The State endorsements: How to find all our recommendations for the 2024 SC primary
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South Carolina 2024 Primary Election
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The State Editorial Board has published all its endorsements for the June 11 Republican and Democratic primary elections in South Carolina.
Now I need a nap.
My Fitbit tells me I averaged 5 hours of sleep a night this week and 5 1/2 hours a night last week.
It was a lot of work. We set out to be thorough, transparent, and fair and accessible to every reader and every candidate in 25 races in Lexington and Richland counties.
Now we will let the candidates and readers of every political stripe assess the integrity of the work. That’s why it exists. We did it for you, the voter, who actually has the harder job: choosing the public servants to represent us.
You can read all our endorsements below.
We offer our research and recommendations to help you with voting. As I tried to explain a couple weeks ago, we’re not here to tell you what to think, but rather to share what we think and to suggest what you might think about as you grapple with the complex issues and often contradictory messages of these political campaigns.
Voting has already begun in contested races for Congress, the state House of Representatives, the state senate, Richland County Council, Lexington County Council and Lexington County sheriff.
Six weeks ago, mindful of the start of early voting on May 28, we emailed short questionnaires to more than 50 political candidates in 25 races. We gave candidates up to 250 words per answer for a handful of questions specific to their race, and we told them we would share their Q&As with the public and use them to inform our endorsement decisions.
Two of the 56 candidates we tried to interview never responded to our survey. A third candidate told us that she had suspended her campaign because she didn’t live in the district and couldn’t serve. Every other candidate replied. We were grateful that so many of them saw the value in sharing their views with our readers — their constituents — and we kept trying to reach the two holdouts, unsuccessfully.
Vetting candidates is one of the most important jobs in opinion journalism.
We fail our readers when we don’t share what we learn from and about candidates for public office.
As responses came back, we edited them for accuracy, and asked many of the candidates to corroborate claims or back up facts. Answers longer than 250 words were edited down for space reasons, and we published all the Q&As online in their entirety.
Then the South Carolina journalists on The State Editorial Board began our discussions.
This year the endorsements were made by two local opinion team members, me as the new South Carolina opinion editor and letters editor and longtime South Carolina journalist Allison Askins, in consultation with The State’s President and Editor Brian Tolley.
Who are we? To put it simply, our judgment helps shape the opinion journalism we publish and the conversations we foster. We’re held to the same high standards of ethics, fairness and accuracy as reporters and editors producing The State’s neutral news report, but we do our work independently of them. The other journalists in the newsroom see our endorsements when everyone else does.
By definition, our work, unlike theirs, is opinionated.
The Editorial Board published our final endorsement Friday morning after a busy couple weeks assessing the Q&As, doing additional interviews and research and reflecting on each candidate’s achievements, background, character, demeanor and experience.
We also considered how a candidates’ values represent their constituencies — because primary elections pit Democratic candidates against other Democrats and Republican candidates against other Republicans to see who will advance to a winner-take-all general election in November. And we considered the makeup of the larger body that the candidates want to join.
Are, for example, women underrepresented in South Carolina’s General Assembly? Yes. Yes, they are. We weighed that, too.
Three thoughts, in closing:
- Representation matters. Representation, in all its facets, is up to you.
- Elections, like the people seeking public office, can be complicated. Elections also have consequences.
- Voting is a collective responsibility but a personal choice. We look forward to seeing who you collectively choose.
Still have questions about the endorsement process? Please email me at mhall@thestate.com. And don’t forget to vote by or on June 11!
The State’s endorsements
Our choices for Congress in SC
Our choices for SC state House
Senate District 22 Democratic primary
Our Richland County Council choices
Our Lexington County Council choices
Our choice for Lexington County sheriff
Our candidate interviews
Meet your congressional candidates in District 2, District 6 in the June 11 SC primary
Meet your Lexington, Richland county state House candidates in the June 11 SC primary
Meet your Lexington, Richland county state Senate candidates in the June 11 SC primary
Meet all five Richland County Council candidates in the June 11 SC primary election
Meet all 10 Lexington County Council candidates in the June 11 SC primary election
Meet the three candidates for Lexington County sheriff in the June 11 SC primary election
This story was originally published May 31, 2024 at 11:02 AM.
