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South Carolina Primary: State Rep. Nancy Mace gets easy win in GOP primary for Lowcountry U.S. House seat
Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham easily dispatches 3 primary opponents, will face Democrat Jaime Harrison in the fall
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
CHARLESTON (CFP) — State Rep. Nancy Mace cruised to an easy victory Tuesday in the Republican primary in South Carolina’s 1st U.S. House District, setting up a Lowcountry slugfest this fall against Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham, one of the GOP’s top 2020 targets.
Mace, from Daniel Island, took 57 percent of the vote, easily eclipsing Mount Pleasant Councilwoman Kathy Landing, at 26 percent. Chris Cox, a founder of the Bikers for Trump organization, came in third with 10 percent.
Nancy Mace speaks to supporters after her primary victory (From SCETV via YouTube)
Speaking to supporters after her win, Mace said her campaign would “take back the Lowcountry and put it back into the hands of someone who’s going to be a truly independent voice.”
“Joe Cunningham votes with Nancy Pelosi of California and [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] of New York 85 percent of the time,” she said. “The Lowcountry doesn’t want that, and they don’t deserve it.”
Mace, 42, a real estate agent and businesswoman elected to the legislature in 2017, was the first female graduate of The Citadel, the state’s formerly all-male military college, in 1999. If elected in November, she would be the first woman to ever represent South Carolina in the House.
In her primary battle with Landing, she had the backing of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the conservative business groups Americans for Prosperity and Club for Growth.
Cunningham, 38, a Charleston lawyer, narrowly won the 1st District seat in the Democratic wave of 2018, after the incumbent Republican, Mark Sanford, was upset in his primary. He is the first Democrat in nearly four decades to hold the seat.
President Donald Trump carried the district by 13 points in 2016, making it one of the prime targets for Republicans running in 2020 with Trump on the ballot. Cunningham’s vote in favor of impeaching Trump will no doubt feature prominently in GOP ads this fall.
Also Tuesday Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, as expected, easily dispatched three little-known challengers in his primary, getting 68 percent of the vote. He will now face Democrat Jaime Harrison in November.
When Graham last ran for re-election in 2014, he faced a hotly contested primary against candidates running at him from the right who charged that he was inauthentically conservative. But his strong embrace of Trump over the last three years helped quiet his Republican critics.
Harrison, a Columbia lawyer and former state party chair, is trying to become the first Democrat to win a Senate race in South Carolina since 1998 or any statewide race since 2006. His campaign has caught on with Democratic donors, collecting $19 million so far for his challenge to Graham, according to the latest FEC filings.
Graham has raised $26 million.
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Voters in Georgia, West Virginia and South Carolina vote Tuesday in rescheduled primaries
Democrats will pick a U.S. Senate nominee in Georgia and a gubernatorial candidate in West Virginia
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
(CFP) — Voters in three Southern states — Georgia, West Virginia and South Carolina — will vote Tuesday in primaries that were rescheduled from earlier in the year due to the coronavirus crisis.
In Georgia, Democrats will be picking a nominee to oppose Republican U.S. Senator David Perdue in November, while Republicans will begin sorting out their nominees for two open U.S. House seats in safely Republican districts that have both drawn a gaggle of candidates.
In West Virginia, Democrats will pick an opponent to face Republican Governor Jim Justice — who won four years ago as a Democrat before switching parties and embracing President Donald Trump — and will also decide on a nominee to face U.S. Senator Shelly Moore Capito.
In South Carolina, Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham faces three little-known challengers in his primary, while his expected Democratic opponent in the fall, Jaime Harrison, is running unopposed.
Republicans in the Lowcountry will also pick a candidate to run against Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham, who is one of the GOP’s top 2020 targets.
Due to the coronavirus crisis, mail and early voting has been expanded for the primaries, with a smaller portion expected to vote in person on primary day with reduced numbers of polling stations.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in Georgia and South Carolina and from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. in West Virginia.
In Georgia, the marquee race is the Democratic contest for U.S. Senate. The polling leader in the race has been Jon Ossoff, who benefits from the statewide name recognition he built in 2017 by spending $30 million in a special election for the 6th District House seat, a race he narrowly lost.
Ossoff’s primary challengers include Teresa Tomlinson, the former mayor of Columbus, and Sarah Riggs Amico, a Marietta businesswoman who was the party’s unsuccessful nominee for lieutenant governor in 2018.
Polls have given Ossoff a large lead but short of the majority he would need to win the nomination outright and earn a spot against Perdue in November. If he does not clear that threshold, he’ll face an August runoff against Tomlinson or Amico.
Georgia’s other Senate seat, held by Republican Kelly Loeffler, is also up for election in 2020; however, because that contest is to fill the remainder of a term, a special election won’t be held until November, in which Loeffler will run against candidates from all parties, including Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, who has launched an intra-party fight to push Loeffler out of the seat.
