♪ Gavin> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina , I'm Gavin Jackson.

We are less than three weeks away from Election Day, and this week I speak with Congressman Jim Clyburn and SCGOP Chairman Drew McKissick about the latest on the campaign trail, and some top issues here in the state.

But first, I'm speaking with Congressman Jim Clyburn.

Congressman Clyburn, thanks for joining us.

Cong.

Jim> Well, thank you very much for having me.

Gavin> So sir, you're the state's only Democratic Congressman.

We know that.

That's why we have you on to get this Democratic perspective.

And I want to ask you about Vice President Harris and her campaign.

She took that over in late July.

And the last time you and I spoke was at the Democratic National Convention up in Chicago, in August.

So kind of tell me, since then, till now, we're less than three weeks away.

How do you, how do you sum up this campaign?

How do you view how she's done and how your party is doing right now, With less than three weeks to go?

Cong.

Jim> Well, I think she's done incredibly well.

I was not surprised at that.

You may recall, way back the first of the year, when all of the acts, were, on display, about whether or not Joe Biden should, remain on the ticket.

And there were people looking for alternatives.

I made it very clear then, that I was going to be with Biden for as long as he was in the race.

And if he ever decided not to go forward, I would be all in, with Kamala Harris.

And a lot of people thought, that, that was not the best route to take.

I did, and I think that what you're seeing now, is demonstrative of the fact that she is ready for this job.

And if you look at her resume, look at the resume of all others, she just has an incredibly good resume.

And I think she's demonstrated in the last, several days, that she has a spine of steel.

And a mind that is, really up for this task.

Gavin> And when you say the last several days, do you mean some of her interviews that she's been doing including that Fox News interview, Wednesday evening?

Cong.

Jim> Yes, absolutely.

You know, people just look at, Fox News on yesterday.

I don't know how she had the sense to know, that, that questioner, was not being, totally honest with what he had put up on the script, up on the screen.

Now, you know, people who, maybe she saw, the show earlier in the day.

But I think that she acquitted herself, extremely well, with that.

And I think she did that in the debate.

And that's why, the, "45" is refusing to debate anymore and he's hiding something, from the American people.

in his reason he will not sit for any interviews.

And, of course, I thought it's kind of interesting as I listen to, the excerpts from that, Fox News, on yesterday.

It's kind of interesting to me, that the misrepresentations, that they continue to make, they seem to be getting away with it.

I don't know why, the country has evolved, into, this, love affair with misrepresentations and outright lies.

But that seems to be where the country is.

Gavin> And sir, kind of looking into some of the issues that Vice President Harris is facing this week, she's working to sure up a lot of that support from men, specifically black men.

She's spoken with several prominent black media personalities this week since we're talking about interviews, Charlamagne tha God, Roland Martin, the like.

We're talking about this because of some polling that has shown her slipping in support.

There's a variety of polls that show different things here.

How concerned are you about this?

And what do you think is the root of this problem?

Cong.

Jim> Misrepresentations.

The root of the problem, misrepresentations.

And, I'm saying that to be polite.

Social media...

I think, are great.

You know, I'm one who polarizes media.

I know that I'm in the minority these days.

I think social media are great.

I do believe very strongly, that they have a lot of pitfalls as well.

A lot of people believe everything they see, on media, on social media.

And a lot of what you see on social media, just is not true.

And I think that's the problem here.

How can you, square, the record of Donald Trump with the record of Joe Biden?

It is just not, you cannot compare.

Here, in the Charleston's Lowcountry, the investments that we are making, in the economy here.

Just yesterday, 192 million dollar investment, plus, another safe ports investment that's going to take us somewhere in the neighborhood of over 200 million dollars, just in the last day.

Over five billion dollars in South Carolina in the last three years.

Tell me how much was invested in our economy for the four years that Trump was president?

We didn't spend one dime on infrastructure in four years.

And look that what's happening in South Carolina today.

We now have a harbor there in Charleston, that's 54ft deep.

When I was elected, first elected, it was about 36ft.

We can now take all the big ships coming in and out of that port, and they can go side by side, going in and coming out.

None of this could've happened before.

All of this happened in large measure because of Joe Biden.

That first deepening of the harbor, that was Joe Biden under Barack Obama, who navigated that for us.

