SC Democrats take a page from GOP playbook and stomp on democracy with court case
South Carolina could’ve had a lieutenant governor with a green mohawk, but the Democrats had to ruin that.
Taking a page from the Republican playbook, the Democratic Party of South Carolina kicked democracy in the groin by taking poor ol’ Labor Party candidates to court and having them blocked from being on the November ballot. The Labor Party candidates said they would appeal.
The whole injustice is part of a larger problem in South Carolina of left-leaning infighting and a glaring mistake for the state’s Democratic Party.
During the court hearings, the Labor Party’s lieutenant gubernatorial nominee, Harold Geddings, sat beside his fellow Laborers with his lime-and-lemon colored mohawk lying flat to one side and a goatee of the same color protruding from his mask. He sat with Gary Votour, the party’s gubernatorial candidate who resembles David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash, as well as Donna Dewitt, a former AFL-CIO South Carolina president. Lucus Faulk, who would have run against U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace in the 1st Congressional District, was with the crew but didn’t have a distinguishing trait other than wearing jeans in court. Nothing wrong with that.
This group appears to be a splinter of the statewide Labor Party and the outcome of an internal rift. According to a court filing by Willie Legette, the Labor Party co-chair, Dewitt went rogue, held a “convention” and nominated candidates under the Labor Party banner, despite the statewide party voting to not have candidates in 2022.
As the chant goes: This is what Democracy looks like.
Don’t let my words be misconstrued as condescension. I believe this rag-tag group, especially someone with the tenacity to shave both sides of his head and dye the remaining hair neon, could shake up South Carolina’s government in a positive way, or at least an entertaining, if short lived, way.
Infighting among moderate Democrats, progressives and left-leaning activist plays a part in why these factions are so anemic in South Carolina. In the face of overwhelming odds against conservatives, those on the left go for each others’ throats, leaving them spent to take on the GOP.
The Labor Party candidates were never going to win or pull many votes, especially being a fringe group of the fringe. That makes the Democratic Party’s action all the more heinous and confusing.
Taking the Labor Party candidates to court was anti-democratic and a terrible standard for the party that’s trying to pit itself as upholding democracy rather than tearing it down. That’s especially true if one considers the reason the Democratic Party found to have the Labor Party ousted from the ballot.
The splinter Labor Party candidates didn’t have their nominating convention by the state mandated May 15 deadline. That was the violation that allowed the court to rule in the Democrats’ favor. That’s a technicality and not worth the democracy-desecrating accusations that could be levied at the Democrats for taking the runts to court. The state Election Commission appeared willing to put the candidates on the ballot and was waiting for the court or the attorney general to give them the go-ahead.
South Carolina Democratic Party chair Trav Robertson defended taking the candidates to court.
“I didn’t have a choice,” he said. The Labor Party candidates “are the people who want Donald Trump thrown in jail and to hold him to account but they don’t want to hold themselves to the same standard.”
Robertson said he believes the state Election Commission or the Attorney General’s office should have enforced the May 15 deadline, but since they didn’t, the Democratic Party was forced to take the Labor candidates to court.
The Democratic Party’s actions are reminiscent of those taken by former state Sen. Jake Knotts, a Republican. In 2012, Knotts got his primary opponent, current Sen. Katrina Shealy, knocked off the ballot along with almost 200 other SC candidates for a technical issue dealing with candidates’ filing paperwork. Shealy went on to win that election as a petition candidate.
I doubt the Democratic Party wants to look in the mirror and see anything resembling Jake Knotts.
Do Labor Party folks have to get along and agree with traditional Democrats at all times and vice versa? Not at all. But the Democrats shouldn’t be bullies by taking the little guys to court.
Instead of taking them to court, the Democratic Party should focus on ways to appeal to those precious few voters who might pull the lever for labor. By taking the Labor Party candidates to court, all the Democratic Party has proven is that it doesn’t have big enough ideas to bring in the far left.
If the Democratic Party is worried that an outsider group within the Labor Party will steal enough votes to have an impact on election outcomes, they have far bigger problems than leftist opponents.