Peach State Republicans will also start the process for picking nominees for two of their safest U.S. House seats — the 9th District in the north Georgia mountains, which Collins is giving up to run for the Senate, and the 14th District in northwest Georgia, where Tom Graves is retiring. Nine Republicans have entered the primary for both of those seats, making runoffs a near certainty.
In the 7th District in Atlanta’s northeast suburbs, seven Republicans and six Democrats are running in their respective primaries for the seat Republican Rob Woodall kept by a scant 413 votes in 2018. He decided to retire rather than to contest the seat again.
Carolyn Bourdeaux, the Democrat whom Woodall barely beat two years ago, is back, but she faces a primary battle against five challengers including State Senator Zahra Karinshak, a lawyer and former Air Force officer; State Rep. Brenda Lopez Romero, the first Latina to serve in the Georgia legislature; and John Eaves, the former chairman of the Fulton County Commission and former Atlantan who decamped for the suburbs in a bid to get to Congress.
On the Republican side, State Senator Renee Unterman, a former mayor who has served 22 years in the legislature, is facing off against six competitors, including Lynne Homrich, a former Home Depot executive, and Rich McCormick, an emergency room doctor and former Marine Corps helicopter pilot.
The only House incumbent in either party facing a significant primary challenge in Georgia is Democratic U.S. Rep. David Scott, who is being challenged in the 13th District in the southern and western Atlanta suburbs by Jannquelle Peters, the former mayor of East Point; former State Rep. Keisha Waites; and Michael Owens, the former chair of the Cobb County Democratic Party who challenged Scott unsuccessfully in 2014.
Scott, 74, is seeking his 10th term in the House and has held elected office continuously for 46 years. The majority black 13th District is strongly Democratic, which means whoever emerges from the primary will likely win the seat in November.
In West Virginia, Democrats are itching for a grudge match against Justice, who infuriated them by jumping to the GOP just seven months after taking office — and adding insult to injury by announcing the switch on stage with the president at a Trump rally.
Five Democrats are running for the nomination to oppose the governor, led by Kanawha County Commissioner Ben Salango, who has the backing of a slew of labor and teachers unions. He was also endorsed by Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, who had flirted with running against Justice himself before deciding to take a pass.
Also running are State Senator Ron Stollings from Madison; Jody Parker, a former journalist from Madison; and Stephen Smith, a community organizer and former executive director of the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition, who is running what he describes as a grassroots, progressive campaign.
A fifth candidate who filed to run, Doug Hughes, later announced on Facebook that he was pulling out and endorsing Smith.
In the Senate race, former State Senator Richard Ojeda — an outspoken retired Army officer who lost a race for Congress in 2018 and then launched a quixotic bid for the Democratic presidential nomination that failed to gain traction — is the best-known of the three candidates vying to take on Capito, whose seat is not currently considered to be jeopardy.
West Virginia does not have primary runoffs, which means that the leading vote-getter in both the governor’s and Senate races will be the nominee.
In South Carolina, the marquee race is the U.S. House contest in the 1st District, where Republicans have their sights set on Cunningham, who flipped the seat in 2018.
The race for the GOP nomination includes State Rep. Nancy Mace from Daniel Island, a real estate agent and businesswoman who was the first female graduate of The Citadel; Kathy Landing, a businesswoman who serves on the town council in Mount Pleasant; Chris Cox, a chainsaw artist who was one of the founders of the Bikers for Trump group; and Brad Mole, a housing administrator from Bluffton.
Mace and Landing have led the race in fundraising and advertising, with Mace raking in more than $1.3 million for the race to $630,000 for Landing, according to the most recent filings with the Federal Election Commission. The question will be whether either woman will be able to clear the majority needed to avoid a runoff with Cox and Mole also in the race.
Mace has gotten the backing of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the conservative business groups Americans for Prosperity and Club for Growth. But Landing has her own conservative backers, including the House Freedom Fund, a campaign group associated with House Freedom Caucus, as well as conservative stalwart and former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint.
In the U.S. Senate race, Republican primary voters will decide whether to reward Graham for his enthusiastic embrace of Trump.
Six years ago, he faced a slew of candidates who ran at him from the right and criticized him as inauthentically conservative. But this time around, Graham faces only token opposition from three little-known candidates, none of whom has raised enough money to compete with his $26 million war chest.
Harrison, who hopes to be the first Democrat to win a Senate race in South Carolina since 1998, faces no opposition on the Democratic side of the ballot. He has so far raised $19 million, according to the latest FEC filings.
