Dispute over whether Greenville road should be named after Trump or Obama tossed out
A Greenville County interchange that was at the center of a dispute of whether to name it after President Donald Trump or former President Barack Obama won’t be getting renamed after all.
At least, not unless someone revives the effort to change the name.
Lawmakers Thursday showed obvious disdain for the dueling renaming resolutions, with Rep. Bruce Bryant, R-York, calling the moves “a big political game.”
“We don’t want to get into the business of naming things after current presidents or former presidents,” S.C. Rep. Jimmy Bales, D-Richland, said during the committee meeting.
The controversy began in January after two Republican lawmakers, who are not from Greenville County, proposed renaming the interchange between Interstate 85 and Highway 385 after Trump. In the resolution, the lawmakers applauded Trump for his efforts to “defeat the radical left.”
Five days later, two Democratic lawmakers, who are also not from Greenville County, filed a resolution to name the same interchange the “President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama Interchange.” The resolution mentioned Obama’s accomplishments, including winning the Nobel Prize, ending the Iraq war, signing the Iran Nuclear Deal and championing the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
S.C. Rep. Richie Yow, R-Chesterfield, called out one of the sponsors of the Trump resolution, Rep. Jonathon Hill, for his past statements on naming landmarks in South Carolina after living people.
In August 2019, Hill made a public Facebook post about the issue after former S.C. Department of Transportation official John Hardee — the former namesake of the John Hardee Expressway — was convicted on prostitution charges.
“Oh, it is so about time for this,” Hill posted last August. “The sad thing is that it took an embarrassing situation like this to make lawmakers go, ‘Gee, maybe we shouldn’t go around naming stuff after each other before they’re dead.’”
Since then, Hill has said he would vote for legislation to end the practice of naming roads after living people, but until it’s illegal, he thinks it’s okay to name landmarks after people who are still alive.
“It is obvious to me that the author made a mistake,” Yow said, pointing to the August Facebook post. “It’s obvious to me that this was not done with good intentions.”
Yow also pointed out that the sponsors of both the Trump bill and the Obama bill were not from Greenville County.
Ultimately, the committee voted to continue both bills into next year, but the legislative calendar gets reset at the end of 2020, so the bill is essentially dead.
“We don’t want to get into this mess,” Bales said.
After the meeting was over, Greenville Republican Rep. Bobby Cox tweeted that he would introduce a resolution to rename the stretch of road after Allen Jacobs, a Greenville police officer who died in the line of duty. Jacobs was shot after giving chase to a teenager who was recently released from prison and thought to have tried to purchase a weapon, WYFF reported.
“A local interchange should be named for a local hero,” Cox tweeted.
This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 12:32 PM.
