Conservative candidate wins four-way race for Lexington County SC House seat
Local businessman and restauranteur Jay Kilmartin came out on top of a crowded GOP primary on Tuesday to become the likely next representative from a Lexington County district in the S.C. House of Representatives.
Kilmartin held on to finish above 50% in a four-way race to succeed outgoing Rep. Chip Huggins in the lakeside District 85, avoiding a runoff two weeks later.
Four Republicans on Tuesday were seeking the nomination for Huggins’ seat. Huggins decided not to seek re-election in District 85.
Kilmartin had 52% of the vote when all votes were counted Tuesday. Attorney Christian Stegmaier had 20% of the vote, Catherine Huddle had 17% and Rebecca Blackburn Hines 10%.
The district covers the Chapin area and wraps around the shores of Lake Murray to the Irmo area between the Saluda River and Interstate 26, a growing suburban area outside Columbia.
Kilmartin ran to the right in the primary, promising to “fight against the ‘woke’ progressives,” and standing for “conservative values” in the State House.
He runs the Melting Pot on Colonial Life Boulevard in St. Andrews and lives in Irmo, where he serves as a bassist in the River Bend Church band, according to Kilmartin’s campaign website.
Kilmartin describes himself as a member of the “America First movement” and a supporter of former President Donald Trump. His site says he wants to “stand up to federal overreach” and opposes the kind of restrictions seen early in the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring “the right to prosper and move freely without forced vaccination and masking.”
“I think my messaging resonated with the constituents, being a sovereign state and fighting the federal government,” Kilmartin said Tuesday. “With what’s going on in the world, the overreaching federal government we saw during COVID, people are very distrustful of the federal government.”
Kilmartin said South Carolina needs to ward off measures that might be adopted in more liberal-leaning states, specifically saying the state should prohibit gender transitions for minors. He argued such a law would follow on the heels of a law passed this year that banned transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girl’s sports at public schools.
Kilmartin managed to win the GOP nomination outright, avoiding a runoff despite the presence of three other Republicans on the ballot.
Also running for the nomination were Christian Stegmaier, an attorney with the Columbia firm of Collins & Lacy, and two members of the Lexington-Richland 5 school board, Rebecca Blackburn Hines and Catherine Huddle.
Hines and Huddle ran against each other despite serving together on the Lexington-Richland 5 school board since both were elected in 2020, where the two have occasionally been at odds.
In February, Huddle supported a school board censure resolution against Hines that would have precluded Hines from serving as a board officer or chairing a committee. Hines had written a letter to S.C. Education Superintendent Molly Spearman questioning the school district’s handling of books Spearman’s office had asked them to remove from school libraries, prompting Spearman to criticize the district’s responsiveness. Other Lexington-Richland 5 board members then criticized Hines for writing to Spearman on district letterhead without the board’s approval, arguing it created the impression she was speaking for the board as a whole. The censure motion ultimately failed.
Stegmaier is an attorney who previously ran in 2018 for the S.C. Senate seat vacated by Richland County Republican John Courson, but he was defeated in the GOP primary.
The Republican nominee will face Libertarian John Davis in November’s election.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, three-term incumbent Rep. Micah Caskey held on to his Districrt 89 seat in the Cayce-West Columbia area over former music teacher and Christian magazine editor Melanie Shull by only 26 votes out of the 3,034 cast, a result that would lead to an automatic recount. Other representatives wracked up bigger primary wins as Nathan Ballentine won 68% in District 71 and Cal Forrest won 83% in District 39 to secure re-nomination over their primary opponents.
This story was originally published June 14, 2022 at 11:26 PM.
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