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

The latest Winthrop poll was released this week.

And we talked with author and professor Scott Huffmon on the latest results, and who is leading in the gubernatorial race.

But first, the state's Ports Authority held its annual state of the Ports in Charleston.

And we sat down with the recently appointed president, Micah Mallace, about the future of the ports.

Micah Malice, SC Ports President and CEO.

Thank you for making time for us today.

Micah Mallace> It's my pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

Gavin> So you are two weeks into this job, essentially.

Leading the ports, following a management shakeup.

What is the state of the South Carolina Ports Authority right now?

>> You know, the Port Authority is in a, we're in a very fortunate position.

We have an exceptional team, which I maybe took for granted when I was there, previously but an exceptional team that is super motivated towards serving a larger purpose, which honestly, is half the battle.

We have infrastructure that prior management saw the vision and delivered on.

And so we have the infrastructure we need, the terminals, everything else.

We're delivering a rail terminal, but other than that everything is largely built, and ready.

We're in a very fortunate position.

I'd say equally we're very candid about the challenges that we face.

The industry is in year three, going on year four of a freight recession, which has been challenging for all.

And so growth, you have to be extra creative, extra aggressive and make bold decisions in order to engineer and to generate growth.

And so that's where we really need to focus.

Gavin> Can you talk about what a freight recession is essentially?

Micah> Sure.

>> Because I feel like everyone is still thinking, oh you know, you know, like they think about the pandemic when everything was chaotic.

I mean, the supply chain issues There was the Suez Canal situation.

And now, things have maybe calmed down.

We're seeing more affordable prices in that respect.

But you're saying there's a recession for freight.

So what does that look like?

Micah> I mean, this is oversimplified and one should fact check the actual data points, but, you know, during the pandemic, we were all stuck at home.

We were flush with cash and buying kind of anything and everything we could to entertain ourselves.

That drove across the industry, whether it's shipping or domestic trucking or whatever, that drove volumes, moving through the supply chain up order magnitude, call it 20 percent.

When the pandemic kind of ended and we all went back to services and traveling and what not, the volumes kind of crashed back to what was really a normal level.

However, many in the supply chain had kind of, you know, built the church for Easter Sunday, had, had invested in capacity to compensate for the, for the increase in volumes experienced.

And so today, there remains too much capacity and not enough freight.

And a freight recession is just simply, a year over year decline in the amount of freight moving through the supply chain.

And that's what we've seen for the last few years.

Gavin> And I kind of got you sidetracked there, but we're talking about your state of the ports today and you give that speech this week down in Charleston.

What are your priorities now in this new role?

You're talking about having the capacity, having that infrastructure.

Where do you want to take the Ports Authority?

Micah> Because of the good fortune of the infrastructure being built, the team being solid, our balance sheet being in a good place, we have the latitude to focus.

And we're focused on growth.

That is our number one priority.

It's the number one thing that we, every day when we get to work, and every night when we go home, that we are thinking about.

Gavin> And we'll talk about how you would look to do that too.

But, a big situation has been the Navy based intermodal facility, that 118 acre rail yard, which is adjacent to the Leatherman Terminal in North Charleston.

It's behind schedule.

It's over budget.

It's about $690 million right now.

What's the need for this facility and what's the future for it at this point?

Micah> The future is very clear.

We will deliver the facility.

We'll deliver it at the right time.

We don't want to rush into it.

We want to deliver a facility that is both fully constructed, of course, but also operationally ready to serve our customers.

That's the future of it.

I won't put a specific date to it because I'm two weeks on the job and still figuring that out.

But ultimately we will come out with what, you know, when we, when we believe is the right time to open the facility, the, you know, "What will the facility serve?

", the second part of your question, the current intermodal facilities, Norfolk Southern's and CSX's yards in Charleston are adequate for the volumes of today, but are not adequate for the volumes that we all aspire to in the future.

And so delivering incremental intermodal capacity in Charleston to allow for us to continue our growth in the in the rail serve business side of, of our, of our business, we see as a critical need.

Gavin> Yeah, especially when you're, talking about infrastructure, you're talking about where you are in the Charleston area.

It's pretty tight when it comes to roadways.

