromer, Rob Harris and Josiah Magnuson — each won easily.

The Freedom Caucus, known for its stunts and shenanigans at the Statehouse as much as its chaotic, unapologetic targeting of status quo Republicans, picked up two additional seats at the expense of two prominent incumbents, Rep. Bill Sandifer, the chair of the House Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee, and Rep. Jay West, the assistant majority leader.

Two other Freedom Caucus candidates — Chris Huff and Sarita Edgerton — made June 25 runoff elections after placing first in the primary. In addition, two other Freedom Caucus members — Reps. Melissa Oremus and Jordan Pace — will almost assuredly retain their seats next year because they didn’t draw a primary or a general election challenger.

So don’t expect the caucus to ease up on its antics or approach any time soon. If anything, it may be even more emboldened.

It wasn’t all good news for the Freedom Caucus, though. Efforts to pick up even more House seats failed as another 10 Freedom Caucus candidates were unsuccessful. And two of the more well known members of the caucus who relinquished their seats to run for Congress fell short. Stewart Jones finished third and failed to make a top-two runoff election in the 3rd congressional district GOP primary, and Adam Morgan lost by less than 2,300 votes out of nearly 71,000 cast in the 4th congressional district GOP primary.

There are real issues to be addressed at the Statehouse next session, only starting with energy, education and the environment. It’s possible that the Freedom Caucus’ unsuccessful attempts at higher office will cause some self-reflection among its members at the Statehouse —and maybe lower the temperature in the rooms off Gervais Street. But don’t hold your breath.

1. Is this it for the sister senators?

In 2023, a bipartisan group of five female South Carolina state senators were recognized and revered nationwide as “sister senators” after they drew a line against a near-total ban on abortion in the state. South Carolinians remain divided on abortion, but the three Republican women in the group all faced serious primary election challenges on Tuesday. None had the evening they envisioned.

One was defeated easily, another lost by just 31 votes but will get an automatic recount, and a third faces a runoff election in two weeks against an opponent she barely outpolled when the tallying was done Tuesday. If she loses that runoff, the five sister senators could be down to a single sister senator just months after they all received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award in October.

Mia McLeod, a Democrat turned independent in Richland County’s Senate District 22, did not run again for her seat. Margie Bright Matthews, a Democrat in Senate District 45, which stretches through Allendale, Beaufort, Charleston, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties, is assured of holding onto hers because she drew no election challenger this year. But she may be the last of the quintet.

Sister Sen. Penry Gustafson, R-Kershaw, is certainly gone. Allen Blackmon, a two-term Lancaster County Council member, easily won the pair’s Republican primary, capturing four out of every five votes. He will now face Democrat Yokima Cureton in safely Republican Senate District 27 in Chesterfield, Kershaw and Lancaster counties. Cureton lost her last election, the 2022 Lancaster mayor’s race.

Sister Sen. Sandy Senn, R-Charleston, will also likely lose her seat. State Rep. Matt Leber, R-Johns Island, is ahead of her by four-tenths of a percentage point in Senate District 41 in Chesterfield, Kershaw and Lancaster counties, close enough to trigger an automatic recount but far enough ahead for him to be breathing easier than her. If Leber is ultimately victorious by defeating Democrat Rita Adkins in the fall, South Carolina’s 46-member senate, which has only six women now, could be even more dominated by men.

Columbia Sen. Tameika Isaac Devine, who won a Senate seat in a January special election following the incumbent’s death, easily won her Democratic primary Tuesday and is a safe bet for re-election this fall in Senate District 19. So she at least will join Matthews in the senate. Will sister Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, also return to the Statehouse? It’s not looking good.

Shealy finished first in a three-person race on Tuesday, but by a thin margin, and now heads to a June 25 runoff election against lawyer Carlisle Kennedy. When the votes were tallied, she had won only four of every 10, an uncomfortable position for an incumbent to be in, but not the first or the worst discomfort for her in this race. Shealy’s tires were slashed while she was at church in March and someone broke a window at her house in April, possibly with a pellet gun, an act that prompted her to call the sheriff’s department.

Shealy “stated she wasn’t worried at first, but due to election season, she has been dealing with various forms of harassment,” the sheriff’s report reads. “[She] preferred the incident be documented in case anything further happens in the future.”

No one should be threatened for their political views, especially when they are trying to find a compromise on a complex issue.

But elections have consequences. And the people spoke in this one. At least the ones who voted did.