Primary Objective

Local voters have four choices of which flavor of Republican candidate they want to replace the retiring state Sen. Paul Thurmond in the Statehouse.
Because no Democrat candidate emerged to run for the District 41 seat, June 14 Republican primary will be the de facto election. The seat represents close to 100,000 residents in both Charleston and Dorchester counties.
The four GOP candidates are former City Councilman and realtor Tim Mallard and a trio of lawyers, including Sandy Senn, Roy Maybank, and Culver Kidd.
Dist. 41 is far from the only state race, Senate or House, where single-party domination has meant elections are just formalities, with the real competition in the primary.
Thanks to a political deal gerrymandered years ago in the state Senate, which regulates the shape and the makeup of all state and national districts in South Carolina, “heritage” like this one abound.
These are districts whose lines have been drawn to deliver consistently Republican or Democratic winners.
Former state Senate President Glenn McConnell, now the president at the College of Charleston, was the architect of the compromise, with former state Sen. Robert Ford, now trying to return to his seat after a political scandal, providing the swing vote and push among black politicians.
Last Thursday, the Charleston County Republican Party held a modified debate with the four Dist. 41 senatorial candidates, as well as other down-ballot races. With less than 150 attendees looking on, the four candidates made their cases.
Tim Mallard
Mallard focused on his ability as a businessman to find solutions, whereas his competitors’ only skill was to “argue … and argue … and argue.”
A former City Councilman, Mallard made it a point to remind those in attendance that he stood up and fought what he referred to as the “40-year-old bureaucracy” of the city’s former mayor, Joseph P. Riley Jr.
Mallard took a staunch position that the state’s taxes were too high and that “FairTax efforts,” code for flat-tax budgeting, should be looked at. Mallard, like all the other candidates said that he would not sign a no-tax-increase pledge, because of the dire need in the state’s roads system.
“That would be irresponsible, because of our infrastructure, everything needs to be on the table,” said Mallard, including an adjustment to the state’s gas tax.
Roy Maybank
Roy Maybank agreed with much of Mallard’s tax positions, as shoring up the state’s infrastructure was one of his two top agenda items, along with increased education funding.
Maybank said that the state should look to increasing its gas tax, which hasn’t been done since 1987, but not as a panacea or cash-infusion for the General Fund; the proceeds should first be set aside for maintenance.
Maybank railed against the no-new-tax line, considering the time the gas tax has been untouched in the face of growing and worsening roads issues throughout the state.
Like the other three candidates, Maybank wants to make sure that legislators recuse themselves from votes directly affecting parties they work for, a potentially nettlesome issue for lawyers. Maybank called for an impartial, private, third-party board to review the fully-disclosed personal income of all candidates.
Sandy Senn
Local attorney Senn has been a mainstay in Charleston conservative politics for years. She said she’d vote against a gas tax increase in its current form, and called for a local option to take over roads with state funding.
Senn also said that putting state tolls on existing federal highways in the state should be explored. Excoriating President Obama, Senn also set her teeth against other forms of outside control, saying “dark money,” or anonymous political donations from unnamed donors via political action committees, was a “terrible thing … We need to know who is pushing whose buttons.”
Like the other candidates, Senn waffled a bit on the issues of vouchers, saying that whatever the parents thinks is best should be honored. She also said County Council should be “ashamed” for letting the 526 completion project lag so much that the state is now asking for the money back.
Culver Kidd
Kidd, the grandson of a Georgia legislative heavyweight, first called for term limits for anyone going up to Columbia. While he wouldn’t sign a no-tax pledge, he said taxes were too high, and that he wouldn’t consider signing-off on a gas tax increase without serious restructuring at the state Department of Transportation.
Making good on saying he was a “true conservative,” Kidd also said he was against abortion, and that life begins at conception.
A local solicitor, Kidd said the 72-hour gun background check, which alleged Emanuel A.M.E. shooter Dylann Roof was able to skirt, was enough time, but that government needed to follow the laws surrounding it.
From the Other Side
Democratic Party County Chair Brady Quirk-Garvan praised the field, saying he was pleased they were a relatively moderate lot.
But Quirk-Garvan also said some of his local Republican friends have called for Senn’s election, saying it would make the party look “less closed-minded.”
And, he added, because of lower voter turnout expected, and because Democrats had no dog in the fight, that between 2,000-3,000 voters next month could decide who will represent 100,000 people in Columbia for years.
The best news Quirk-Garvan could muster was that his party’s polling shows that Dist. 41 is trending more and more Democratic; “more so than any other Republican-held seat in the state.” And that could mean a two-party race the next time around.
It might not be 32 flavors, but it could be a start.