<Yeah.> We talked to S.C.D.O.T Secretary, Justin Powell about that all the time, when it comes to you can't add any more lanes essentially because there's only so much space.

So you're really trying to I guess maybe focus more on rail to get that cargo through.

Micah> Yes.

I mean rail accounts for between, depending on the month between 25 and 27 percent of our total cargo base, we see, there is certainly an opportunity to grow that.

We also see that there's an opportunity to grow our share of freight that moves intermodally inland through other competing ports, which only makes us more competitive.

Gavin> When you look at competing ports, we're talking about, you know, Port Savannah, but when you look at that, I mean, how do we stack up against those guys?

Are they in your sights?

I mean, is that our goal to try and, do better than them?

Like, how do you, how do you, maybe look at your competitors?

Micah> You know, our competitors are, any of the top ten container ports across the U.S.

And each has different benefits and challenges.

You mentioned specifically Savannah, of course, being 90 miles apart, it's a, it's a very, strong competition.

And it's actually a great competition.

If you look at the port industry, Savannah and Charleston are, I would argue, I think many shipping lines would confirm the two best operating ports in the country.

And that's probably partially because we have to be because we're so close to each other.

So sometimes competition is good.

But we look at the West Coast ports and continuing to grow share of cargo that used to move out of the West Coast to break over the East Coast instead.

And of course, here in Charleston, and so we see competition across all the top ten container ports.

Gavin> And when you talk about growth, Micah I mean, you're talking about more, more shipping lines, more routes.

And we've seen that growth over the past year or two with more routes to Asia.

I mean, is that how you see chipping away at maybe the West Coast ports too?

Micah> Yes.

I mean, we see adding it's a, it's a very linear...path to the extent that cargo owners, so the, the Walmarts and Targets of the world, to the extent that they choose our market and then the shipping lines follow and we'll bring more capacity, more vessels, to the extent that the shipping lines bring more vessels and more capacity, other tagalong freight will kind of show up.

And so we have to focus, very hard on servicing with a white glove approach, the major retailers and manufacturers that drive the decision making of the rest of the supply chain.

Gavin> And you've seen that with the Walmart distribution center in the area.

Talk to me about what you were talking about in your speech about, nontraditional growth opportunities.

What does that look like?

What does that mean when you when you say that?

Micah> So, we have traditionally focused almost exclusively on container volume growth, to a lesser extent, lesser extent, finished vehicles, R.O.R.O.

growth, as well, but primarily our dominant focus has for years been container growth.

And that remains a critical priority of ours.

That is the bulk of our business.

However, we see rising costs in both, on the Cap.Ex.

front, I mean, the infrastructure that we build is substantially more expensive than it used to be, and that's across the board.

I talked to a real estate developer, and they see the same thing.

But equally, our operating expenses, have been on the rise, have been in an up trend.

And so in order to compensate for those realities we don't aspire to... sure, we have to have good cost controls in place, but just cutting costs can also impact your service level.

And so instead, what we aspire to do is use the real estate holdings that we have and anything else that may be on the table to generate projects that we otherwise wouldn't have previously looked at.

That... offer us an opportunity to improve our cash flow, and then to take that cash flow and to invest it in our core segment of container to ensure that we remain super competitive.

Gavin> So we're talking about selling property for more distribution centers or what I mean, what would that look like?

Micah> Our primary goal is not to sell property, maybe instead to monetize property.

So to put operating facilities on our property.

We'll talk in the state of the port... And this is one example that I, that makes a lot of sense to me.

Years ago, we had one of the top, top, retailers come to us and they said we need a new transload facility, which is a very specialized building.

We need a three pail partner that is not in the market today.

There's, that building does not exist in the market today, and we need it by peak season, which is in six months.

And, you can't build a building in six months.

And it's, you can't get a permit to build a building in six months.

And so we said, okay, we will use the real estate that we control and our balance sheet to go and invest in something that we know will be an incubator for future growth.

And so we built a very creative, somewhat temporary building, on our terminal that they used for a few years until they were able to move in to a purpose built facility.

And sign a long term contract to ensure us that they'll be here for, for the long term.

So that's one of many potential examples.

We've not identified all those examples yet, but that is the kind of stuff that we aspire to do to generate momentum, to create growth and to use the assets under our purview to do so.

