Republican Templeton joins race for SC governor, officially

Republican Catherine Templeton is running for governor, officially.

The Mount Pleasant Republican formally announced her campaign Tuesday in an email.

“I have never run for office, and I won’t run for the next one, but I can’t unsee what I saw in Columbia,” said Templeton, citing what she called the “corruption, waste, self interest, and good ol’ boy system.”

Templeton’s official kick off in the race is not surprising.

The labor lawyer and former state agency chief is one of three Republicans who have been fundraising for the governor’s race. Her plans to run have been public for months.

Yancey McGill, the former state senator and, briefly, lieutenant governor from Williamsburg, also is seeking the GOP nomination.

The two will face Republican Gov. Henry McMaster in the 2018 GOP primary.

Templeton was one of former Gov. Nikki Haley’s first Cabinet appointments, picked to run the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. Later, Templeton was named director of the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Templeton’s oversight of DHEC was not without controversy, however. The agency was criticized for its response to a TB outbreak in Greenwood and its oversight of the state’s safety program for dams, dozens of which collapsed in flooding in 2015 and 2016.

This story was originally published April 4, 2017 at 4:47 PM with the headline "Republican Templeton joins race for SC governor, officially."