♪ >> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

Winthrop University Political Science Professor Scott Huffmon gives us insight on the results from several key races across the country this past week, and what they mean for the 2022 midterms.

But first, we talked with politics reporter Joe Bustos of The State newspaper about big local races in the First in the South Republican Action Convention.

Joe, welcome to this weekend, South Carolina.

>> Thanks for having me.

>>So, Joe, I want to talk to you about a couple different things.

It's been a busy week here in South Carolina.

Obviously, we had some municipal elections going on across the state.

We also had the first and the South Republican Action Convention that you attended, a lot of people attended in Myrtle Beach, as well, as we're about a year away from the midterms.

So, a lot going on here want to catch up with you about, but first, I want to focus on Columbia, the mayor's race here.

It's probably one of the bigger races to follow in the state.

We're talking about a couple of candidates who are vying to replace outgoing Mayor Steve Benjamin, who has been leading the city for 11 years.

What did you see in that race?

What happened?

What's the state of that play in that race right now.

<Joseph> So, there are four candidates who are in - the mayoral race.

No one got 50% of the votes.

So Tameika Isaac Devine, council member and another council member Dan Rickenmann, they are going off to going into a run off.

Rickenmann got 44% or he got the most votes in the race.

The most popular person who may be in the city is Sam Johnson, the former chief of staff to Mayor Benjamin, he came in third.

But he got maybe about 23% of the votes and that's going to be the who do his supporters go to?

Do they go behind Tameika Isaac Devine?

Or do they go towards Dan Rickenmann.

That's going to be the interesting part of the next couple weeks when we have the runoff?

<Gavin> Yeah, two weeks into that runoff.

And like you said that split vote there too, and we've seen a lot of pushback, too from the SE GOP, a lot outside groups, also really going after Councilman Devine there too.

So I'm guessing that's the bigger threat here, especially, in a pretty democratic city.

>> Yeah, it was to me, Issac Devine has been pushing back against all those allegations that have been in some of those flyers that have been sent out.

I think her biggest point is she says she's never been charged with any kind of ethics violation.

She stands by her record.

Now, the question is, how much does that resonate in the next couple of weeks?

Do people still trust her at the end of the day?

Did that GOP messaging have any effect on the electorate in two weeks?

>> Yeah, runoff elections, already pretty low turnout for the election itself, not only here in Columbia, but across the state, just a lot of municipal elections going on.

And obviously it's going to be even smaller turnout, come two weeks.

We'll be watching that race, but let's move to the Grand Strand Joe, where we saw some interesting action.

We saw a mayor's race out there in Myrtle Beach, and then also some Georgetown City Council action that I know the South Carolina Republican Party is really happy about.

What do we see happen on the coast.

>> So, Brenda Bethune, the mayor of Myrtle Beach, she won a reelection campaign.

She had four challengers and she still got a majority of the votes.

So, this person that came in second place was a photographer who worked for President Trump but a G, no.

He was also someone who pushed Q Anon theories, conspiracy theories, and Brenda Bethune still got a majority of the vote in an area that's increasingly, increasingly Republican.

And then there's a Georgetown City Council.

It was a 43 split, a democratic split, before the election, after the election.

It became a five...to two Republican advantage on that city council.

So there's been some trends in that area and the Republicans have taken advantage of it.

<Gavin> Yeah, it seems like they were pretty pumped, too, because they've never had such power in Georgetown City Council either, even though it sounds like they're trying to move that city council to become a non-partisan situation, as well.

<Joseph> Yeah.

And that's even if it's nonpartisan city council, you're always going to have people leading it one way or the other.

People will know what direction some city council members lean.

They may they may call it nonpartisan, but you always have an idea where people stand on some of these issues.

Yeah, so >> Myrtle Beach, Horry County, then Georgetown County, some big battlegrounds.

We saw a lot of activity over there this weekend as well.

You were there two at the First in the South Republican Action Convention.

That took place this weekend.

It's meant to attract a lot of top billions a lot of big names in the Republican Party.

At one point, even President Donald Trump's name was floated to attend that.

A lot of other different people were named.

But it's basically the inaugural CPAC of South Carolina was what the whole billing was there, kind of what did you hear at that gathering Joe and who was there?

What were some of the big names that ended up attending?

>> It was a lot of red meat.

So a lot of red meat was thrown out there to the party loyalists, people who volunteer, who fundraise, who door knock for candidates.

