At their first debate, Rice, Fry, Richardson butt heads as each seeks a seat in Congress
It didn’t take long for the debate to become raucous.
Just minutes into the first official debate for the Republican primary in South Carolina’s 7th Congressional District U.S. Rep. Tom Rice had to shout over the boos of the crowd.
The incumbent congressman who’s seeking a sixth term in Congress was attempting to explain the most consequential vote of his decade-long career: His January 2021 vote to impeach former President Donald Trump.
The crowd didn’t want to hear it.
“I took an oath and I never turned my back on you,” Rice explained. “What I did was protect your freedom by protecting the Constitution.”
The crowd jeered.
“I saw everything I needed to see sitting on the house floor that day, smelling the tear gas, walking by the bloody and beaten capitol police officers,” Rice continued, describing his experience of the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 that prompted the impeachment vote against Trump. “I saw every fact I needed to.”
The audience jeered and booed so loudly, moderator and former Lt. Gov. Ken Ard admonished them.
“We’re going to stop this,” he told the crowd, noting that law enforcement officers were on standby.
And that was just the first question.
Over the course of two hours Thursday night, Rice and four of his challengers shared a stage for the first time to make their pitches to voters.
But the debate was lopsided. Rice largely stuck to talking points and explanations he’s delivered numerous times at town halls and campaign events around the district while Horry County Board of Education Chairman and Trump-endorsed state Rep. Russell Fry spent precious debate minutes trading barbs, ignoring the incumbent.
And then there was Barbara Arthur, a Christian speaker who spent more time railing against President Joe Biden, communism and media than she did addressing her fellow candidates. Cheraw physician Dr. Garrett Barton, meanwhile, attempted to remain above the fray and received comparatively less speaking time.
The debate didn’t have a clear winner, but that didn’t stop Fry from claiming victory.
“He’s feeling great, we won the debate, obviously,” Fry’s campaign manager Philip Habib said.
Richardson, too, felt confident.
“I think it’s going to be me and Tom,” in a run-off, Richardson said.
And Rice, mingling in the lobby of the Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center, said he was feeling “better now than when I walked in.”
The two-hour debate, hosted by the university, the Florence County Republican Party and Community Broadcasters was the first time Rice joined his primary competitors on stage.
Attacks were numerous Thursday, but the debate also covered substantial ground on infrastructure needs across the 7th Congressional District, the national debt and how the United States should approach trade with China.
It was voters’ first substantial view into the leading candidates who are running in one of 2022’s most hotly contested GOP primaries.
Rice’s impeachment vote, as some candidates noted on stage, is what drew the national spotlight. And Trump’s ire.
Trump, in November, called for “good and SMART American First Republican Patriots” to challenge Rice, 1st District Rep. Nancy Mace, R-Daniel Island, and other Republicans who have criticized him or voted to impeach him.
Trump ultimately backed Fry in the 7th District primary contest in February, a move that angered some conservatives in Horry County. In March, Trump shared a stage with Fry where he called Rice and Mace “grand-standing losers” and urged voters to replace them with Fry and Katie Arrington, who he’s endorsed against Mace.
Several of Rice’s opponents brought that energy to Thursday’s debate with plenty of choice words for the congressman.
Arthur, for one, said Trump “revived patriotic pride” for her and accused Rice of “hiding behind the Constitution” in defending his impeachment vote. She went on to call the Jan. 6 riot a “farce” and accused Democrats of inciting the riot using “communist tactics.”
For Fry’s part, he compared Rice to progressive Democrats and said his impeachment vote allowed him to be “weaponized by the Democrats.”
He noted that Rice’s impeachment vote could make him less effective if Trump were to win the presidency again in 2024.
“Do you think that President Trump is going to pick up the phone for Tom Rice? No, he’s not,” Fry said. “But do you think the person he endorsed who enthusiastically embraces the America First agenda, do you think he’ll pick up the phone for a Congressman Russell Fry? That’s the difference in this race.”
He called Rice’s vote “unforgivable.”
That was one point Richardson agreed with Fry on.
“You were hoping that people would forget and you were hoping people would forgive,” Richardson told Rice. “And I’m here to tell you tonight they have not forgotten and they have not forgiven.”
Attacks a-plenty from congressional candidates vying for the 7th district seat
Aside from Rice’s impeachment vote, the candidates Thursday found plenty of mud to sling at one another.
Fry and Rice, for instance, traded barbs over the Payroll Protection Program which was part of the first federal COVID-19 relief package. Both Fry’s law firm and the real estate business Rice’s wife runs received forgivable PPP loans.
When Interstate 73 came up, Rice and Fry found common ground. Rice has championed the project, which would connect S.C. 22 near Conway to Interstate 95 near Latta, for years.
“Interstate access is important,” Fry said.
That gave Richardson an opportunity to attack both men at once.
“People don’t want I-73 lets go ahead and face it,” he said. “Quit listening to the Myrtle Beach chamber, Russell, I know you’re their spokesperson.”
The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce has been one of the primary drivers of the I-73 project for years.
But Fry fired back.
“Ken we all know you’re a car dealer but we’re not buying what you’re selling,” he said.
In the debate’s second hour, Rice pivoted from a question about China to attack Fry for missing votes in the Statehouse as he’s served the Surfside Beach area. Rice claimed Fry had missed one-seventh of the total votes.
“He’s been there for seven years. That means he missed an entire year of votes,” Rice said.
Fry hit back with his own attack that Rice had received $500,000 in rent payments from a government agency leasing a building he owns while he was in Congress.
Rice explained that the 10-year lease was in place four years before he ran for Congress and that federal ethics officials had said he wasn’t violating any laws as long as he kept the lease unchanged.
But all of the attacks frustrated Barton. At one point in the debate he said he was tired of “fluff” from the candidates.
“I’m looking for a conservative Republican who can go up to D.C. and not play politics as usual,” he said. Later in the debate, Barton conceded that he may have a steep path to victory.
Richardson and Fry, meanwhile, took turns attacking one another over allegedly-fudged poll numbers, standardized test scores and more.
Fry continued his attacks into his final words of the night.
“At the end of the day you just can’t trust Tom,” Fry asserted.
Rice, for his part, touted his successes and said he hopes voters will send him back to Washington, one more time.
“I’ve done exactly what I told you I was going to do,” he said. “I am so proud of how far we’ve come.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2022 at 10:52 PM.