Gavin> We're about out of time, but I want to ask you, of course, about tariffs and how that's affecting, the shipping industry.

You saw 3 percent growth when it came to T.E.U.s for the year.

But you saw a dramatic decline in automotives being shipped out with 21 percent dip, year over year.

Is this all related to tariffs, I mean, uncertainty?

How do you guys see that factoring into port operations?

Micah> Tariffs have caused major volatility in our industry.

So during the 90 day tariff pause, the window, you know, basically every company that needed to get inventory into the U.S.

tried to get as much as they could in, in those 90 days.

So there were volume spikes, which is very, very hard for the for the industry as a whole to accommodate.

And, and that drove costs up and all the rest.

And then of course, when that window closed and we're experiencing it right now, a drop off in imports because people are concerned about what the tariff rate may or may not be.

And so we have seen tremendous volatility injected into the supply chain industry by tariffs.

I think what I hear from a lot of our customers is tariffs can be compensated for if they know how to plan for them.

And we saw this the last time, you know, the last time tariffs were a fact, a reality, industry figured it out.

It just takes some time to do that figuring out.

Gavin> And four months into the fiscal year, what's the forecast for this year looking like?

I think this year will be challenging.

The next 2 to 3 months we expect, based on economists, who track our industry.

We expect volumes to be down across the industry and for us, as well.

And by not a small percentage, we're expecting a pretty sizable dip.

You know, we are are cautiously optimistic about spring next year.

We think that, that inventory levels will be at a point where imports will have to restart.

We are hopeful that some of these trade deals that are being cut literally this week, will, will bolster confidence and allow for exporters to get their product out to market.

But we also know that we've got a lot of work to do.

And we've got to move fast if we're going to catch this fiscal year.

And so that's our that's our primary focus.

Gavin> Micah Mallace.

Thank you.

Micah> Thank you so much for the time.

I appreciate it.

Gavin> Joining me now is Winthrop University political science professor Dr.

Scott Huffmon, to discuss the latest findings of the Winthrop poll, which he's the director of.

Scott, thanks for joining us.

Scott> Glad to be with you.

Gavin> So, Scott, like we said, you're out with this new Winthrop poll with the first look at the 2026 governor's race, specifically the five declared Republican candidates.

We're talking about Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette, Congresswoman Nancy Mace, Congressman Ralph Norman, Attorney General Alan Wilson, and Spartanburg Senator Josh Kimbrell.

So what did you find in your poll?

Scott> Well, essentially, Nancy Mace and Pamela Evette are tied for first place.

You know, they are within the margin of error of each other.

So it's really incorrect to say either is ahead of the other.

That means that Evette has made up a lot of ground.

You know, this is our first poll of likely voters, but previously we polled about name recognition, which is not the same.

But what we found was Nancy Mace was just way beyond everybody else with name recognition.

And so now Evette is beginning to come back, at least among the crowd that really matters, and those are the people that are going to show up.

The other change that we've seen from, from other polls in the Winthrop poll, we saw Ralph Norman and Alan Wilson as essentially tied.

Now, that means Wilson has dropped down a little bit in our poll from some other recent polls.

Why that's happened.

You know, we can't say for sure.

It could be because other candidates are beginning to get name recognition that they didn't have before.

It could be because of the broadsides he's constantly taking from Nancy Mace.

Either of those could be the explanation, but right now he is tied, with Ralph Norman for essentially second place.

Gavin> So Scott, when you're looking at that you have Mace and Evette like we're talking about fighting it out at the top.

Norman Wilson, on the other end, still very early days here, but I have to imagine that the Evette campaign, which has visited almost every county since she made her launch in July and has spent money on TV spots, is pretty happy with how things have been shaking out.

Scott> Well, you know, she's spent a whole lot of money, but for her, a lot of that money was to get name recognition.

So every penny that Nancy Mace is spending is trying to convert a voter.

Now, Pamela Evette, the money she is spending is converting voters, but she had to spend a whole lot and do a lot of traveling just to get name recognition.

Now, what they're both going to see very soon is when Al, Alan Wilson and Ralph Norman finally unleash their campaign strategies, which they have not done yet, then everything is going to become very fluid again.

