SC Republican lawmaker says he’s considering a run for Charleston mayor in 2023
The mayor of South Carolina’s largest city may have just drawn his first challenger for a political contest that is still more than a year away.
During a hearing at the state House late Thursday morning, House Rules Committee Chairwoman Anne Thayer unexpectedly announced that her colleague, outgoing Rep. William Cogswell, R-Charleston, planned to run for the mayor of Charleston.
Cogswell, a three-term state lawmaker, later told The State by phone that Thayer’s declaration about his next political steps was not 100% right, but he did confirm that he is “certainly considering” a run for mayor.
If Cogswell decides to officially enter the Charleston mayoral race in 2023, he would be running against incumbent Mayor John Tecklenburg.
Tecklenburg was first elected mayor of Charleston in 2015, taking helm of the office previously held by Mayor Joe Riley for 40 years. Tecklenburg went on to win reelection in 2019 after securing some 61% of the vote in a runoff against City Council Member Mike Seekings.
Cogswell said he’s been approached and encouraged to run for the position by allies in Columbia and in Charleston.
Asked why he declined to run for a fourth term in the Legislature, Cogswell told The State, “Candidly, there’s the normal reasons which are (it’s) difficult to balance a family and your day job, but I’ve also always been more of a moderate, and it’s just becoming harder and harder to be a moderate in government.”
Cogswell is a Republican, but mayoral races in Charleston are nonpartisan. Tecklenburg identifies as a Democrat.
Already, two candidates have filed to run for Cogswell’s state House seat: Republican Tom Hartnett and Democrat Ellis Roberts.
In the Legislature, Cogswell sits on the Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee.
In 2018, he was one of 25 state lawmakers from the House and Senate who called for the state constitution to be rewritten, arguing that it currently gives a disproportionate amount of power to the Legislature and too little power to the governor.
When he initially ran for the state House seat in 2016, he told the Charleston Post and Courier that he decided to get into the race because the district was facing unprecedented growth that he thought could be “either alleviated or positively directed by better infrastructure planning and budgeting.”
Cogswell, who lives in downtown Charleston in an affluent pocket of the peninsula south of Broad Street, has owned his real estate business, WECCO Development, for more than 20 years. The firm is best known for redeveloping The Cigar Factory on the Charleston peninsula, and for the redevelopment of Garco Mill in the Park Circle area of North Charleston.
According to his online biography on the S.C. Legislature’s website, Cogswell has served on the Historic Charleston Foundation Board since 2009, and has been its advocacy chairman since 2016.
He is married, has two children and attends Grace Episcopal Church.
Filing for Charleston’s mayoral race has not opened.
Maayan Schechter contributed to this report from Columbia, S.C.
This story was originally published March 31, 2022 at 1:58 PM with the headline "SC Republican lawmaker says he’s considering a run for Charleston mayor in 2023."
