(opening music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Gavin: Welcome to This Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

As the 2022 elections come to an end, South Carolina Republicans kept control of all statewide seats, including Governor Henry McMaster, who will possibly go down as the longest serving governor in our state's history.

Here's a brief recap I statewide GOP chairman, Drew McKissick, on how candidates did this year, Drew: Better here than South Carolina, certainly than other places around the country.

I mean, here's South Carolina, we had the red wave came and swept in along the coast and went all the way to the Upstate.

proving it again, what we already know that South Carolina is a solid Republican state.

We had a governor win reelection by 18 points, which is 10 points higher than he won by four years ago, Elon Weaver running in an open seat pursuing him education, winning that race by 16 points speaks to the strength of our ticket, which is fantastic.

And then down the ballot really is where the real story is told, I believe is what we want to look at a little bit here.

First off in terms of the State House, we flipped eight state House seats here in South Carolina, from Democrat to Republican, three of those had a little bit of help by way of redistricting, five of those that we picked up, you know, much, much more difficult fashion fighting for every vote.

But eight total pickups.

27 Point pickup on straight ticket 10 More than again in 2020.

And I'll also point out that when you do the math 60% Of all the Republican ballots that got cast yesterday, were straight ticket Republican voters 60%, which speaks to the strength of the party and the importance to our candidates and our nominees of actually getting on the ticket.

Cases like Ellen Weaver again, she'd benefited greatly from straight ticket effect.

Those less Statehouse seats I just mentioned, benefited greatly from that they can become a nominee get a ticket, we push for straight ticket support all around the state have been doing that in the last several cycles.

And that's taken off.

And I think that's also attributed to a lot of conservatives in our state.

You know, who may have considered themselves conservative Democrats in the past and independents, who began to think of themselves as Republicans now not only have they been, you know, voting, maybe Republican president, but for Congress and then maybe Democrat at the local level, because you know, they go to church with somebody, they're related to somebody who may be on county council or what have you.

That now they're thinking of themselves as Republicans are actually pushing that straight ticket button.

And again, that's invaluable support for our candidates up and down the ticket.

And lastly, you know, how do we get all this done?

So look at some of the campaign mechanics here.

First off, this was the largest ground game for get out the vote in the history of the South Carolina Republican Party for midterm elections, five times bigger than anything we've ever done in a midterm.

Since July of this year, we've knocked on over 137,000 doors.

And for comparison purposes, and 2018, we knockedcon 15,000.

So that gives you a comparison for the last midterm election.

We made 333,000 phone calls, sent 654,000 text messages.

And we also sent over 2 million pieces, of get out to vote mail.

You know, a lot of what we saw, I think yesterday in terms of the lack of problems that the polls here in South Carolina, is attributable to getting that election integrity bill passed earlier this year.

I think the total number of people who ended up voting mail in absentee ballot was around 50,000, which is a drastic reduction from what we've seen in the past.

In exchange for now that's having that 12 day early voting period, which is far more secure.

You show your photo ID there just like you do at the polls on Election Day.

And it's only run in a select advertised number of locations in each county, where we know to go have poll watchers in place.

So we were had an operation taking care of that.

But I attribute the fact that we didn't have issues to speak of comparatively the polls here around South Carolina this year to the legislature getting that election integrity bill passed.

And I sincerely appreciate it in their efforts to get that done, and the governor signed that into law.

It was a resounding rejection in the Democrats message here in South Carolina.

You know, we've seen them go, you know, woke crazy nationally, and it was turning regular Americans off.

They didn't focus on the issues that were relevant and important to people.

That turns people off and then again here with the candidate they have the governor are spending all this time trying to talk about legalizing marijuana, legalizing gambling and abortion on demand.

Yeah, those things are not relevant, to south Carolinians.

It's not gonna move votes or win a campaign.

It was a solid rejection of the Democrats message in South Carolina.

Gavin: Joining us now to dive more into the midterm election results is Scott Huffman.

