One year later, Tom Rice’s vote to impeach Trump looms large over SC congressional race
One year ago, after Rep. Tom Rice (R-Myrtle Beach) voted to impeach former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, the reaction was swift.
Almost immediately, local Republican Party members began organizing censure votes of Rice, ultimately resulting in a censure vote from the South Carolina GOP. In the weeks after, several challengers announced they would seek to primary Rice in the June 2022 elections. And by the end of the year, Trump himself came out against Rice, saying he would support one of his challengers.
And now, exactly one year later, Rice’s vote continues to loom large over his bid for re-election.
“(Voters) feel that he betrayed the 7th district, that he betrayed America, that he didn’t follow the Constitution,” Horry County Board of Education Chairman Ken Richardson, one of the candidates challenging Rice, said in an interview.
Rice on Jan. 13, 2021 joined Democrats and nine other Republicans in voting to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot. The U.S. Senate later acquitted Trump of the charges.
Rice, for his part, has embraced his vote to impeach Trump and has argued repeatedly that he believes Trump’s inaction to stop the rioters on Jan. 6 as they stormed the capitol amounted to a breech of the constitution. He’s said his job as a congressman is to uphold the constitution — which he’s described as a conservative position to take — and to hold those who violate the constitution accountable.
As he’s begun his race for re-election, Rice has said Republicans need to stick to the conservative ideas and policies Trump pushed during his time in office, but that the party ought to move away from the man himself.
“I hate to say I’m loyal to any particular person. I’m loyal to our country, I’m loyal to our constitution,” Rice said in an interview with The Sun News last week ahead of the anniversary of Jan. 6. “I’m loyal to the ideals that are put forth by the Republican Party because I believe those ideals lift people up.”
Those challenging Rice, though, said they believe rejecting Trump is a losing strategy for South Carolina’s 7th district, which stretches from Georgetown to the North Carolina line, and West to include Chesterfield County.
“I think it’s a big issue for all the voters of the 7th district. It is the issue that people are talking about the most,” said state Rep. Russell Fry (R-Surfside Beach), one of Rice’s challengers. “It’s time to replace Rice with a proven conservative. That frustration of the people is still very prevalent.”
So convinced is Fry that Rice’s impeachment was a mistake that will define the primary election that his campaign launched a website titled “ImpeachTomRice.com” on Thursday. The website redirects to an online portal asking for donations to Fry’s campaign.
Other candidates challenging Rice, too, told The Sun News that voters still regularly talk about Rice’s vote to impeach Trump. Challenger Jeanette Spurlock, though, said voters’ concern was often less about believing that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that the Jan. 6 riot was justified and more about an appearance that Rice turned his back on Trump when Democrats were attacking him.
“I don’t think we can take off the table the impeachment vote because it represents a loss of trust …we need to have someone we can trust,” Spurlock said. “I just don’t see many people trusting him to get us out of the messes we’re in.”
Dr. Garrett Barton, a Florence-area doctor who is also running against Rice, said voters he’s talked to feel “betrayed” by Rice’s vote to impeach Trump.
“I would say being on the trail it is a big issue we’ve heard,” Barton said. “It’s almost like nine out of ten people weren’t happy about the decision.”
Put together, the continued concern over Rice’s vote to impeach Trump boils down to how the GOP will approach Trump during this year’s midterm elections and into the future. Rice has argued that its time for the party to begin moving away from Trump, while his challengers say they believe Trump should continue to be the face of the Republican Party.
“The GOP existed before Trump was the candidate …and the ideas that we promote haven’t changed before, during and since Donald Trump,” Rice told The Sun News. “And the ideals will exist long after Trump is an afterthought.”
Fry and others said explicitly that they view Trump as the leader of their party, and that he should continue to lead Republicans.
“It is my belief that Donald Trump is the defacto head of the Republican Party,” Fry said, citing Trump’s success in appointing conservative judges and rewriting trade deals for the country. “Distancing oneself from the president who pushed those policies doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Several of Rice’s challengers said voters in the 7th district were especially upset by his vote to impeach Trump because Trump was so close to leaving office. Even if Trump’s claims of election fraud fell flat, Rice’s vote to impeach was more about keeping him out of politics in the future, some argued, rather than holding him accountable for Jan. 6.
“A week away from the man walking out of the office, people feel like the vote wasn’t to hold him accountable,” Richardson said. “It’s not as much that he voted to send Trump home but if he had been impeached, it would have stopped him from running and winning again.”
That aspect of the vote is important, Richardson and others argued, because South Carolina’s 7th district is “Trump country” and voters here would likely vote for him again in the future if they’re able to.
The impeachment vote looms so large in the race, Rice’s challengers said, that many voters view it as equally important to economic issues and other matters facing the country.
“The trust is gone,” Spurlock said.
Still, challengers said they have to be somewhat careful when addressing the impeachment vote. While voters are upset with how Rice voted, they don’t appreciate candidates “mudslinging” at one another, Spurlock said. She made a negative comment about Rice on Facebook recently, she said, and was criticized for it. That’s forcing candidates to make fuller arguments to voters about why they are a better person to replace Rice.
“People are dreading the dirt and the mudslinging,” she said. “If I want to shine I can’t shine because someone else is dim.”
That’s perhaps a sentiment Rice agrees with. In his interview with The Sun News, Rice bemoaned the “inflamed passions” that have taken over American politics, and criticized both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for leaning into those forces.
Rather than focus on partisanship, Rice said, he plans to focus on upholding the constitution and solving problems for residents in his district.
“Too many of our leaders…are so focused on politics and not focused enough on solving problems. They want to wait til they get all the power and ram things through,” Rice said, adding that members of Congress need to “...work with each other, maybe not in ways that either one of us are going to like, but we each get a little bit of what we want and we can help lift people up.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2022 at 3:29 PM with the headline "One year later, Tom Rice’s vote to impeach Trump looms large over SC congressional race."
