SC GOP shifts focus to turning red state legislative seats

With their presidential nominee picked, S.C. Republican Party officials are turning their focus to state legislative races.

Topping the list? Flipping a state Senate seat in Richland County that retiring Democrat Joel Lourie will vacate when his term expires at year’s end.

Democratic state Rep. Mia McLeod, a Columbia communications consultant, and Republican Susan Brill, a Richland 2 school board member and former Richland County Council member, are running for the seat.

So far, blue is winning, at least in the cash race.

Democrat McLeod has the fundraising advantage over Republican Brill, having raised $39,000 from April through June and finishing the quarter with $114,000 to spend. Brill raised $23,000 in the same period, finishing June with $69,000 to spend.

If Brill prevails, the seat would be a big Senate win for the GOP. Lourie has been a vocal advocate of the Democratic agenda. In 2004, Lourie won the seat, which long had been held by the late Republican Warren Giese. Since then, however, Richland County has become more and more Democratic.

Republicans also hope to flip the state Senate seat that Democrat Creighton Coleman of Fairfield County is leaving. Coleman lost to Mike Fanning, a nonprofit executive, in the Democratic primary. Republican Mark Palmer, an Iraq war veteran, also is seeking the seat.

However, flipping the seat to the GOP could be a tough battle. Coleman beat Republican challengers by landslides in 2012 and 2008.

S.C. House races the state GOP hopes to flip in November include:

▪ The Newberry seat held by Democrat Walt McLeod. McLeod’s retirement, after two decades in the State House, leaves open a seat being contested by Republican Rick Martin, co-owner of a battery outlet store, and Democrat Carlton Kinard, a recent graduate and former student body president of Newberry College.

▪ The Charleston seat formerly held by Republican House Speaker Bobby Harrell, who resigned amid an ethics scandal. Democrat Mary Tinkler won the seat in 2014, but decided to step down after a single term to run for county treasurer. Lin Bennett, a former Charleston County GOP chair, is running against Democrat Bob Aubin to succeed Tinkler.

S.C. Democrats in the spotlight

S.C. Democrats struck high profiles as the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Felicia Sanders and Polly Sheppard, two of the three survivors of the Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston, spoke at the convention.

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn also shared the spotlight with three other high-profile S.C. Democrats expected to take an interest in his congressional seat if the Columbia Democrat ever retires: S.C. Democratic Party chairman Jaime Harrison, Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin and former state Rep. Bakari Sellers.

Benjamin raised his national profile by sitting next to former President Bill Clinton during the convention.

Later, he answered questions from reporters about his political ambitions.

“I’m running for re-election,” he told Columbia’s WIS-TV from Philadelphia. “I expect to serve the people of Columbia at least for one other term. You know, if it’s God’s will that I go do something else, with the permission of my wife and two daughters, you know, we’ll see where that takes us, but that’s not in my plan.”

The political conventions this month also have thrust Sellers, a Hillary Clinton supporter who introduced the candidate during a campaign stop in his hometown earlier this year, even higher into the Democratic firmament as a rising star.

Sellers’ job as a CNN commentator took him to Cleveland for the Republican National Convention and to the Democrats’ party in Philadelphia.

But Sellers – who took on conservative Fox News talking head Bill O’Reilly while also fielding social media criticism for being a news commentator with an unapologetic Democratic perspective – admitted sitting in the media is not always easy. When one Twitter follower commiserated: “Can’t imagine what it’s like being on those political roundtable shows,” Sellers replied, “I need more than 140 (characters) to explain, but it can get rough.”

▪ U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-North Charleston, went viral when he spoke from the U.S. Senate floor this month about being racially profiled by law enforcement, including by Capitol police as senator. Scott also said his experiences were not isolated incidents but shared by other African-American lawmakers.

This week, in an op-ed penned in Time Magazine with fellow Republican U.S. Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who is white, Scott proposed a fix for the nation’s racial tensions: “Solution Sundays.”

“Sunday is a slower, yet significant day, for most Americans. So, we challenge each family to give one Sunday lunch or dinner for building relationships across race, to literally be part of the solution in America. ... It is harder to stereotype when you know people first-hand. ... This is not a new idea, it is as old as America. ... During a time of great racial tension in our nation, we need more intentional relationships. We want unity, but are we willing to work for it and model it with our own family?”

▪ One candidate in the 2018 S.C. governor’s race already has started raising money. Republican Yancey McGill of Kingstree has raised $155,000, including $555 that he gave himself, according to his campaign finance report filed this month. The former Democrat switched to the GOP in March after he had left office.

A state senator for 25 years, McGill is the last Democrat to hold statewide office. He briefly became lieutenant governor in 2014 after former Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell, a Republican, resigned to become the College of Charleston’s president.

This story was originally published July 30, 2016 at 2:25 PM with the headline "SC GOP shifts focus to turning red state legislative seats."