He's a political science professor at Winthrop University.

Scott, welcome back to the show.

Oh, Scott: Oh, happy to be with you.

Gavin: Scott.

Let's just jump right in that red wave everyone was talking about for this midterm election.

Not quite the tsunami folks were talking about.

We can talk about national politics in a moment, but want to talk about maybe the red wave we did see in South Carolina, with Republicans really suring up their stances and their positions in the state.

Scott: Yeah, to stretch the metaphor, we were a flood zone for that red wave.

It definitely hit us very strongly, even though the Democrats outperformed expectations pretty much in on almost the rest of the country except Florida, the Republicans were just, took dominant positions last night, and they increased their dominance over the past few elections.

Gavin: Yes.

Got we're taping Wednesday morning here.

We typically tip on Thursday, but because of the holiday, we're taping Wednesday, since the day after we still want to see a lot of the final results get official.

But right now we can see that the governor for example, McMaster won by about 17 points over Joe Cunningham and Tally Casey.

I mean, that's, that's more than double than what we saw in 2018.

For McMaster, defeating James Smith there.

What can you maybe point to?

Is it just folks really want to see the good times keep rolling with with Governor McMaster?

Scott: Well, you know, there's a lot of things going on there.

And as you pointed out, 17 is a huge number, South Carolina nominally, as the last McMasters last election showed should be about our Republican plus 10.

State, more or less, and to double up expectation shows both strong Republican a strong incumbent candidate, but also just, you know, not the best campaigning on Joe Cunningham's end.

Joe Cunningham, you know, ran a campaign where he tried to make McMasters age, an issue where you know, he tried to make same sex marriage an issue, which is not something that is as strongly held as an issue in South Carolina.

And the economy is going fairly well in South Carolina, I mean, recession or the inflation is hitting everybody, but then that's hung around Joe Biden's neck, not Henry McMaster.

So Henry McMaster had some wins in the economy, he could tout and take credit for things that are going bad with the economy, he can hang around the neck of Joe Biden.

He's fairly popular among the general population very popular among his Republican base that were just a not not a lot of people who found anything to grasp on in Joe Cunningham's campaign as to why they needed to heave McMaster out the door, and in turn, they reelected him by a massive margin.

Gavin: Yeah, we're seeing, you know, the SC GOP today held a press conference and they said that they had the largest ground game for get out the vote in a midterm election ever.

You don't hear such brag from the state Democratic Party.

In fact, you hear things like from state representative Jermaine Johnson, who tweeted today, no doubt in my mind that the SCDP The State Democratic Party, and all County Democratic parties and groups need to have a come to Jesus meeting immediately.

There needs to be some major shakeups.

I mean, is this the same?

The same course we've heard every time there's an election in South Carolina when Democrats are kind of surprised by the results, same thing we saw with Jamie Harrison 2020 with that 10 point margin between him and Lindsey Graham.

Scott: Yeah, it's second verse, same as the first.

I mean, they keep being surprised by the fact that they're losing and losing by large margins, their bench is not nearly as deep their bench of of good skilled, experienced candidates is not nearly as deep as the Republicans.

And if you look last night, we had a little over 50% overall turnout.

Now that may sound kind of lackluster, but in South Carolina Historical terms for midterms, it's actually pretty on par.

The past few midterm elections showed 50% turnout.

43.9% turnout, a little over 50% turnout.

And so, you know, this is on par with turnout.

But what that says if if we see massive electoral victories by the Republicans, but turnout on par with what we've seen in the past, then what happened was an increase in Republican turnout, which that ground game clearly paid off and a decrease in Democratic turnout.

That's the way you get the same overall level of turnout, of these massive victories.

Gavin: Scott, how much do you attribute that to really just you know, invigorating the base are also transplants coming to our state.

Obviously, we were a growing state, especially in places like the seventh congressional district on the coast as well as the first congressional district.

The more competitive district we saw in our state.