Now, we had some big names.

We had Rick, Senator Rick Scott from Florida.

He's running the national Senatorial Republican Committee.

He's in charge of trying to make sure Republicans get a majority in the Senate next year.

So, he gave his speech.

He was very clear that he thinks Tim Scott who spoke on Sunday, he's clear that Tim Scott will probably win in a landslide, is actually one of the things he said about the upcoming race.

<Gavin> Safe to say that, for sure, >> Yeah.

We had Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff to Donald Trump and former RNC Chairman.

He said early in his speech, I'm going to get this out of the way, the odds of President Trump running for re-election in 2024 or 100%.

That got some applause from the crowd.

Some people who were very loud about it.

Some people even stood up and applauded, which was really, really interesting, because when, when my colleague Dale Shoemaker, and I spoke to some attendees, some people did not exactly want Trump to run again, but they wanted him to help in the background.

The party should embrace his ideas, but he probably should stay off the ballot, because he could be toxic.

But there's also some people there who think that Trump is the only one who could, who could help the country.

So there's still a split of who should lead the party in the next couple of years.

<Gavin> Interesting.

Yeah.

Especially when you're looking at that - the role of the state party wants that convention to play going forward in terms of, you know, obviously, the First in the South Primary, They kind of want to get a jump on that whole nomination process, too and just the role that they're trying to carve out there with a convention like that.

But Joe, you also heard Joe, you also heard from Senator Tim Scott, who's running for re-election, too.

You guys even caught up with him after the event to kind of get some idea about what his future is looking like.

Obviously, he's running for his final Senate campaign right now.

He has no real challengers at this point.

He has a Democrat, Crystal Matthews who's running against him at this point, too, but what did he say about his future beyond that race?

>> He got the question during the Q&A with people who were in attendance.

And he said he's concentrating on 2022.

He thanks God.

He's very thankful for people talking about 2024.

But he said, there may be a surprise candidate that's coming back, surprise return candidate coming back again, hinting at Donald Trump and reporters did follow up with him afterwards and asked if Trump ran, would he run?

Tim Scott said no, he would not.

He would support President Trump, if President Trump decided to jump back in >> Similar to what we heard from former Governor Nikki Haley, too there.

<Joseph> Yeah, it's there - people are, these potential candidates are kind of aligning themselves with Trump.

They don't want to appear to be against him running again, because at the end of the day, their chances may be tied to having his support if he decides not to run.

>> And Joe, looking at, SE GOP chairman, Drew McKissick, he had some opening remarks, there, talking about unity in the party, which is interesting, because you're talking about people who want to support Donald Trump and those who think he's toxic.

And then you're in Horry County, which is just a huge melting pot for a lot of this rhetoric, a lot of these ideologies, especially because the party itself in Horry County is somewhat divided from the state party.

We're looking at some people like executive committee woman, Tracy Diaz, who kind of said that she felt slighted by the state party with this whole situation going on, broke away and actually had their own separate convention, a couple miles south, a couple of miles away from that one that was going on with the state GOP.

And she, you know, Tracy Diaz is a early promoter of Q anon conspiracy theories, and a lot of different rhetoric going back and forth between Horry County GOP and the state GOP.

So, what was going on right there with that other rally this weekend, this past weekend?

<Joseph> It it was definitely interesting, now.

Again, Drew McKissick said it's important that we be unified.

Rick Scott said it's important that we are unified.

We're going to be unified against Joe Biden.

That's the one thing that could unify us.

We're all against Joe Biden and Joe Biden's policies.

What happened at the other conference is a good question.

They were charging people to get in <Gavin> - including journalists.>> Charging media, charging journalists to get in, which is a hard sell for us when we have such - we have limited budgets.

Most of us were unable to go and attend that conference.

I know - State Representative Jonathan Hill was scheduled to speak, but... it was definitely interesting how they had this alternative conference, and at the other end of the Grand Strand, we had the SC GOP saying it's important that we be unified.

How that conference went, well, we're not sure.

We're still waiting to see what kind of releases they put out on it.

>> Joe, It's interesting that we're talking about unity.

And then you're also in the seventh congressional district where, you know, Republican Congressman Tom Rice, who voted against or voted for President Trump's impeachment, this go round in January after he you know, incited the January 6 insurrection, who's now drawn, I think, 15 challengers to challenge him in this race for the 7th congressional district.

