Clyburn speech reset for Thursday

In a last-minute switch, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn of Columbia now will speak Thursday at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, the same evening when President Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination before more than 70,000 people.

“It’s a bigger stage,” S.C. Democratic executive director Amanda Loveday said.

Clyburn, the third-highest-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House, was scheduled to speak Tuesday, during the convention’s opening night at Time Warner Cable Arena.

“Due to the overwhelming enthusiasm in the arena and extended applauses, Rep. Clyburn generously agreed to move his speech to Thursday,” a party official said.

Clyburn, the only South Carolinian scheduled to speak during the three-day convention, is the only Democrat to hold a statewide or congressional seat in the Palmetto State.

Klobuchar, Gantt speak to S.C. delegates

S.C. delegates heard Tuesday from U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, an S.C. native who was the first African-American to attend Clemson University.

Klobuchar, mentioned as a possible 2016 presidential hopeful, warmed up the crowd with a few Appalachian Trail jokes and high praise for U.S. Rep. Clyburn. Then, it was down to business – trashing Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

“On his first international trip as a candidate, before he puts two feet on foreign soil, he puts one foot in his mouth,” Klobuchar said of Romney. “An international incident and this is in front of one of our best allies at the Olympics? You know what we call it in Minnesota? We call it a ‘Mitt-stake.’”

Gantt told the delegates that President Barack Obama could win South Carolina “if you delegates will go home with fervor and fire and say, ‘Look, this is what this man has done.’ Don’t run away from what this economy looks like.”

No Democratic presidential candidate has won South Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Old football foes Jackson, Clyburn meet again

The Rev. Jesse Jackson made a surprise appearance at the Virginia delegation breakfast Tuesday before U.S. Rep. Clyburn was to speak.

Jackson, who is pushing a voter registration drive, assailed recent voter ID laws like the one South Carolina passed and is fighting to enforce in federal court. He said the laws, which require presenting a state-issued identification to cast a ballot, harken to the days of segregation, when the South was ostracized.

“You cannot have the (Carolina) Panthers and (Atlanta) Falcons behind the Cotton Curtain,” Jackson told delegates.

Clyburn teased how he played a high school football game against Jackson, a Greenville native, who was a quarterback. Asked how the game went, Clyburn, who played running back at a Camden school, said simply: “Not too well. They beat the hell out of us.”

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What the S.C. delegates are doing

Today: Breakfast address by U.S. Rep. Clyburn and convention Rules and Bylaws Committee chairman Jim Roosevelt, grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Thursday: Breakfast with Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former S.C. Gov. Jim Hodges and Kentucky Auditor Adam Edelen