Nancy Mace says Joe Cunningham put Parris Island ‘on the chopping block.’ Did he?
South Carolina’s Republican U.S. senators on Wednesday rebuked GOP congressional candidate Nancy Mace’s suggestion that a vote for a massive defense bill would shutter the Parris Island Marine base — a line of attack Mace is deploying against her Democratic foe, U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham.
Mace, who is challenging Cunningham for the Charleston area’s seat in Congress, said Cunningham’s vote for the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act in December 2019 was a “dereliction of duty” because it included an amendment requiring the Marine Corps to make all of its boot camps co-ed.
Mace is saying in campaign ads that this requirement will ultimately force Parris Island to close, a point now disputed by members of her own party.
“It originated in the House,“ Mace said of the amendment in question. “And if you’re going to be representing a district with military bases in it, you ought to know if your military bases are mentioned or affected in any military defense spending budget.”
But Mace’s claim against Cunningham omits key details about the legislative process associated with the passage of the defense spending package. Cunningham’s Republican counterparts in the U.S. Senate agree that the vote on the defense bill, which included the amendment to integrate Marine Corps training, was not a vote to close Parris Island.
Last week, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger said the branch of “the few, the proud” was considering shutting down its two boot camp locations — Parris Island and San Diego — and instead may have its recruits report to a new base where men and women would train together.
A plan outlining the future of Parris Island has not yet been finalized. A U.S. Marine Corps officer told Gov. Henry McMaster on Thursday that it’s “too early” to say whether the branch will shutter its boot camp on Parris Island.
With the fate of Parris Island unknown, Mace tested her line of attack on Monday night when she squared off with Cunningham on the debate stage in Beaufort. They were just 10 minutes away from Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, the historic training base that has been transforming civilians into Marines since 1915.
Three times during the debate, Mace said Cunningham put Parris Island “on the chopping block.” At one point, she called his vote a “dereliction of duty.”
“Parris Island was specifically mentioned in the bill, but you still voted to close down Parris Island with that vote,” Mace said onstage.
Mace has since doubled down on her message that Cunningham failed his district, saying in interviews that he should have done more to ensure protections for Parris Island in this major piece of legislation.
Cunningham did secure $37.2 million to modernize an outdated live-fire training range on the base, an action he cited during the debate.
Mace held a pair of press conferences on the topic in the 48 hours after the debate and has fired off three tweets about it, including one that claimed Cunningham “voted to shut Parris Island DOWN.”
On Thursday, the Mace campaign began airing a 30-second TV ad about it, claiming Cunningham “passed a law requiring transgender equality in the military, a liberal mandate that will close Parris Island.”
However, there was no explicit vote on whether to keep Parris Island open or closed.
Cunningham voted in favor of the House version of the defense budget, which included an amendment from U.S. Rep. Jackie Speirer, D-Calif. Her amendment required that the Marines prohibit gender-segregated training at its pair of boot camps. Parris Island would have five years to carry out the order. San Diego would have eight years to do it.
The defense budget that was signed into law came out of the Senate, and included this amendment from the House version.
All of South Carolina’s Washington delegation voted for the final bill’s passage, except for U.S. Rep. Tom Rice, R-Myrtle Beach.
Cunningham, in a statement, called Mace’s accusations “ludicrous, and a desperate attempt to make cheap headlines.”
“Last year, I was proud to vote alongside the South Carolina delegation, including Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, to integrate Marine Corps training, and we are all committed to providing the necessary funding to implement that training within the five-year timeline,” Cunningham said.
When South Carolina’s U.S. senators were asked if they saw their votes for the defense budget as a vote to close Parris Island, their offices said no.
“Better pay. Delivered funding for military institutions across South Carolina. Providing our men and women in uniform the tools they need to do their jobs. Those are some of the many reasons Senator Graham supported the NDAA,” said Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop. “As for closing Parris Island, Senator Graham made his views clear said from the start, ‘It ain’t gonna happen.’”
Scott, the state’s junior senator, also said it was not a vote to close the military base, which employs more than 6,000 people.
“Senator Scott voted for the 2020 NDAA because it gave our troops a significant pay raise, increased funding for military institutions across South Carolina, created new opportunities at the Savannah River Site, and provided more resources for the DoD’s HBCU Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation program,” said Sean Smith, Scott’s communications director.
Smith continued, “In no way did his vote endanger Parris Island, because Parris Island is not going to close – period.”
Mace, who shattered gender barriers when she became the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, South Carolina’s military college, said the future of Parris Island is now in jeopardy because of “some far-left California Democrat who snuck it into the NDAA.”
She also takes issue with the way the Marine Corps is being forced to make its training camps co-ed.
“Especially when we’re just starting to tackle sexual abuse in the military, I don’t think this is a good place to start. I think that these decisions need to be left to our military leaders and to the women it’s going to impact. I know myself, as a woman, I’d have a problem with it,” Mace said.
U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican and a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the co-ed training requirement should not impact the future of Parris Island and its ability to, as its banner says upon entering the base, “make Marines.”
Wilson, R-Springdale, also serves on the congressional committee’s Readiness subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over Department of Defense policy, programs and accounts related to a number of matters, including training and base realignments and closures.
Wilson was heavily involved in the negotiations process associated with the National Defense Authorization Act.
“Voting in favor of the NDAA was in no way a vote to close Parris Island,” Wilson said in a statement to The State newspaper. “The requirement in the FY20 NDAA to fully gender integrate boot camp at the platoon level within five years should have no bearing on any potential decision to close Parris Island.”
Wilson said women have been training at Parris Island since the 1940s, and noted the recruit depot graduated its first co-ed company in 2019.
“The Marines should instead reinvest in Parris Island as the unique value of the base and facilities cannot be replicated. I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in Congress to ensure the base is kept intact,” Wilson said.
Asked if she thought her statements about Cunningham’s vote on the military spending bill were misleading, Mace said, “not at all.”
“There’s nothing misleading about it. That’s as direct as one can get. And it’s wholly unacceptable.”
She continued, “How do you not know that your base is or isn’t in there? I can’t even, as a lawmaker, compute that you wouldn’t know what you’re voting on and what it means for your district on a bill that’s so important.”
In an interview, after initially citing the 2019 December vote on the defense budget bill, Mace was corrected by a staffer who said the votes in question happened in June of that year.
Mace said she hopes South Carolina leaders can ultimately find a solution that keeps Parris Island open.
This story was originally published October 1, 2020 at 12:19 PM.