So people, just tend to believe what they see on the media, on social media, rather than pay attention to what the real facts are.

Gavin> But when you look at that support and her maybe lack thereof support or slipping support, I should say, about black male voters, how concerned are you about that?

And what do you think that root problem is?

Cong.

Jim> I don't think there's any slippage.

Once again, I think who you talk to, I go... maybe doesn't look like, but I go to a barbershop, every two weeks.

I'm not hearing, what people tell me they're hearing in barbershops.

I was raised in the beauty shop.

My mom's, had two beauty shops when I was growing up.

Had about 16 operators in those beauty shops.

I was in and out of those beauty shop all the time, so I know what... what the culture is in the beauty shops.

I'm not hearing or seeing what is being reported about this.

You get one or two people who, for whatever reason, may speak well, of Donald Trump, and that becomes "black men."

No, that ain't "black men," that is, may be two black men.

But that's not a reflection of what I'm hearing.

Gavin> So, Congressman, what we're looking at the closeness of this presidential race.

There's a lot of tight polls out these seven swing states, including Georgia and North Carolina.

Vice President Harris was in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin this week, pretty much every week.

And these states are part of that "blue wall" that we keep hearing about.

Which Trump flipped back in 2016, Biden flipped back in 2020.

How does she hold these states and maybe flip a state like North Carolina?

Cong.

Jim> Well, it's all about turnout.

These... states, are close, for many different reasons.

Georgia, has been, in the throes of a legislature, that seemed to be, hell-bent on making it harder for people to vote.

You know, I don't like to get too deep in the weeds with this stuff, but, the fact of the matter is, none of this stuff is, is new.

What was going on, on January 6th.

Is grounded in the 1876, Presidential election.

And what went on, after, and what's going on now with these legislatures.

All you got to do is look back at what happened in these same states, back in the 1870s.

After that election, Jim Crow set in.

All you gotta do is look at, Project 2025, and I referred to it as Jim Crow 2.0.

And it's a playbook for exactly what happened during the Jim Crow era.

And if that's what people want.

I would dare say, that's not what people want, including, people of color.

I don't know if I want to see my children relive what I lived, growing up here in South Carolina.

I know what it's like to live in a Jim Crow.

And when I look at Project 2025... Just look at what they say about public schools.

Look at how many times "mom's against liberty," is mentioned in Project 2025.

And look what they're doing, they're trying to take textbooks out of schools.

Saying if you go to a public school, you got to sign up for conscription.

If you go to a private school, you go on to, to education, public school, you go, into the military, that kind of stuff.

This is crazy stuff.

But as, as crazy as it may seem, it's right there in the document.

And so, I would say to people, we need to get real about what's going on in this country.

When I used to teach, History, I used to say to my students, anything that's happened before can happen again.

And, just because, the First Reconstruction, came to end, is an indication to me, that this, that we are now calling the Second Reconstruction could very well come to an end.

So I'm telling people, we have to be very, very careful here, because I see, signs of what happened in Germany in the 1930s, taking place right here in South Carolina.

And you got General Milley the highest member in, person in our military referring to Donald Trump as fascist at the core.

Why would he lie?

Gavin> Yeah, a lot of concerning rhetoric floating around, too, especially after the summer and the assassination attempts and everyone talking about lowering the rhetoric.

And it still seems to be pretty heated.

But, sir, we have less than two minutes left, and, you know, you're talking about getting out to vote being critical.

We see that, Kamala Harris has raised somewhat of a billion dollars in her 80 days of fundraising.

They have a massive amount of money on hand too.

And we already have early voting going on in our neighboring swing states, North Carolina and Georgia.

In fact, Georgia had record early turnout already.

Do you have any reason to be concerned when it comes to voting in this country, in our state?

Do you have any reason to be concerned about the security or the fairness of our election process in our state or our country?

Cong.

Jim> Well, I'm not concerned about the security of the vote.

I'm concerned about the vote to take place in the first place.

That's what I'm concerned about.

I'm concerned about the kind of violence at the polling places that we saw in 1876.

Look, I'm not making this up.

It's all right there in the history books.

I've been study it all of my life, and I used to teach it.

And what you see taking place today in these legislatures, what you see taking place today at these polling places.

We've got a mayor up in Wisconsin, that has been arrested for carrying off, a, drop off box.

