S.C., Horry County party organizations, R and D, have role in a new election strategy
The presidential election of 2020 signaled seismic change in voting patterns across the Southern United States – with potential political leadership roles for South Carolina.
Georgia voters were in the spotlight when they gave Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate, the Peach State majority. The Democratic win was challenged, but confirmed by recounts and Republican state officials. Then, on Jan. 5, Georgia elected two Democrats to the U.S. Senate, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
Ossoff defeated incumbent Republican David Perdue, for a regular six-year term. Warnock beat Kelly Loeffler, who had been appointed to the remainder of retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term, which expires in 2022.
In 2020, Georgia was the only state with two U.S. Senate elections. That happens when one of a state’s two U.S. Senate seats becomes open before the term expires. (Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina was appointed effective Jan. 2, 2013, after Jim DeMint resigned, then Scott was elected in 2014 to the remaining two years of the term.)
SLIM MAJORITIES
The two Georgia Democrats flipped political control of the Senate. The seats are 50-50, R and D, and the new Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris has the tie-breaking vote as presiding officer of the Senate. Democrats also continue to have a slim majority in the House, having lost some seats in 2020.
Biden is the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992. In South Carolina, Republican President George H.W. Bush won with 48% and H. Ross Perot took nearly 12%.
In 2020, Trump comfortably carried South Carolina, with 55.1 percent of the vote. Biden received 1,091,541 S.C. votes (43.4 percent), illustrating that the Palmetto State remains a red state, but with a significant number of Democratic-leaning voters – or folks who will vote for Democratic candidates. Biden and Kamala Harris obviously received votes from Republicans who did not support Trump.
THE OLD SOUTH
The South was solidly Democratic for more than a century. From 1855 to 2003, all but three of Georgia’s U.S. senators were Democrats. Southern Democrats typically were segregationists. S.C. Gov. Strom Thurmond was a candidate for president on the Dixiecrat ticket in 1948 when Southern states broke from the Democratic Party over human rights.
The Republican Southern Strategy in the 1950s and 1960s appealed to White fears of Black people, at first overtly and then by talking about forced busing and states rights. Lee Atwater of Aiken, S.C., used emotional wedge issues in S.C., then national, political campaigns. Atwater died in 1991.
Trump used the Southern Strategy more than any president or presidential candidate since George Wallace. Trump’s lies about the election being stolen claimed that Democratic (Black) voters in big cities voted fraudulently, in states he lost.
NEW STRATEGY
A version of the Southern Strategy was at play in the Trump-incited attack on the U.S. Capitol. The strategy won’t continue to work. That’s not to suggest we have entirely overcome racial discrimination and inequality.
The national majority of votes for Biden and Harris was significant, but “The Battle for Our Better Angels” (subtitle of Jon Meacham’s “The Soul of America”) will continue. South Carolina can be a leader in embracing a new southern strategy.
Horry County Republicans should not take for granted the 66%(118,821 votes) Trump margin. They face some rebuilding, or refocusing, ahead as the GOP roils in the wake of the Trump presidency. Democratic organizations, in Horry and other overwhelmingly red S.C. counties, need organizing efforts that attract qualified and attractive candidates.
Both parties, nationally and locally, must embrace diversity and unity on telling the truth and equality under the rule of law.