So "Everlette" has done, "Everett" has done with her money what Mace is doing with her money, all that is going to be mixed up once, Norman and Wilson start spending, which they really have not done.

Gavin> And I mean, that's probably I mean, again, we're seven months away from the June primary for these Republican candidates, kind of keeping some of their powder dry in a sense.

I mean, is that about on, on track is where things maybe go in the campaign season, it's the cycle of it all?

I mean, we're kind of coming up on the holiday season.

People are a little tuned out, even though we we like to talk about things heating up after Labor Day.

It's still very early days.

Scott> It is.

And you're absolutely right.

We're getting into the season of holidays.

The candidates want to, to keep their name out there, but if they blew all their money getting name recognition, getting to the front of the polls right now, they would lose out to whoever begins spending their money in late January, February.

So as soon as the holidays are over, I think we're going to see spending ratchet up among all the candidates, all the candidates that are still in it, maybe some will drop out, but the holiday season will slow things down a little bit.

You'll see candidates trying to get earned media, trying to get attention without spending money.

We know Nancy Mace is very good at that.

The other candidates are going to try and probably do the same thing over the holiday season without spending their campaign money, which several of them have loaned themselves so far.

So they're really going to have to jump into the fundraising game, as well as releasing their get out the vote campaigns.

Gavin> And Scott, like we're saying, seven months away to the June 9th primary.

I also found in your in your poll here that 46 percent of the South Carolina voters are still undecided on the race.

So a lot needs to happen between now and June 9th.

But like you're saying, it's still very early.

It's going to be very fluid.

Once we see some more campaign spending, pick up and campaigning take off.

So again, what do you think that they need to do to really get those 46 percent to engage, or is it going to be a matter of just kind of pounding the pavement?

And once we get closer, like it naturally happens, more people will start paying attention to this race?

Scott> Well, one important thing is going to be Donald Trump's endorsement.

We asked the question, how important is Donald Trump's endorsement to you, to these registered voters who are Republican?

And when the folks who are very likely to vote in the Republican primary responded, nearly 80 percent said that Trump's endorsement was either very important or somewhat important.

And that actually held true across those who were pretty likely to vote.

And just the Republicans who were registered.

So Trump's endorsement matters.

But, you know, the other thing, we found Henry McMaster among those people who have an opinion among Republicans who have an opinion, McMaster is very popular.

So, if he weighs in, that could matter a lot, too.

If McMaster uses his popularity to weigh in and it's behind the same candidate that Trump weighs in on, that's going to carry a lot of weight.

It'll be really interesting, actually, if McMaster and Trump backed different candidates.

But right now we know from this poll that Republicans are looking to Donald Trump to see who he might endorse.

And that's going to shake things up as well.

Gavin> And of course, we're talking about endorsements.

You know, they do carry substantial weight too, because you quantified it with Donald Trump here.

But when it comes to timing, we're talking about June.

It's going to be October to November.

Wouldn't you think that would be the most opportune time for them to drop an endorsement?

I mean, it's pretty tricky.

And sometimes even Republicans like McMaster in the past, they don't typically endorse during these open primaries.

So, what do you think the strategy is behind a possible endorsement?

Scott> Trump has already endorsed Lindsey Graham.

You know, you never know.

Trump is the ultimate showman.

For all we know, he could say, I'm going to deliver a Christmas present for such and such, and actually do it over the holidays.

You know, normally you would think, okay, an endorsement will really begin to matter after the holidays when people raise their antenna again and start paying attention.

But Donald Trump is just fundamentally different than any other politician we've seen, so he might take a different strategy.

It's all about the ratings with him.

He asked constantly, how will it play?

How will it play?

We heard that about his first term all the time.

So he'll be asking his closest advisers, okay, when it comes to my endorsement, how will it play?

When's the best time?

And we may not see.

We probably won't see, what the norm has been in the past.

Gavin> And we do know that the Evette campaign does have some ties to the Trump administration with some of his people working on her campaign and similarly too, Nancy Mace with one of the former Trump staffer, too working with her.

So there's a lot of, a lot of factors at play there, too.

