Housing Authority chair: Columbia voter turnout push doesn’t support any candidate
The Columbia Housing Authority’s board chairman said an email he sent to the agency’s CEO asking her to make a strong push to get housing authority residents to vote in Tuesday’s Columbia mayoral runoff was intended to “encourage participation in the election and participation in the promise of America” and was not in support of any individual candidate.
Housing authority board Chairman Ernest Cromartie III’s response came after mayoral candidate Daniel Rickenmann, who is facing Tameika Isaac Devine in the Tuesday, Nov. 16, runoff election, called for an investigation after Cromartie sent a Nov. 8 email to housing authority CEO Ivory Mathews advising her to implement several action items ahead of the runoff election.
Some of the requests in the email included daily robocalls and text messages to housing authority residents and housing voucher recipients reminding them to vote, offering transportation to the polls in a “rolling rotation” of vans, and knocking on residents’ doors and reminding them to vote and offering them transportation to polls.”
“Voter engagement is important to this board and HUD, as I know it to be important to you, as well,” the email to Mathews said. “As such, reallocation of resources (personnel time, use unrestricted funds, etc.) is authorized where needed to accomplish this goal. We have less than a week to get this done, please update the board daily on progress, successes and ongoing efforts to empower our residents through voting.”
South Carolina Ethics Commission records indicate four members of the housing authority board — Cromartie ($850), Selena Pickens ($100), James Chatfield ($300) and Anne Sinclair ($1,000) — have given campaign donations to Devine this year. But the email from Cromartie to Mathews does not name any specific candidate for office, nor does it identify any specific political race. There also is a runoff election for an at-large seat on Columbia City Council on Nov. 16.
In a statement issued Wednesday night, Cromartie pointed to a Sept. 28 fact sheet sent out by the Biden administration calling for an “all-of-government action” to promote voting access and participation in the voting process.
“My purpose was simply to have our residents involved in the electoral process such that persons seeking any elected office that would serve the residents of our community would see the value of including residents of public housing in their messages to the public,” Cromartie said in the statement. “While these measures require extra effort on our part, the measures were suggested with the knowledge that our residents do not always have the access to the electoral process as others.”
Cromartie, an attorney, said the housing authority serves the elderly, disabled and many people without transportation, and that those shouldn’t be a hurdle to voting.
“Whom they vote for is up to each individual,” the board chairman said in his statement. “No fair reading of my email indicates anything to the contrary.”
Mathews, the housing authority CEO, issued a statement on the matter late Wednesday afternoon.
“Under my administration, Columbia Housing has not and will not redirect staff or financial resources to any impermissible voter activities,” Mathews said in the statement.
The statement from the housing authority said it has focused its CH Votes campaign on “voter registration, voter education and voter mobilization” and that, because some of the “mobilization activities” mentioned in Cromartie’s email “fall outside the scope of the CH Votes campaign,” Mathews reached out to HUD for input on Monday. No action has been taken on Cromartie’s email request, the housing authority said, and it is awaiting HUD’s response.
Rickenmann said in a Wednesday release he didn’t think monies from a public housing agency should be “redirected in support of political activity.” He called on U.S. Reps. Jim Clyburn, a Columbia Democrat, and Joe Wilson, a Lexington County Republican; state Attorney General Alan Wilson and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general to investigate the situation.
“I want every citizen in Columbia to vote,” Rickenmann said. “But money designed to serve the most vulnerable among us should never be redirected to serve the political interests of insiders. This is the kind of behavior that has left people behind in Columbia for over a decade.”
Devine, meanwhile, was quick to note that her name is not mentioned in Cromartie’s email, nor does the email encourage residents to vote for her or any other candidate.
“My response is, ‘What’s the problem?’” Devine said. “The Housing Authority for many years has encouraged voters. ... We all should be encouraging increased voter turnout everywhere. My position is, with the Housing Authority especially, when it’s a lower wealth community, predominantly African American, and a lot of people don’t have transportation or access to the polls, we should want the Housing Authority to do what they can to encourage people to vote.”