This is the kind of stuff they did in the 1870s when they were trying to bring on Jim Crow.

So it's happening all around us.

This stuff is real.

Gavin> And we're going to have to leave it there with Congressman Jim Clyburn.

Sir, thank you very much for your time.

Cong.

Jim> Thank you very much for having me.

<Appreciate it.> Gavin> Joining me now for the Republican perspective on the sprint to Election Day.

Is SCGOP Chairman Drew McKissick.

Drew, thanks for coming back.

Good to see you.

Chm.

Drew> Good to be with you.

Gavin> The last time we saw each other, we talked, was at the RNC in Milwaukee back in July, if you can believe that.

That was days after the first assassination attempt on former President Trump's life.

The convention was upbeat and unifying.

But you and others drilled home not to be complacent.

And then, sure enough, at the end of July, things really changed there, with Vice President Kamala Harris taking over the ticket.

So how would you sum up the past few weeks since then?

To use a sports metaphor, I'm going to go ahead and say we're in the fourth quarter, two minute warning.

No timeouts left.

It's a tied game.

What's it like right now?

How do you see things?

Chm.

Drew> Well, it has been a roller coaster ride, no doubt about that, with a lot of changes.

And, you know, in Presidential campaigns, usually it's events that end up driving the way things will go.

Swapping Joe Biden out, was certainly a major event.

That was, of course, after the debate that they had, where everyone saw how poorly Joe Biden did.

Which was a big reason why he was swapped out.

And we knew that there was going to be a sugar high for a good bit of time with, with Kamala, being swapped out for Biden.

Going forward from there, though, it's been, here in South Carolina about what you would think it would be.

I mean, it's a state that Donald Trump going to win by double digits.

You know, and you've seen national polls sort of ebb and flow.

Now they're moving a little bit more in President Trump's direction.

These are of course, 50 different state by state elections, it's not a national election.

Here in South Carolina though, we're looking at potential gains here in the State House, State Senate, local level races, Sheriff's races here and there, and so forth.

And, you know, having President Trump at the top of that ticket, is going to be a benefit to help us drive out Republican votes.

Gavin> We'll definitely talk about some of those down ballot races in a moment.

But what do you think that this Presidential race is going to come down to, especially when we look at these seven swing states, two of which border our state?

Chm.

Drew> Sure.

It's comes down at this point, to execution.

I mean, you have a campaign plan that you put together.

You've decided what your priorities are.

You basically, you've decided what your message is and what you're going to focus on.

Now you have to execute, you know, your plan in terms of getting out votes, and you've got, again, 50 different states, as you point out, six or seven that are pivotal to how this is going to turn out.

And in each of those states, the voting laws are a little bit different.

You've got different early voting laws, different laws about, either ballot harvesting, mail-in voting and other things along those lines.

So you have a different plan, tactically to execute getting out the vote in those states.

And that's what they're focusing on now.

And you know what I've seen anecdotally and some actual, you know, returns early returns, say, for instance, in Virginia that has 45 days of early voting, Republican Congressional Districts in Virginia are outperforming Democratic Congressional Districts in terms of total vote.

I think to the tune of 30% or more in some places.

So does that speak to more enthusiasm for Trump, or does it speak to lack of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris?

We'll find out.

Gavin> Yeah.

And I was gonna say we're going to talk about early voting, but when you just brought that up, we look at the early turnout so far in Georgia.

When Tuesday, they had record numbers of, I think 300,000 that followed the same, Wednesday.

North Carolina's opening up today.

So can you deduce anything from those numbers in those swing states there?

Chm.

Drew> Yeah.

Again, you look at, primarily where you see the increase or where you don't see an increase, you know.

Are these Republican areas, Democrat areas?

You don't know how those people are voting necessarily, but you do know where they're voting.

And when it comes to, you know, again, in some states, say if they have partisan voter registration, where you can tell whether or not that's more Democrats or Republicans, who are casting ballots.

Here in South Carolina, we don't have partisan voter registration.

But, you know, when we do get early voting results here, we are able to bump those, records up against, past partisan primary voting history.

So we can see if you have more of a history of voting in a Republican or Democrat primary.

And it tells us a little bit.

In the '22 cycle, for example, we saw that Republicans were out voting Democrats in early voting here in South Carolina, which was unusual compared to the rest of the country.

