South Carolina’s Democrats Face Major Challenges

Disgruntlement among South Carolina Democrats with their party’s performance in last fall’s elections has recently boiled over into public criticism of how the state’s House Democratic Caucus allocated campaign funds in 2010. However, quibbles over where money should be spent are dwarfed by systemic challenges faced by the state’s increasingly outnumbered Democrats.
 Former employees of the House Caucus and state representatives have criticized the caucus for spending money to bolster challengers in unwinnable races instead of supporting vulnerable incumbents—three of whom were defeated in 2010.
 
The caucus paid Orangeburg Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter’s consulting firm, Beanstalk Associates, $27,000 to advise Democratic challengers in six Republican-held districts, none of which flipped in 2010. The caucus spent an additional $66,000 to $80,000 on campaign mail for Democratic challengers in those same districts. Some incumbent Democrats did not receive any House Caucus support while, in some cases, challengers who ultimately received less than 30 percent of the vote had up to six pieces of mail sent out for them by the caucus.
 
A source close to the Democratic House Caucus leadership who declined to be quoted confirmed that supporting challengers rather than incumbents was the caucus’s strategy, but contended that in any other cycle a number of the districts in which the caucus invested would have been winnable. Furthermore, the source said, Democrats would have had a stronger track record in 2010 if they had been able to field candidates in three competitive districts that went uncontested.
 
Tyler Jones, the former director of the state’s House Democratic Caucus and an independent Democratic consultant, believes that the party lost at least two state House seats that it could have kept if the caucus had devoted more money to protecting incumbents. “It bordered on campaign malpractice,” says Jones. “There was just some bad decision making.”
 
Jones is unsure why the caucus chose to allocate funds in the manner that it did, though he believes that part of the problem is that some caucus officials were in positions that “they had no business being in.” “Professional consultants, or whoever is running the caucus, should know that the first priority in a tough year is to protect your incumbents,” he says. “That fell by the wayside somehow.” Another problem, he believes, is a state law that prohibits political consultants from requesting that the House Caucus allocate donations to a given candidate.
 
With Republicans holding every statewide office in South Carolina, the state’s Democrats have larger problems to deal with moving forward. Some Democratic consultants see the state’s electoral trends moving in a direction that does not favor success for their party.
 
Kerry Crantford, another South Carolina Democratic consultant, saw troubling signs in the returns from the 2010 elections. “In the high-growth counties—the coastal counties and the Charlotte suburbs—we saw dismal support for Democratic candidates,” he says, adding that the counties in question—Beaufort, Charleston, Georgetown and York—have “tremendous influence in statewide elections.”
 
South Carolina’s upcoming redistricting process will be entirely controlled by the state’s Republicans. Given the restrictions placed on the state by the Voting Rights Act, there is little chance that Democrats will be competitive in any redefined districts, or the soon to be created 7th congressional district, that are not majority-minority. “Right now, white Democrats are an endangered species in South Carolina,” says Jones. “The way lines are drawn for state House and Senate are along racial lines. It makes it tough for white Democrats to win elected office in the General Assembly.” While no Democratic consultant that C&E spoke to was willing to go on record challenging the VRA, some complained that it was slowly dividing the Democratic Party along racial lines.
 
Crantford and Jones both emphasize that their party cannot succeed unless the electorate is receptive to its message—and southern voters were clearly unreceptive to Democratic messaging in 2010. Further hobbling South Carolina Democrats are blunders such as those committed by the House Democratic Caucus last year. “Until Democrats invest more resources into a more focused message, they will have a difficult time converting the 10 to 15 percent of independent voters in the South, as well as motivating marginal Democrats to participate,” says Crantford.
 
However, the problems for the Democratic Party do not end with messaging, and as changes in population distribution and demographics continue to favor Republicans, the Democratic Party will have to adapt somehow or become the permanent minority in South Carolina.
 Noah Rothman is the online editor at C&E. Email him at nrothman@campaignsandelections.com