Steve Bannon’s enemy list includes this SC candidate’s campaign chairman

A S.C. Republican who hopes to become governor has ties to one person on the enemies list of alt-right kingpin Steve Bannon.

Campaigning for U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore in Alabama, the former White House adviser and Breitbart News chief listed several members of the GOP “elite” whose “day of reckoning is coming” for opposing Moore in that state’s GOP primary.

On Bannon’s hit list of “elite” GOP strategists and politicians? Ward Baker, the campaign chairman for Catherine Templeton’s GOP primary bid to unseat Gov. Henry McMaster.

Baker is a heavyweight GOP fundraiser who advises the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. That political action committee has spent more than $8 million backing Moore’s opponent, appointed U.S. Sen. Luther Strange, in Tuesday’s Alabama special primary, according to the Washington Post.

That contest will decide the GOP nominee to succeed Jeff Sessions, who resigned from the Senate to become U.S. attorney general.

“By the way, for Mitch McConnell and Ward Baker and Karl Rove and Steven Law – all the instruments to try to destroy Judge Moore and his family – your day of reckoning is coming,” Bannon said.

Templeton, who declined to comment Tuesday, is running her first political campaign. She is one of three Republicans challenging McMaster, a former S.C. GOP chairman, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

Templeton, a Charleston attorney, is pitching herself as a political outsider even though she, too, has a record in state government. Templeton ran two state agencies as a member of Gov. Nikki Haley’s cabinet and, after she left those posts, secured two lucrative consulting contracts with state agencies.

Templeton has surprised some S.C. Republicans with her fund-raising ability, raising almost as much as McMaster, the incumbent. Tapping Baker for the role of campaign chairman signals Templeton’s intent to continue being competitive in a race that will cost several million dollars.

Whether Bannon’s targeting of Baker will have any impact on the S.C. race remains to be seen.

Speaking in Alabama, Bannon praised his former boss, President Donald Trump, who backed Strange. But, he added, Moore was the better candidate to fulfill Trump’s agenda.

Trump is expected to campaign for McMaster in South Carolina’s governor’s race. Before South Carolina’s pivotal, first-in-the-South GOP presidential primary, the Richland Republican became the first statewide elected official in the nation to endorse Trump.

This story was originally published September 26, 2017 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Steve Bannon’s enemy list includes this SC candidate’s campaign chairman."