He wasn't invited to the SE GOP convention.

What's going on?

What's the state of play?

What did you hear from folks about that ongoing primary battle right now for Tom Rice's seat?

>> I think there's one thing to be clear also to clarify, the, SE GOP didn't invite Tom Rice, but they also made sure no one who was running for that seat actually got speaking time.

When anyone had a flyer from another candidate had a flyer that was being distributed, the SE GOP did not want to distribute it.

There was a candidate who's running, who tried to do an interview in front of the First in the South logo.

And the SE GOP shut that down.

The SE GOP is not is trying to make a living.

They're not taking sides in this.

But when you have 15 candidates running for the nomination, they're going to splinter off that angry at Congressman Rice vote and Congressman Rice may end up doing well because of it.

Congressman Rice leads in the fundraising.

And so how that all turns out will be, will be dependent on weather.

The people who are angry at Congressman Rice could actually unify around one or two candidates.

<Gavin> A big race we'll be watching, for sure, but also another big race statewide is the governor's race.

Obviously, Governor McMaster's running for his second term, second full term.

He's drawn some Democratic challengers.

What's the state of play right now with that race, Joe?

Who's raising the most money and how's that going at this point.

<Joseph> So, at the end of the third quarter, McMaster had raised $3.5 million and reported raising $3.5 million dollars for the entire cycle.

Democrat candidate, Joe Cunningham, he was at $1 million for the cycle and state senator Mia McLeod, who's running for the Democratic nomination.

She was at 275,000.

So Governor McMaster is in the lead, fundraising wise, even though there was some difficulty last year, even holding fundraisers because of COVID, but it looks like it hasn't affected his ability to raise money in a race.

So, he's just, I mean, he can afford to sit back.

There's no GOP challenger, right now.

So, he could sit back, he could save up that war chest at the moment.

And while Joe Cunningham, Mia McLeod trying to figure out who's going to actually get the nomination on the Democratic side.

>> A lot of campaigning going on, too, at this point.

We'll be watching that as well, with Joe Bustos.

He's the politics and government reporter for The State newspaper.

Joe, thanks so much for joining us.

>> Thanks, Gavin.

It was good to be here.

>> Now, Winthrop University political science professor, Dr. Scott Hoffmon, joins me to analyze results from top races from across the country, and what they mean for the upcoming midterms.

Scott, welcome back.

>> Thanks, glad to be with you.

<Gavin> So Scott, let's look at these two gubernatorial races across the country.

And...what they mean for the midterms coming up specifically Virginia and New Jersey.

Virginia statewide went to President Joe Biden won by 10 points last year, elected Republican Glenn Youngkin, with 51% of the vote to Terry McAuliffe, who had 48%.

What are the ramifications of this?

Obviously, it's a big, big issue this week that everyone's trying to decipher and see what it means for the upcoming midterms.

>> Well, it's not just the loss of McAuliffe.

There were three statewide offices that the Republicans picked up, and the news is not good for Democrats, in Virginia, or in the country.

Basically, what it showed, a lot of the folks who voted for Joe Biden were voting to get Donald Trump off their TV screens.

The Democratic Party had been looking at Joe Biden running for president since the 80s.

And saying, yeah, no thanks, but he was nice and safe and not Donald Trump, and so he got elected, However, then, okay, then the pullout from Afghanistan, nothing else is happening.

Democrats are in sort of a malaise to Jimmy Carter, ennui, whatever you want to call it, and the Republicans are fired up.

Now, Northern Virginia and a little bit on Southside Norfolk are the absolute keys to winning Virginia.

You have to have overwhelming turnout there.

The rural areas of Virginia are just not so populated, that they generally make a difference, unless there's overwhelming turnout.

That's what we saw.

We saw fired up Republicans about the culture wars and we saw Democrats with a lack of energy.

<Gavin> Yeah.

And a lot of votes switching going on there, too, it sounds like.

>> Yeah.

And you know, people split their tickets all the time.

And that's, you know, not an uncommon thing.

But the Republicans may be picking up the Statehouse as well.

But you did see a lot of people who voted for Joe Biden to become president, and then voted for Youngkin.

A lot of those people, honestly, weren't voting for Joe Biden, they were voting against Donald Trump, then they voted for Youngkin.

>> And then Scott, we always know it's a difficult year for the party in the White House when it comes to midterms.

Is this even more, so a wake up call, a flashing red light for Democrats?