Which is what told us we were going to have a good election day if we were already winning in the early vote.

Gavin> Yeah, we'll see, our early voting open up next week for the next two weeks, of course.

<Absolutely> But when we look at maybe some of the big news this past week with, worried about, you know, Vice President Harris having some difficulty, possible difficulty, depending on what polling you're looking at, when it comes to the black male vote.

Big demographic there in the Democratic Party, but as well as the Hispanic vote as well.

You know, we just heard from Congressman Clyburn saying that he doesn't see it that way, even though we did see former President Barack Obama say, you know, telling folks to get out there and vote.

But we also see Vice President Harris attracting more women to the party.

But what do you make of these polling trends?

I mean, that's something that the Republican Party has definitely been chasing for years, there, expanding the demographics of the party.

Chm.

Drew> Well, what you've certainly seen, no matter what anybody would like to say or predict about what's going to happen, what we have seen in the past, is a trend.

We've seen a trend of more, African-Americans, more Hispanic Americans voting Republican.

Particularly black men among African-Americans, to be sure.

And... actually, I believe in 2020, you had, Donald Trump received the highest percentage of African-American and Hispanic-American and Asian-American support of any Republican nominee since Richard Nixon back in '72.

So we've seen this trend line over the last several cycles.

That's good.

I think that's indicative of what we're going to see again in a couple of weeks.

And again, I've heard, you know, just anecdotally, here in South Carolina, in a lot of the districts that we're focusing on here, of again, black men in particular, not being excited about the Democrat ticket.

To the point where I think it was, I heard that from three different campaigns a few days before Barack Obama made his statement last Friday.

And I thought, now, if they're hearing that- Gavin> Congressional, State House?...

Chm.

Drew> -well State Senate seats here around the state.

But if they're hearing that to the point where they have to get Barack Obama to go out and make that pitch, and then you have Kamala Harris come out and make a pitch about forgivable loans and legalizing marijuana, and other things, which I thought were, you know, overly pandering.

And I think a lot of black men think were overly pandering.

It makes me feel a lot better about how things are going.

Gavin> So when you hear these things specifically here in the state too, do you see the party, which you chair, doing more to reach out to these demographics?

Chm.

Drew> Well, absolutely.

I know our candidates are, I can see that in terms of, you know, who we communicate with, who we mail, who we call on phones, doors that we knock, and so forth.

You know, you've seen the Republican Coalition nationally and here in South Carolina expand, particularly since '15 or '16.

To, you know, include a larger swath of what people would refer to as working class families.

And that's, you know, White Americans, Black Americans, Brown Americans, it doesn't matter.

I mean, people who have, you know, a job and they're trying to make it go for their family.

And they have a basically a traditional value sense of how to live and how to raise their family.

That's allowed us to, expand our majority in the State House and the State Senate, over the last three election cycles, to a supermajority in the State House and one away from a supermajority in the State Senate now.

Gavin> Well again, we'll get to that, I promise.

I ask you about early voting.

We were just talking about that, but also the security of our elections.

A lot of people make a lot of hubbub about, you know, potential fraud.

We had the Attorney General on last week, and he mentioned that there's concerns, that they're trying to run down to try and check with the Department of Homeland Security, when it comes to possible illegal immigrants on our rolls.

We've heard from other election officials saying that they've never seen that happen.

There's never been any illegal immigrants voting.

But, of course, the Attorney General is just cautious and wants to look into this issue.

How secure do you see our state elections at this point?

How much faith do you have in them?

Chm.

Drew> Well, here in South Carolina, we didn't have the problems that other states did back in 2020.

Famously.

And, after that election, you saw in '21, we passed a major piece of election reform here in South Carolina, election integrity bill, which, by the way, passed unanimously in our legislature, a very bipartisan bill.

Gavin> Good to see- Chm.

Drew> We were very, very proud of that.

And, you know, we, we, clawed back on the mail-in absentee system a good bit.

But in exchange for that, we opened up an early voting system, ten days early voting in person.

Were you have to show the photo I.D., much more secure than mail-in absentee ballots.

So if I felt good about things here and how they were run here in 2020, I certainly feel better about it now.

That doesn't mean that there aren't always things that you can do or look at, potentially make changes.

Because, you know, those who would like to take advantage of the system are always thinking and trying to change what they do.