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U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham rolls to primary victory in South Carolina
Graham avoids runoff with majority in a race against six GOP rivals
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CFP) — U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham — the No. 1 target of Tea Party and anti-establishment groups in this year’s GOP primaries — has easily won renomination over a field of six challengers.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham
Graham took 56 percent of the vote in the June 10 Republican primary, far ahead of the second place finisher, State Senator Lee Bright of Spartanburg, who took just 15 percent. The rest of the field polled in single digits.
Graham will now face Democratic State Senator Brad Hutto of Orangeburg, who won the Democratic primary, Given the state’s strong Republican tendencies, Graham will be a prohibitive favorite.
Graham, 58, who is seeking this third term in the Senate, has run afoul of some Tea Party groups and conservative anti-establishment activists for his efforts to reach bi-partisan compromises with Democrats, including his support of an immigration reform bill that was opposed by most Republican senators.
His close political and personal friendship with U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona has also drawn fire, particularly over their blistering criticism of U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky for his filibuster over President Obama’s drone strike policy. Tea Party groups tried, and failed, to oust McCain during his 2010 re-election bid.
However, over the past year, Graham has buttressed his conservative credentials with heavy criticism of the Obama administration for its handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and for the IRS’s targeting of tax exempt groups.
Graham benefited from the large number of Republicans who filed to run against him, which fragmented the field and did not allow any of them to catch fire.
Fully anticipating he would be challenged in the primary, Graham also raised and spent more than $7 million, dwarfing his competitors, according to reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission.
Graham is one of five sitting Southern Republican senators in 2014 who have drawn primary challengers backed by Tea Party and anti-establishment conservative groups. Those challenges fell short in Kentucky and Texas but in Mississippi, U.S. Senator Thad Cochran was forced into a runoff. The fifth race is in Tennessee, which doesn’t hold its primary until August.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham’s critics line up to take him on in GOP primary
A crowded primary field, with three candidates in the race so far, could help the veteran Republican senator survive by dividing the anti-Graham vote
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
COLUMBIA, S.C. (CFP) — U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham’s maverick ways have already drawn him not one, not two, but three challengers in the 2014 Republican primary — a crowded field that could help the senator survive by dividing the anti-Graham vote.
Senate challenger Lee Bright
The latest challenger, State Senator Lee Bright of Roebuck, valuted into the GOP primary on August 13 by calling Graham “a community organizer for the Muslim Brotherhood” — a rather opaque reference to Graham’s recent high-profile trip to Egypt with his close friend, Senator John McCain of Arizona.
McCain and Graham went to Egypt at the behest of President Barack Obama to meet with Egyptian officials after the miliatary’s recent overthrow of the elected government of President Mohammed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Also in the race is Nancy Mace, a Charleston businesswoman who has been having to answer questions about her role as part ownner of FITSNews, a irreverant Web site mixing South Carolina news with pop culture.
The site is run by Will Folks, who in 2010 claimed to have had an affair with Republican Governor Nikki Haley, which Haley vehemently denied.
Mace, who was the first female graduate of The Citadel, also claims Tea Party support, including a recent endorsement by the Tea Party Leadership Fund, a national group.
The third candidate in the race — so far — is Richard Cash, from Anderson County, an evangelical Christian missionary who owns a used car business and a fleet of ice cream trucks. On his Web site, he says “the origins and foundation of American greatness lies in Christianity, Capitalism, and the Constitution.”
Cash ran for the 3rd District U.S. House seat in 2010, winning the first round of the primary before losing the runoff to the eventual winner, Rep. Jeff Duncan.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham
Graham, 58, who is seeking this third term in the Senate, has run afoul of some Tea Party groups for his efforts to reach bi-partisan compromises with Democrats, most recently for his support of an immigration reform bill that was opposed by most Republican senators.
His close political and personal friendship with McCain has also drawn fire, particularly over their blistering criticism of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky for his filibuster over Obama’s drone strike policy. Tea Party groups tried, and failed, to oust McCain during his 2010 re-election bid.
However, over the past year, Graham has been highly critical of the Obama administration for its handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and for the IRS’s targeting of tax exempt groups.
Graham has said that he expects a vigorous primary challenge and has already raised more than $6 million for his 2014 campaign. A colonel in the Air Force Reserve, his staunchly pro-military stands could also serve him well among an important constituency in his native state.
A crowded GOP primary field would seem to help Graham by dividing the opposition arrayed against him. However, South Carolina has a runoff system for its primaries, which means that if the anti-Graham field can keep him under 50 percent, he would have to face the second place finisher in a runoff.
On the Democratic side, the only announced candidate so far is Jay Stamper, 41, of Columbia, the managing director of a non-profit business development group.
Given South Carolina’s staunch Republican tendencies, the winner of the GOP primary will be considered a prohibitive favorite in November.
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