<Scott Huffmon> Oh, absolutely.

You got to remember back when Obama was elected, Gee, in the next year, Virginia went Republican, and that year, New Jersey actually also went Republican.

They all went this time.

They came darn close.

And so in those next midterms, we saw a lot of Democrats being swept out of office.

So, they're going to have to do a lot of organizing, people are going to have to feel that the Democrats at the national level have done something to make their lives better and they're going to have to energize the base, which at this point, is, you know, in a lounge chair with a wet cloth over their head resting, apparently.

[Gavin laughs] >> Quite the image right, there's Scott, but when we talk about, you know, McAuliffe, a former governor, there, a party insider, the campaign was pretty tricky, because they tried to paint Youngkin like this Trump guy, but Youngkin was running a campaign where he really walked a fine line right there.

Do you see this becoming a blueprint for Republicans and pretty tight swing districts going forward, that they've kind of maybe cracked this code where they can be close to Trump in a way that they're not close to him?

<Scott> Well, and you know, what?

One instance may be, you know, an exception, but it looks like he did a pretty good job of sounding and acting like Trump saying absolutely everything to fire up the Trump base, the classic culture war, talking about critical race theory, which has never been taught in an elementary school or high school, ever.

It's a way from being taught at law school, and it's not what people think it is anyway.

But that fires people up but not having Trump by his side, so you don't alienate those swing voters.

That is a blueprint.

You fire up the hardcore Republicans, but you find a way to not put Trump's face in front of the swing voters who voted for Biden, >> Scott, kind of switch to, you know, looking at the Democrats, and this being kind of a ding at them.

You know, was this a pretty big rebuff of Washington to Democrats, right now?

You were talking about the Progressives versus the moderates.

Talking about these infrastructure bills that some say I think, Senator Tim Kaine said, if we would have passed this in August, this infrastructure bill, or the spending bill, we could have seen Terry McAuliffe, running with all these things that will be coming their way in Virginia.

But instead, it's just been back and forth, and that's been the dominant headline right now.

You even had House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn kind of saying that I'm not too sure that Democrats have yet developed the will to win in 2022.

So, this was also a pretty big slap against Democrats just really being inactive, it seems like, >> Well, there's always the, you know, the classic trope used about Democrats is that it tends to be a circular firing squad, that, you know, they're basically taking each other out of contention by nitpicking the tent is a big tent, the Republican tent is much more concentrated, much more uniform in its ideology.

The Democratic tent is full of people who, whose ideologies are, frankly, pretty far apart on some things.

You know, they did say they barely got Obamacare passed before they got kicked out of office, because they dragged their feet now, whether or not getting infrastructure through early would have made a difference.

We'll never know.

But the truth is, Trump and the Republicans were pushing for large infrastructure investment much like this at the time.

But it's come down to negative politics, negative partisanship.

Your side must lose for my side to win, policies be darn and the Democrats are fighting over themselves, you know, inside their conference rooms, while they are leaving the candidates for 2022 out to dry.

<Gavin> What do you think, Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, the Democrat from West Virginia?

Do you think he's kind of maybe become more of a voice of reason as a result of these results?

Do you think that we're going to see some movement now on these infrastructure bills?

Again, another wake up call that things should have been done months ago?

>> I went to a vote of voice of reason, it goes to what political scientists would call median voter theory, right and the median voter theory in political committees in Congress, is that the policies of the median voter are the ones that get passed, because they're the ones whose tipping point goes one way or another.

In the Supreme Court you know, it wasn't so much the Rehnquist Court when Rehnquist was here, as much as it was Sandra Day, O'Connor's court, during those years, because she was the tipping point there.

So, it's not so much that Manchin, somehow having a voice of reason that no one else understands.

It's that his position makes him absolutely critical at this particular juncture.

>> You think we'll see some movement now, because of all this on these infrastructure bills, at least?

>> If the Democrats don't light a fire under themselves and their base, then you know, they deserve every shellacking, they're going to get in 2022.

That'll be a wake up call for them, and Republicans are figuring out how to take them out.

And they're doing a good job at it, coming this close in New Jersey, three statewide offices in Virginia.

They did an amazing job.

>> Scott, when we go from Congress to the issues, we know, you just mentioned critical race theory, education becoming a big issue in Virginia in that race and the governor's race there.

The messaging was off for McAuliffe and then right on for Youngkin.

What...do we see about these issues?

