What Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette’s gubernatorial campaign speech was missing | Opinion

You have to wonder if AI wrote Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette’s speech announcing her candidacy for governor of South Carolina. It included not a single original thought, or even a memorable or cute turn of phrase. It was Republican boilerplate in the extreme.

Most South Carolinians didn’t know Evette or what she stood for before the speech, and most South Carolinians don’t know Evette or what she stands for after the speech.

South Carolinians should be excused if they got the impression she was hoping to become President Donald Trump’s executive assistant rather than the Palmetto State’s top executive.

Other Republicans vying for the seat at least have an established platform from which to launch themselves.

Alan Wilson is the state’s attorney general and can use his law enforcement credentials, even if they aren’t all that impressive.

State Sen. Josh Kimbrell, R-Spartanburg, the first to officially jump into the race, recently made headlines for being sued by a business partner.

Others considering a campaign are well known.

Rep. Nancy Mace, who represents the 1st congressional district, used her perch as the first woman to graduate from The Citadel’s Corps of Cadets to become a congresswoman — and seemed reasonable until she was not, especially about transgender issues.

Rep. Ralph Norman of the 5th congressional district stands out among South Carolina Republicans for criticizing Trump’s “big beautiful bill” before passage and for endorsing former Gov. Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

Evette is part of the Gov. Henry McMaster administration, but she hasn’t stood out.

She missed an opportunity Monday to stand out, too. Her campaign announcement should have provided a clear introduction to voters who don’t even know her name. Her supporters must hope she simply played it too safe, not that her speech is what to expect over the next several months.

Evette announced plans to create a state DOGE or Department of Government Efficiency. Never mind that gobs of state-level Republicans have been calling for the same thing, or that Elon Musk’s version was a massive failure and underperformer.

She plans to reform the judicial system to ensure judges aren’t beholden to politicians, which seems a response to some judges refusing to treat Trump like a king. She pushed for universal school choice, a conservative policy position as old as time. And she wants to eliminate the state’s income tax the way Florida and Texas did.

She didn’t mention any policy positions until more than halfway through her 15-minute long speech, using the first half to remind South Carolinians about her unwavering support for Trump.

“I will never back down from defending your Second Amendment rights,” she (kinda) thundered.

She threw in the old standby of wanting to attack “waste, fraud and abuse,” and a promise to protect “Christian values” and the rights of parents.

Evette is “the new sheriff in town” who will get those rascally “illegals,” put “woke corporations” in their place and stand up to the “radical left.”

“The radical left wants to turn South Carolina into California, and we will stop them,” Evette said about a state that’s been Republican-controlled all my adult life.

The “establishment” and “special interests” will get “a rude awakening,” she said.

How a politician who has served alongside Gov. Henry McMaster for six years, and was elected on the same ticket as him in 2018 and 2022, isn’t the establishment, she didn’t explain. But he is termed out of office, and she wants the top job.

Like Mace, she couldn’t help but take a few jabs at the trans community, declaring she will keep men out of women’s sports, darn it!

Her speech was a perfect distillation of the sad state of the state’s politics.

Evette reasons she doesn’t have to say any more than she did. She doesn’t have to be bold or take a single courageous position. She doesn’t have to say she’ll ensure that more vulnerable South Carolinians will have health care access despite Trump’s Medicaid cuts, or that the state will rethink its gun laws to drop the rate of gun deaths to where hated California’s currently sits.

All she has to keep saying is some form of “Don’t you guys know how much I love, just love, the Great President Donald Trump! I love him more than every other GOP candidate combined!” without mentioning any of her party’s missteps or how she plans to avoid repeating them. She just has to be the Trump robot we’ve all come to expect, and hope enough voters believe that’s enough.

What’s worse is the state’s Democratic Party may not even put up a viable challenger.