Some Midlands school board candidates are running together. Can they do that?
As voters in the Midlands have been bombarded by election material this year, they might have noticed something. Multiple candidates are running for school board seats across Lexington and Richland counties, most of them for at-large, multi-candidate seats where the top vote-getters will win seats on the board.
But even in this electoral free-for-all — where each candidate could be seen as running against all the others, none of them with party labels — some are finding ways to signal their agreement with each other.
In several Midlands school board races this year, several candidates are effectively running as a team, even without labeling themselves as Democrats and Republicans.
In South Carolina, most school board races are non-partisan. Candidates might be elected to school boards in the Midlands without party labels, but that doesn’t mean they don’t run as part of a slate.
In many races, campaign material will list candidates in local school board races side by side, whether endorsed by the individual campaigns or not.
In Lexington-Richland 5, three of five candidates are effectively running as a team; Jason Baynham for one seat on the Richland County side of the district, and Catherine Huddle and Ken Loveless for two seats on the Lexington County side. The three have cross-promoted each other on social media and appeared on campaign mailers together.
South Carolina law doesn’t prohibit candidates from coordinating their efforts or even from being endorsed by political parties in a non-partisan race. The most limitations the S.C. Ethics Commission imposes is the requirement to set up a separate, joint-fundraising account for any money the candidates raise collectively, according to a 2002 advisory opinion issued by the commission.
Some candidates have been grouped together by outside organizations hoping to influence school board races.
In Richland 1, four candidates have been endorsed by the group Get Richland One Working, or GROW, a nonprofit organization that focuses on “improving educational outcomes for children in Richland County School District One,” according to its website, including through endorsing candidates for the school board.
Angela Brown and retired educator Richard Moore received the group’s endorsement in the at-large race for two seats on the Richland 1 board, along with Steven Diaz for District 2 and Ericka Hursey in District 4.
In Lexington County, Huddle and Loveless have both been endorsed by the Lexington County Republican Party. The county GOP has also endorsed McKenzie Flashnick and Dana Homesley in Lexington 1 and Abbott “Tre” Bray, Mary Burkett and Cliff Springs in Lexington 2.
Those kinds of outside endorsements also aren’t prohibited by S.C. campaign or ethics laws, the state Ethics Commission confirmed in an email, even when the candidates themselves don’t receive the formal nomination of a party when running for a school board seat.
So candidates are legally in the clear to coordinate their election runs, and in the process give voters a clearer idea of who will work well together should they get onto the board.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified one of the candidates endorsed by Get Richland One Working for Richland 1 school board. The candidate endorsed by the outside group is Angela Brown.
This story was originally published November 1, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
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