I mean, was it also a slap to Biden, or was it more about the Republicans getting their messaging down on these issues and controlling the conversation?

Like you said, critical race theory, which isn't even taught in public schools in Virginia, became a dominant issue.

>> Yeah, it was, a test run for these issues, these culture war issues.

This is exactly what we're going to see in 2022.

Critical Race Theory is as follows: in law school, you should examine a law passed to see if it has a disparate impact on one race or the other.

That's it.

You know, the Democrats in the early 20th century passed laws in the south, saying you had to pass a literacy test, it didn't say that black people weren't allowed to vote, but the way it was used was to keep Black people from voting.

So critical race theorists say, let's take a look at that law.

That's it.

What people think is critical race theory is something different, and it really doesn't matter.

You're right.

The Republicans have figured out which flags are going to send the best signals to their voters, and it was successful in this year in 2021.

And they've now got a roadmap for 2022.

If the Democrats can't have something to show that they've made voters lives better and to undermine the culture wars that the Republicans are going to bring.

They're just going to be in trouble.

>> Then, talking about trouble, you mentioned New Jersey with Phil Murphy, the Democratic incumbent who actually won re-election.

That's the first time any incumbents won reelection in that state since the 70s.

How surprised were you by just how close that race was in that in that blue state?

I mean, is it still a blue state at this point?

<Scott> Well, honestly, I wasn't that surprised that it was close?

I actually thought that New Jersey was going to tip and it almost did.

So, you know, seeing what was coming.

Looking at the trends of the polling, it was absolutely clear that this absolutely was going to be close, but very easily could have gone Republican.

I mean, the polling in the Virginia race was extremely good.

Unfortunately, the way it was reported on was not necessarily as good.

You know, it was things like, McAuliffe retains a small lead.

Okay.

In the poll, he was one and a half points ahead.

And there was a three point margin of error.

No, that race is a toss up.

So, if you watch the trends, it went from McAuliffe having a pretty big lead to down to literal toss ups, and you knew at that point, McAuliffe had lost all the momentum.

Youngkin had picked it up.

So you could see this coming down the pike.

>> And Scott, what does this mean, when we look at South Carolina, ruby red, South Carolina?

I mean, are there any takeaways for what it could mean down here?

There are rarely any close, close races.

The closest we've ever seen is that first congressional district race in 2018 with Joe Cunningham than Nancy Mace flipping it back last year.

I mean, anything that we're going to take away from that for folks running in 2022 here?

>> Well, I think you're just going to see consistency about the messaging.

Republicans have always been in the modern era always been better than the modern era Democrats at consistent messaging, getting their talking points down.

So, that they you know, become dog whistles that the Republican voter hears and they know that it attunes them to the national things that they believe in.

So, all politics are now national.

Tip O'Neill's all politics are local phrase is now gone and the Republicans are simply better at tapping into the national anger, national energy in local races.

We're going to see that continue in South Carolina >> Scott, with a minute left.

Talking about top issues there.

We're talking about education became a big one, even though the economy is also one of the top ranked issues.

How do you see the economy playing out next year, when we're looking at inflation, supply chain issues, you know, Christmas delivery issues, gas prices?

Do you see that becoming maybe the big one for next year, after we've seen these refined issues also come into play?

>> No, they're not going to be that huge.

They're going to be the secondary and tertiary.

Inflation is actually - a report came in yesterday.

It's not quite as bad as we thought.

The supply chain issues are because guess what, the economy was better than we thought, and people went from spending their money going out to eat or services, to "Hey, I'm buying something for a home project.

And then, of course, you know, China with it's zero COVID rule at some of their ports, you know, really interrupted the supply chain.

You know, if the Democrats, you know, want to tap into that, then they should all just vaguely say that it started under Trump, but then say this is your chance to finally buy American, buy local.

I mean, you can twist those in a way that might help you, but the big culture war things, no, those are going to be the big waving flags.

Those others will be issues, secondary and tertiary.

<Gavin> A lot to look forward to in 2022.

We can't wait Scott.

Thank you for your insight.

That's Winthrop University political science professor Dr. Scott Hoffmon.

Thanks as always, <Scott> My pleasure.

>> Stay up to date with the latest news throughout the week.

Check out the South Carolina Lede.

It's a podcast that I host twice a week that you can find on South Carolinapublicradio.org or wherever you find podcasts.

For South Carolina ETV.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.

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