Of course, we can talk a lot But more about that and how gerrymandering, and the new maps came into play there.

But how much how much comes from this when it comes to growth, and where South Carolina is, especially when you compare it to our neighbors like North Carolina and Georgia, which were always doing when it comes to politics?

Scott: Sure.

I mean, growth is absolutely one of the factors, the folks who are moving into South Carolina are doing so generally for business higher paying jobs, those folks are going to tend to be Republicans, but we are getting tons of retirees, especially in the seventh in the first districts.

And we saw in the seventh district, the modern Republican losing out in the primary, as that base had turned much more deeply red than before.

And then, of course, a solid Republican victory in the seventh.

And that growth, a lot of it is folks coming down here from the North, who were Republicans up north and bringing their native Republicanism with them.

So we have had both an evolving Republican Party over the last two decades in South Carolina, but part of that evolution has come from transplants.

And, you know, don't forget that a lot of these transplants might have retired up north with a you know, a union pension and other things and may have supported the occasional Democrat up north.

But down here they come and they're faithful red voters.

Gavin: And Scott, we saw that to play on the first congressional district to down there in the low country with Nancy mace winning her second term there over Dr. Annie Andrews, the Democratic nominee.

You know, that was one of the districts that they really sured up state lawmakers really sured up in the new congressional maps that we saw passed this year, of course, are still in the courts.

But that map is still in play.

We saw Lynn Teague with the League of Women Voters saying that this is basically what they wanted to see happen.

We saw Nancy Mace win by 14 points last night versus her beating Joe Cunningham by 1.6 points in 2020.

So really a swing there, but also in line with what we're seeing statewide.

Scott: Right, this, you know, the red flooding in South Carolina, which showed up in the low country for sure.

But as you pointed out, that district was really not that favorable to a Democrat, lightning had to strike and it kind of in a bottle for a Democrat to win.

And that's what happened for Joe Cunningham.

The incumbent Republican Mark Sanford lost in his primary, you got an inexperienced or less experienced candidate who had some issues that low country voters were not fond of like offshore drilling.

And those were kind of things that came together to help Joe Cunningham.

And then he had the incumbency advantage going on, which meant when he lost as you would actually expect to happen in the first sector, he only lost by a small amount.

Well, that was a little too close for comfort for the Republicans in the state legislature.

So the gerrymandering, the redrawing of the district lines brought in some more Republican voters made that seat safer, and between incumbency advantage, a strong Republican turnout at a safer Republican district, Nancy Mace performed extremely well.

Gavin: Yeah, Scott, especially when you track her trajectory.

Obviously, you're talking about winning that race in 2020.

For her several days after being sworn in January 6 happens.

Nancy Mace takes to the airwaves and is highly critical of President Donald Trump for inciting that insurrection.

She doesn't vote for impeachment like Tom Rice did in the seventh congressional district, which cost him his seat to Russell fry.

But she got up right to the line.

She walked that line that she got a pretty big primary challenger, and that was, that was where we saw like the most contentious part of this entire election season, I would say, of course, is in the primaries.

And we saw that in the first congressional district play out so she really, she made it through but that was the most difficult part for Nancy Mace's go round.

Scott: Yeah, it hurt her race and the general election was much safer proposition and then the primary the primary, because we did not know how much impact Trump's support or opponent would have his lack of support for her would have and we see what happened in the seventh congressional district.

That really was a tough factor.

But as that played out in a lot of the rest of the country, it sort of backfired because a lot of Trump candidates who are election deniers and supporters of the attempted insurrection on January 6, won their primaries due to Trump's endorsement.

But they were weak candidates in the general election.

And we saw last night that the Republicans could have had an overwhelming night nationally and picked up 30 Plus seats swing and here they are struggling to see if they're barely going to have control the House and to control the Senate is still up for grabs as we were waiting for a few calls and we have to have a run off in Georgia.

