Columbia-area voters will choose their next state senator – if they remember to vote
Only 1 in 5 S.C. voters turned out to vote in June’s primary elections, which featured a race for governor and other high-profile offices.
Now, some of those voters are being asked to turn out again — just two months later — to decide on a state senator to represent large swathes of Columbia, Richland and Lexington counties.
On Aug. 14, primary voters in the Senate’s District 20 will choose from three Democratic and four Republican candidates to represent them for the next two years — if they vote.
“Even people who know me and want to vote for me have told me they don’t know when it’s coming up,” said GOP candidate John Holler.
A half-dozen candidates have jumped into the race — multiple attorneys, an insurance agent, a preacher, a delivery driver, a transgender activist and a former chairman of the state Democratic Party..
Crowded GOP field
The seat came open after longtime Republican state Sen. John Courson resigned in June and entered a guilty plea to a charge of misconduct in office related to the misuse of his campaign spending account. Courson had been suspended from the Senate for more than a year prior to his resignation.
Courson’s plea ended a 33-year political career in District 20, which stretches from the southern neighborhoods of Columbia to the northwest, along Interstate 26, into portions of Lexington County. Despite the circumstances surrounding the senator’s exit, candidates in the GOP field say they haven’t heard that much on the campaign trail about Courson’s departure under an ethical cloud.
“People generally like Courson, and just feel like it’s a shame he got caught up in it,” said Holler, a Methodist minister and president of Epworth Children’s Home.
Bill Turbeville, a Columbia insurance agent, thinks the Legislature has looser ethics requirements than his own industry.
“I’m required to take an ethics class every year,” Turbeville said. “It might be good for lawmakers to bone up on ethics, unfortunately.”
Turbeville and Chapin attorney Christian Stegmaier also both plan to push for term limits to curb lawmakers’ influence. Stegmaier wants senators limited to two four-year terms, while Turbeville wants a 10- to 12-year limit for all legislators.
“My guide star is George Washington,” Stegmaier said. “He served two terms and went back to Mount Vernon.”
All the GOP candidates say there is a need for strong oversight of how the state Department of Transportation spends revenue that it is getting from the increased gas tax. That money is to go to fix the state’s roads.
Voters are also concerned about the ongoing fallout from a failed Fairfield County nuclear expansion project. Ballentine attorney Benjamin Dunn said the Legislature must insist the cost of that multibillion-dollar failure doesn’t fall on power customers.
“The Legislature needs to put the losses on SCANA shareholders,” Dunn said. “SCANA and Santee Cooper made this decision.”
Holler says he wants to bring his background to bear on children’s issues, focusing on helping the underprivileged. He said he wants to target educational resources where they are most needed without raising taxes, and address the challenges facing the understaffed, overworked Department of Social Services.
“Young people are falling behind not because they’re lazy or don’t have the intellect,” Holler said. “They start behind and, then, they don’t have the resources to help them catch up.”
One issue in the GOP race is Turbeville’s residency.
The insurance agent leased an apartment in downtown Columbia in June, just before the seat was vacated, moving from a home outside the district, in Forest Acres.
Stegmaier says District 20 residents would be better served by someone who “has actually lived and worked and gone to school in the district for more than a day or two before he filed for office.”
“It’s an issue in the primary, and it will certainly be an issue if he goes on to face Dick Harpootlian,” Stegmaier said of Turbeville.
Turbeville says that when candidates raise the residency issue, it’s a “sign of desperation.”
“I was born in Columbia. My wife’s from Columbia. I’ve lived in Columbia my whole life,” Turbeville said, noting he grew up near Dorn VA Medical Center. “As a lawyer, he (Stegmaier) knows I’m a legal resident of the district.”
Turbeville is the best-funded GOP candidate in the race with $55,625, including a $20,000 personal loan to his campaign, according to filings with the state Ethics Commission. Stegmaier has raised $25,000, including a $10,000 personal loan. Dunn has raised $13,500, mostly his own money. Holler has raised $4,000 but has spent $8,000 on his campaign.
Harpootlian leads Democrats
The most high-profile candidate in the District 20 race is former S.C. Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian.
A longtime political fixture in the state, the sharp-tongued attorney previously was on Richland County Council and was the area’s solicitor. He also has forged relationships with national Democratic figures. Former Vice President Joe Biden recently endorsed Harpootlian’s campaign for the Senate.
In the aftermath of Courson’s resignation, Harpootlian has focused his campaign ire on a perceived culture of corruption in the Legislature. He says he wants to cut down on the perks that state legislators get, eliminating their daily per-diem allowance and other expenses that lawmakers can claim.
“They should have to fill out the same paperwork (for compensation) as a DOT worker,” Harpootlian said. “Too many of them see it as a money-making opportunity. That’s one reason they can meet from January to May and we see no action on the budget or SCE&G.”
Also running in the Democratic primary are Kyle Lacio, a delivery driver who casts himself as the candidate of and for the working class, and Dayna Alane Smith, a health insurance worker who would be the first openly transgender member of the Legislature.
“I’m the candidate who would like to change labor laws, eliminate at-will employment and have a state minimum wage,” Lacio said.
Lacio, who claims endorsements from the S.C. AFL-CIO and the Bernie Sanders-linked Our Revolution group, also wants to boost schoolteachers’ pay and other incentives to reduce the teacher shortage in S.C. classrooms.
Filling out the paperwork to become a candidate, Lacio says, he was struck by how many potential conflicts of interest state lawmakers face.
“They ask, ‘Do you consult for these companies? Have investments here? Give paid speeches?’ ” he said. “Normal people don’t do that. But I’m represented by people who have to report they have their hands in so many cookie jars.”
Smith says she wants to preserve Five Points, drawing a contrast with Harpootlian’s efforts, as an attorney for neighborhood residents, to close some bars in the popular entertainment district. Critics say a judge’s ruling in that case could lead to the closure of bars in Five Points and far beyond.
“A lot of people in Five Points are not happy with (Harpootlian) cutting into their livelihood,” Smith said, adding that Harpootlian’s arguments, blaming increased crime in the area on alcohol sales, are a “mischaracterization of Five Points.”
Smith wants to see Richland legislators pass a local bill that would exempt Five Points from some of the state’s liquor requirements.
Harpootlian responds that the bars he has litigated against have violated state law, a contention a judge agreed with in at least one case.
“If your business model is pouring liquor for underage kids, that’s illegal,” he said. “I agree with Dayna that legitimate businesses should not be put out of business. But the folks I’m litigating against are not legitimate and are creating a dangerous environment for the kids there and for the surrounding neighborhoods.”
Thus far, Harpootlian is the best-financed candidate — Democrat or Republican — in the District 20 race.
According to his filings with the Ethics Commission, the multimillionaire lawyer has raised more than $140,000 in individual contributions and also made a $100,000 personal loan to his campaign. Lacio and Smith reported only a few hundred dollars in their campaign accounts in July.
This story was originally published August 3, 2018 at 7:21 AM.