So you have to be a step ahead of them.

You know, but here in this state right now, we feel good.

Gavin> And when we look at, the elections in our state, there's a poll worker shortage.

There's an issue with county election directors not having as many, retention's a big issue.

Is there anything that the party is doing, maybe work with the legislature or other issues when you see these playing out?

Obviously elections will still go forward, but there might be longer lines, difficulty processing and counting ballots.

What do you guys want to see done to make this more robust?

Chm.

Drew> One of the things that I've always said about election integrity, and how we conduct elections, and for all the talk with people have had about, machinery and so forth, I would, I would say that the most important piece of election machinery is the right people.

Who's running the polls?

Who's watching the polls?

Who your poll clerks are and their assistants, and so forth.

And, you know, these are run by volunteers, you know, all around our state.

And one of the things that we've done and we did, you know, very, overtly back in 2020 when, you know, the Election Commission at that time had said they were worried they wouldn't have enough people actually operate the polls on Election Day because of Covid.

I told them that I would reach out to our vast email list all around the state and find as many volunteers as they needed.

And about a month later, they called back and said they had enough people.

So we're happy to help bring more people and push more people into the system, because again, you have to have good people actually operating the polls.

And in terms of, legislature and potential legislation, I know one of the things that we talked about in the past, and the election integrity bill did not do, did not go this far, and I still think that we'd like to see this happen, is to give the state election commission more direct authority over county election commissions.

Because you still have some counties around the state where they don't do things in the same uniform way.

And, you know, it's one thing if it has an effect on a small race at the local level, if we were to ever have a very close statewide race, and you have things being done differently in one county versus another county, well, then you've got potential legal issues of, you know, terms of equal access and fairness and so forth, could potentially become a federal case.

So I think better, a hierarchy for the State Election Commission over local commissions, to make sure that things are done uniformly would be a good start.

Gavin> So we'll talk about these down ballot races here, Drew, because, obviously we have the Congressional races going on, kind of a foregone conclusion in many ways.

Just based on gerrymandering and how the maps go.

State House races, there's about a handful of those y'all are watching again, you're talking about trying to sure up and get some bigger majorities in the State House with 30 Senate Republicans already right now, and 87 House Republicans.

Tell me about some of these races.

Do you guys expect to have any pickups?

Where are some of the more competitive parts of the state?

Chm.

Drew> Well, pickups, I'm on the record saying we'll pick up at least two State Senate seats and two State House seats.

You know where, I'll leave that to everybody's imagination.

Gavin> -gonna have some suspense on Election Day.

Chm.

Drew> Look, we're focusing on where we have opportunities.

And, you know, again, you can look at the map and see where we won and what we don't have.

And obviously, we're focusing in the areas where we don't have a Republican right now.

I'll keep my Democrat friends guessing about how much resources we're putting in any of those districts.

But, you know, suffice it to say, we've got good message, we've got good candidates, and you have President Trump at the top of the ticket.

That puts us in a good spot to make pickups all around the state.

Gavin> And what does that signal Drew?

When we talk about, you know, our swing state neighbors and we've talked about this before, we're a very solidly Republican state.

What does that say to you?

If you're picking up State House seats you're flipping local elections as well?

Chm.

Drew> Well, you know, I mean, every state is different, have a different mix of people, and different mix of people, maybe even who are moving into those states.

One of the things that I've done in conjunction with, the Republican National Committee, when they provided us a look at our, a better look at our voter data, and appending various, you know, other consumer related data to it to make it easier for us to take advantage of it.

One of the things they provide us every three months is a, a list of what we call new known Republican movers.

People who moved into the state.

And they have a Republican background, or they move within South Carolina, and they have a Republican voting record, and they need to be registered or reregister to vote.

And we focus aggressively on those people.

That's low hanging fruit.

And after about a year of them doing that, I said, well, if you know who the known Republicans are, then you know who the known Democrats are, which means, you know what the net difference is between the two.

And they said, yeah, that's a good idea.

Give me a heat map, county by county.

So I can see where the Democrats and Republicans are moving.

And we are at net Republican growth in this state.

Gavin> We'll have to leave it there, Drew.

That's SCGOP Chairman Drew McKissick, Thank you so much.

Chm.

Drew> Yes, sir.

Gavin> And that's it for us this week.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well South Carolina.

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