Gavin: Scott, do you think that's why maybe we're seeing more of a I don't want a mixed message from Nancy Mace It seems like she's always kind of walking a pretty moderate line when it comes to how she approaches governing but you know, she says today on CNN She's not interested in going forward with looking into impeachment.

That's not something that support at this juncture without heavy investigation.

Impeachment has been weaponized.

So she's not throwing around impeachment like some other folks in her party are.

She seems to be kind of aligned more with the leadership there, especially since they came in campaign for her too.

Just seems like a team player instead of a bomb thrower at this point.

Scott: Well, and that's, you know, that's kind of a low bar, because, you know, pretty much a lot of the Republicans are calling for impeachment, just want to retaliate, for the impeachment, votes against Trump.

There's, there's, you know, trying to exert influence in the Ukraine and the involvement in January 6, are tangible things, and we could see why the impeachment happened, although he was not removed from office.

But you know, Joe Biden, the things that he's accused of are pretty much just floating around in the Republican Twittersphere.

And the Republican social media, not something that has caught most of the public's attention, that they think Biden should be impeached, they're not in love with Biden.

But if you look at voters who moderately disapproved of Biden, they still tended to go democratic nationally.

So she is playing the kind of the smart game of positioning herself to be an influence in a house that is going to need some crossover voting, some bipartisanship in order to get anything done.

Gavin: Kind of a novel concept these days, but one that is how governing used to work.

It's a little bit different these days.

Scott, let's talk more about the general general turnout, look at the results nationwide to really kind of drill down on in terms of how this is gonna affect things going forward in 2024.

What message do you think was sent on Tuesday night when it comes to the Republican Party, and going forward, especially when it comes to potential nominees for President in 2024?

Scott: Well, I think the first message it sent is Trump can be an asset and things like fundraising, although he has raised more funds for himself than for the party.

So that can be bad for the party.

But he can also be a liability.

You saw him praising when candidates Republican candidates that he didn't endorse that he that spoke out against Trump.

Lost, he said that that was good for America when a Democrat won.

So I think the party is going to look at the influence that Donald Trump has exerted and whether or not that played into their losses across the country.

A lot of inexperienced candidates, a lot of fairly weak candidates, in some cases, were promoted to the general election, when they would not have made it and they would not have gotten to mustard before.

And so that is one thing Republicans are going to take away.

They're also going to look at the issues, the issues, it's not so much about what was the main issue, it's that the two sides couldn't agree on what was an important issue.

The Democrats it was abortion was the primary, the primary issue, whereas for Republicans, it was inflation.

And they didn't really care that much about abortion because Dobbs had gone their way.

Now they have to look to a future where it's quite possible that the Democrats are going to put referenda or propositions on ballots and states around the country to enshrine the right to get an abortion in the Constitution.

And several states did that last night, because Democrats feel that really brought out turnout for them.

Look at Michigan.

Michigan had a really strong democratic night, and a lot of people are attributing it to the fact that their constitution was up for a vote when it comes to abortion.

So Republicans are going to have to find a way to counter that.

They're either going to have to lean in to the abortion issue, or find a way to get voters attention off of it.

Gavin: Yeah, five states had on the ballot there too, including Michigan, like you said, and also places like Montana and Kentucky.

Some really red states there that voted, you know, to keep abortion free and legal in those states and not restricted like we're seeing in South Carolina right now.

Even in the Senate, as we're speaking right now can't even decide on a bill to be more restrictive because the votes aren't there because the writing is on the wall.

It's not registering with these voters in these districts for these Republicans in South Carolina alone as well.

Scott: No, and that's you know, and that's something that the strong pro life anti abortion crews going to have to deal with.

While they have the influence in South Carolina while South Carolina is so dominant red for the temporary and foreseeable future.

They're going to have to lean into these types of bills if they want to get it passed.

We may see a case coming up, you know, towards the Supreme Court, but again, the Dobbs decision is the rule of the land and state legislatures are getting the say.