But when we talk about Mace and before we move on to the rest of the campaign trail, Scott, I want to ask you just about name ID and that favorability.

We've seen some previous pollings that show that Nancy Mace does have a lot of strong name recognition, but her favorbilities tend to be underwater.

So how do you kind of overcome that?

Well, you're well known, but maybe not well-liked?

Scott> Well, you also have to remember your target audience.

So she is incredibly well known, but the things that might put her underwater with some groups, some constituencies are actually likely to be an asset with the people who are most conservative, the furthest right Republicans who are going to show up to this primary.

They really like hearing her, you know, talk negatively about transgender issues or talk negatively about L.G.B.T.Q.

issues, in general.

You know, talking hard talk about immigrants.

So the things that might make her seem harsh and put her underwater with some constituencies could end up helping her with the only constituency that matters, come June.

Gavin> Scott, we've about five minutes left.

I want to ask you about the Democrats, because when you conducted this poll between October 2nd and October 19th, there was only one Democrat in the race, Charleston lawyer Mullins McLeod.

That changed this week with the announcement of Hopkins Democratic Representative Jermaine Johnson, that he's officially in the race now following months of an exploratory committee.

Now, McLeod was arrested in May after apparently suffering from a mental health episode in which police dashcam footage show him being belligerent and aggressive and saying some disturbing things.

And the state Democratic Party has actually asked him to not run for governor.

So how do you see Johnson jumping into this race when that, when those are the only two candidates?

And that's essentially the dynamic of this race right now.

Scott> You're going to see the party really stepping up behind him, and trying to push him as the only candidate.

They do not want to see a bruising primary.

It would actually help the Democratic Party to have a competitive, not nasty, but competitive campaign to show South Carolinians, "Hey, we have a deeper bench than you think."

Right now, it doesn't look like they have a very deep bench, but the Democrats want to line up now behind the candidate who doesn't have baggage and police cam footage of them really in a terrible situation.

So we will see that play out.

But we're not going to hear a lot about the Democratic race because there's not a contested, really contested race that the Democrats at least want to talk about.

And if there is discussion about it being contested, that's really not going to bring good attention to the Democratic contest.

So they will line up.

They will make a focus of who they are supporting.

They will want, the bad news to go away.

But not having a competitive primary at all really does make the party look weaker.

And they don't want that going into the November election.

They're going to try and begin to show strength.

As soon as they can, probably, late spring on, you'll see a huge push.

Gavin> And then at that point, then Scott, then you could probably see, you know, if there is really one clear frontrunner for the Democrats, if it's Jermaine Johnson or someone else, then you could see Democratic voters maybe jumping into voting in the primary for the Republicans, because we have open primaries in South Carolina, so we don't register by party.

So folks could try and figure out who they want, someone to run... who they want the Democrat to run against on the Republican side.

Scott> Yeah, that, that often doesn't happen.

It's been talked about forever, whenever there are open primaries about the other side trying to sabotage things.

But interestingly, it actually may happen somewhat this time because folks on the Democratic side are on the more liberal side may see the Republican contest as a lot more important, for a governor's race, as they've seen, than they've seen in the past.

So, you know, it's always talked about, "Oh, they're doing this.

"They're sneaking into it."

That's generally not true, until now.

2025, 2026 are just different.

And, you know, if there's not a strong competitive race, this is actually one of the times where the Democrats might push and they'll try and do it under the table, but it won't be, might push some of their most faithful to try and, hop the barrier and vote in the Republican primary.

If they do, that will bring a strong push from the Republicans to make us a closed primary state, Gavin> Especially because we do see, you know, how in the previous, the 2022 campaign, Joe Cunningham, Joe Cunningham, the Democrat in that race, lost by 17 points.

So this could be, this could be the one shot that Democrats, Democratic voters in South Carolina have a chance to pick their their governor, essentially.

Scott> And, you know, that harks back to the old days of us being a one party state in South Carolina, and to the south, being a one party region.

There is a fundamental difference when you look at the South Carolina population and the population of registered voters in South Carolina, and that is always played out in our electoral politics, which doesn't match our population.

Gavin> And that's Dr.

Scott Huffmon with Winthrop University.

Thanks, Scott.

Scott> My pleasure.

Thank you.

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

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.

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