Vice President Harris pushes people to register to vote, address mental health in SC visit
Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday pushed young people to register to vote and said the country needs to continue to address mental health issues coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic during a visit to two historically Black universities in Orangeburg.
Harris was joined by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, who visited Orangeburg’s S.C. State University in August along with U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia.
As part of her visit Tuesday, Harris marked National Voter Registration Day, an effort which started in 2012 where volunteers and organizations coordinate efforts to register people to vote.
It comes about seven weeks before Election Day.
During remarks at Claflin University, Harris touched on the importance of registering to vote, mental health, entrepreneurship, student loan debt forgiveness and addressing climate change.
She also spoke at the S.C. State University Fall Convocation.
During Harris’ 20-minute speech at South Carolina State University’s Fall convocation, she encouraged the students to register to vote for the election that is coming up in 49 days.
“Our nation needs your leadership, today we live in uncertain times,” Harris said. “Domestically, we thought long-settled would be the freedom of voters to decide elections. Long settled we thought would be the freedom of women to make decisions about their own future. We thought we could take for granted what constitutes the truth. But these ideals now hang in the balance and in moments of great crisis, our nation has almost every time turned to our young leaders to help guide us forward.”
Harris said more than half of 18- to 24-year-olds voted in the 2020 election.
“These young voters at the time told us what they wanted. They put in an order of what they wanted to see in their country,” Harris said. “They said they wanted to see college be more affordable, which includes they could graduate from college, leave college not being unduly burdened by student loan debt.”
She also heard from a handful of students during a discussion at Claflin.
Daa’iyah Fogle is a senior at Claflin who has a small business called Day’s Design.
“All of us have the opportunity and deserve the opportunity in the investment, both financially and relationally, that our white counterparts are more likely to receive,” said Fogle, a Greenville native.
Harris noted the Biden administration’s $12 billion investment into community banks.
“We know community banks are in the community and understand the needs and desires of that community as well as the talents and capacity and the access to capital should not be a barrier to innovation and creativity.”
Harris said the country needs to do better in addressing mental health issues.
“We’ve got to stop acting that the body starts from the neck down. We also need health care from the neck up, and there should be no stigma about that, and people should not be made to silently suffer,” Harris sad
It’s a message that resonated with Arteria Gibson, a senior communications major at Claflin University.
“As we continue to recover and recalibrate from the COVID-19 pandemic, I feel it’s even more vital now to bring attention to our community’s physical, mental and social well-being, especially those of students,” Gibson said.
The S.C. Republican Party criticized Harris’ visit to South Carolina, which is her third since become vice president.
“Kamala Harris has been to South Carolina more times during her vice presidency than she has been to the southern border,” said S.C. GOP Chairman Drew McKissick. “Maybe this time she’s just escaping the reality of the hundreds of illegal immigrants dropped off outside her residence in D.C.”
The party also took the opportunity to take a shot at Democratic nominee for governor Joe Cunningham and whether he would be in attendance.
“Will he help welcome the Vice President, one of the leaders of his party, to South Carolina? And if he won’t be in attendance, why?” McKissick said.
Cunningham’s campaign said it did not know about Harris’ visit before Monday and also had a previously scheduled event in Dillon on Tuesday, where was to receive an endorsement from the South Carolina Education Association. However, that event was postponed to next week.
In South Carolina, people can register to vote online at scvotes.gov or by emailing a registration form to their county registration office by Oct. 9. People who register to vote via mail need to have their registration forms postmarked by Oct. 11.
High-profile events
In the last 10 months, S.C. State University has had several high-profile visitors:
April 12, 2021: Former Ambassador to the United Nations and former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley
Dec. 17, 2021: President Joe Biden
Feb. 9, 2022: U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough
Feb. 17: U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm
Aug. 15: U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona
Sept. 20: Vice President Kamala Harris
This story was originally published September 20, 2022 at 2:04 PM.
