In D.C., Tom Rice has pushed I-73 closer to reality. Would his challengers do the same?
Thursday night’s GOP debate between candidates vying for South Carolina’s 7th District seat in Congress featured attack after attack, mud-slinging and even warnings that America was becoming a communist nation.
But the five candidates also offered their solutions to the infrastructure problems that counties across the district face, one of more substantive portions of the two-hour event.
And while the candidates were at times in lock-step opposition — to incumbent Rep. Tom Rice, China and President Joe Biden — each had a different view on Interstate 73, the largest proposed infrastructure project in the district.
“I think that there’s nothing that we could do that would lift up people across the entire district more than build I-73,” Rice, who’s seeking a sixth term in Washington, D.C., said.
I-73, planned for decades, would connect S.C. 22, near Conway, to I-95, near Latta, giving Myrtle Beach and Horry County their first-ever interstate connection.
In the Republican primary, the project has become something of a wedge issue. Rice and state Rep. Russell Fry both support the project, while Horry County school board Chairman Ken Richardson called the project “dead.”
Christian speaker Barbara Arthur, meanwhile, said even discussing the project was “nonsense” while Biden was driving America down a “socialist highway” that “leads to communism.”
Those views matter, in part, because state lawmakers have called I-73 “shovel ready.” Engineering studies on the highway are complete, environmental permits have been secured and the South Carolina Department of Transportation has purchased significant acreage for the road’s right-of-way.
That means the district’s representative in Congress — be it Rice or one of his challengers — could be tasked with advocating for federal funding for the project in Washington.
If Richardson were to best Rice on June 14, for example, the project may lose a key ally.
“I just I don’t get it. I mean, how many people have to tell you I- 73 is dead?” Richardson asked Rice on Thursday. “Tom, you said we’d be turning dirt this year. Take that shovel dig a hole and bury I-73 instead.”
Richardson was referencing a comment Rice made at a February town hall, as state lawmakers debated whether or not to include a $300 million request for I-73 construction from Gov. Henry McMaster. At the time, Rice said, he believed lawmakers would honor the governor’s request.
But lawmakers in both the state House and Senate declined to include even $1 for I-73 in this year’s budget, a considerable setback for the project.
Fry, in a statement, said he believes if he wins the June primary and if Donald Trump wins the presidency again in 2024, I-73 could become a reality.
“I support I-73 and so does President Trump,” Fry, who Trump has endorsed against Rice, said. “When he gets re-elected, I’ll work with President Trump to move the project forward.”
Trump, during a 2015 campaign stop in Myrtle Beach, voiced support for I-73.
“If I were elected, I would approve it immediately,” Trump said in an April 2015 interview.
That didn’t happen, and Trump hasn’t mentioned the project since. He didn’t bring it up when he campaigned for Fry in Florence in March.
For some of the candidates, the lack of state and federal funding for the project means boosters should drop the project.
Cheraw physician Dr. Garrett Barton on Thursday cautioned that Horry County, the Grand Strand and other growing parts of the district are “hesitant” about infrastructure, like I-73, that would continue the area’s expansion.
“If you talk to the people down in Myrtle Beach, they’re very hesitant about how rapidly we’re putting the cart before the horse,” Barton said. “We’re more worried about bringing in the construction jobs and all that, but we’re leaving behind the people who call it home.”
I-73 detractors often argue similar points, that state and federal dollars should go toward local roads, bridges and flooding infrastructure rather than an interstate that would increase tourism and lure new people and companies to the area.
Fry on Thursday argued that projects like I-73 provide “an opportunity for average, everyday Americans” and said he could build the state and federal relationships needed to secure funding for that and other projects.
“You have to have the relationships with people to get that done, to drive forward a focus on infrastructure in this area,” he said. “Interstate access is important. Flood resiliency is important for people in this area.”
Rice, for his part, has made substantial progress on I-73 throughout his years in Congress. At town hall events and on Thursday he said he made securing environmental permits from the Army Corps of Engineers a priority, and the the Corps awarded those permits in 2017.
When a lawsuit over the permits ended last year, Rice said he successfully convinced McMaster to make the $300 million budget request to jumpstart construction. The $300 million would have built the first interchange and six miles of the highway off of I-95.
Rice, who’s said he’s running on a platform of “jobs, jobs, jobs,” said I-73 is needed to diversify the region’s economy. He cited a study that concluded I-73 could bring 29,000 new jobs to its corridor, though its likely, experts told The Sun News, that many of those jobs would be low-paying work in the service sector.
“It’s a win-win-win for South Carolina, and it would lift up this entire district and then and the entire state,” Rice said. “It’s absurd that it wasn’t built 30 years ago.”
But with a crowded field of Republicans vying to unseat Rice, the project’s future is up in the air. Arthur indicated Thursday that she wouldn’t touch the project if elected.
“Infrastructure is important,” she conceded. “(But) in light that we’re losing our country, this is a silly conversation. The Titanic is sinking, y’all. We’re talking about I-73 and roads. This is a bunch of nonsense, honestly.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2022 at 12:41 PM.