I fully expect the folks who would put personhood bills and the strong restrictions on abortion and bills to come back in the next legislative cycle and try it again and try and rally the troops.

But the more centrist Republicans, and a centrist Republican would be fairly far right in most of the rest of the country, but a centrist South Carolina Republican is not going to want to dive into this issue.

And we may see it getting before committees, but not making it to the floor again.

Gavin: Yeah, especially because the six week abortion ban bill that was signed into law in February 2021 just went before the Supreme Court in our state, or arguments, there's gonna be a decision probably by the end of the year, too hasn't even gotten shaken out yet, but we saw a lot of activity over the summer by House and Senate lawmakers to try and do something more restrictive and again, couldn't get couldn't get that across the finish line there too.

So they can always go back to the six week ban, which seems to be where the appetite is, at least in the statehouse right now for abortion.

Scott: Yeah, it has the sense of something was done about this issue.

We restricted it, we cut back on abortion, and let's not go any further and push our luck as this sort of how the feeling seems to be coming across.

Gavin: Especially since too, we saw Republicans flip a few House seats in the state house.

We saw eight additional seats in the house.

You know, three of those were consolidated because of the the new maps that were approved, but we also sell five pickups there for the Republicans at this point.

So it should be about an 88 to 36 breakdown Republican to Democrat in the state of that in the state house has a supermajority for Republicans in the House.

So we'll see some action there, too.

But really quickly, Scott, want to talk a bit more about 2024.

A lot of there's potential candidates, we're talking about the Nikki Haley's the Tim Scott's.

Tim Scott, who easily won reelection to his final six year term in the Senate, saying that that was his last year.

But now they're gonna answer this question like, Oh, we're no longer focused on making sure folks get reelected or elected in 2022.

The focus is now in 2024.

So what are they going to be saying, now?

How are they gonna be dealing with this question, when folks are hounding them?

Scott: Well, I haven't looked yet, but I need to go look and see the candidates that Nikki Haley traveled to stump for how, they did overall.

We know she's been visiting Iowa.

We know Tim Scott has a political action committee that is set up in a way that can bring money in if he decides to run for president, although he is being extremely coy.

And Nikki Haley's not saying anything, but it's all but obvious she's running.

The real question becomes, How and when do they jump in?

And how much of it depends on what Donald Trump is going to say?

We already know Trump sees DeSantis from Florida as a threat because he's already come up with a nickname and that is the shore sign that Trump sees someone who's a threat when he comes up with a derogatory nickname.

So the race is on since we saw Trump's influence was not where the Republican Party thought it might be in this past midterm election, and so 2024 just opened up a bit.

Gavin: Yes.

Gonna say you saw some cracks there.

Seems like it's going to be maybe who can walk through those cracks, and you were talking about DeSantis as being one of those potential candidates there.

Scott: Yeah, absolutely.

Gavin: Gotcha.

Anything else we should be watching for Scott, this point?

We got about a minute left.

Scott: Well, you know, it was the Superintendent of Education race in South Carolina, was really kind of a bellwether of how well the Democrats could do.

That was expected to be the closest race.

A statewide referendum on whether or not the Democrats could come close.

The Republican had an edge.

There's just no doubt about it.

But to walk away with it, with a 16 point thumping of Ellis.

That was kind of my surprise for the night that I expected that to be closer.

I expected that outcome, but I expected to be closer, and that if nothing else showed how far the Democrats need to come.

Gavin: Again, another double digit stomping there with the Republicans leaning over the Democrats in our midterm 2022 elections in the state statewide races.

So a lot to look into a great initial reading from Scott Hoffman.

He's a Winthrop University Political Science Professor.

Scott, thanks as always.

Scott: Always my pleasure.

Gavin: To stay up to date with the latest news throughout the week, check out the South Carolina Lede.

It's a podcast I hosts on Tuesdays and Saturdays that you can find on South Carolina Public Radio.org or wherever you find podcasts.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson, Be well South Carolina.

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