Rural areas showing increasing clout in SC GOP elections

The areas of South Carolina influencing major statewide Republicans elections are shifting.

Clout is no longer just coming from major cities or specific regions of the state. Instead, new S.C. residents along the Grand Strand and angry GOP voters in rural counties are exerting increasing influence.

Donald Trump’s victory in the S.C. Republican presidential primary Saturday marked the third major statewide race won by a non-establishment candidate in the past six years. Each time, the upstart candidate won with help from rural counties.

In 2010, Nikki Haley, then a backbench state lawmaker running as a Tea Party candidate, won the Republican primary for governor over two establishment candidates — a state attorney general and congressman. Two years later, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich upset the eventual Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in the S.C. GOP primary. Saturday, Trump won.

In all three of the elections, GOP voters in 14 counties handed the non-establishment candidate — Haley, Gingrich or Trump -- big victories with results above their statewide tallies. The winners received 50 percent or more the vote in some these counties.

The largest is Horry County, the home of Myrtle Beach. There, an influx of retirees has introduced their own brand of conservatism.

But most of the counties that all three candidates won are smaller, rural counties that rank among the state’s poorest and least educated — including Marlboro, Clarendon, Lee, Union and Chesterfield.

Voters in those counties feel disconnected from a government that they think no longer pays attention to them.

“Future South Carolina campaigns must focus on rural, working-class voters who feel left behind economically and the more moderate transplants who populate our state's coast,” S.C. GOP chairman Matt Moore said. “It's a very new and unique coalition that powered Donald Trump to victory.”

Winthrop University political scientist Scott Huffmon noted findings in a statewide poll that he conducted in December showing Trump supporters were more likely to think white people faced discrimination.

Many of the counties that Trump, Gingrich and Haley carried have among the highest percentage of African-Americans residents in the state.

“I would say these ‘threatened’ people had latched on to the Tea Party in 2010 — which helped Haley after the (Sarah) Palin endorsement — and were channeling the anger against the establishment for not standing up for them,” Huffmon said. “This anger festered after the failure of the GOP establishment candidate (Romney) to take out Obama in 2012 and has found an outlet with Trump.”

“These people are angry at the state of the country,” and they prefer candidates who promise to overhaul politics in Washington and Columbia, former S.C. Republican Party chairman Katon Dawson said. They are saying, “I want to be a maverick Republican. I want nothing to do with (the establishment).”

Also, money is a a chief concern among rural voters, Dawson said.

“People heard (Trump) say, ‘I going to make you more money,’ ” Dawson said. “And they believed it.”

Winning endorsements from the state’s biggest political names guarantees little any more with these rebellious voters.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for example, had the support of many in the state’s Republican establishment, including U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, but finished fourth in the S.C. primary before dropping out of the race Saturday night. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida received endorsements from three top S.C. Republicans — Haley, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott and U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy.

“For all their popularity, Rubio came in second on Saturday,” said Joe Dugan, who produces the S.C. Tea Party Coalition Convention, which attracted six GOP candidates to Myrtle Beach last month, including Trump. “Everyone is going to join the Marco Rubio train. But we saw (in South Carolina) more people climbing onto the train on the other track that’s going in the opposite direction.”

The Trump, Gingrich and Haley victories also showed candidates can win with broad support across the state, rather than appealing to specific blocs.

Gone are the days that a GOP candidate can target the evangelical bloc that makes up more than two-thirds of the state’s Republican voters, for instance, and expect to win. In Saturday’s primary, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, targeted those evangelicals, but lost them to Trump, not known as the most religious candidate.

That shifting ground means that future campaigns, starting with the 2018 governor’s race, could look different.

“It might not mean the end of traditional South Carolina campaign strategies, but it certainly does mean re-considering the assumptions about what motivates voters,” Moore said.

Huffmon said the New York billionaire’s victory showed many voters are unhappy Washington failed to change after the Tea Party revolution of 2010. “What this election showed, if anything, is that conservative voters are sick of being pandered to, then ignored until the next election cycle,” Huffmon said.

Trump’s straight-talk appealed to enough of those voters — a third of voters Saturday — to win the S.C. primary.

“You better be upfront and honest, or they’re going to find out,” Dugan said.

This story was originally published February 21, 2016 at 8:59 PM with the headline "Rural areas showing increasing clout in SC GOP elections."