Staff reports
There’s a new legislative caucus in Columbia and longtime legislative leader Gilda Cobb Hunter wants people to take notice and get ready for some action.
“I’m tired of talk,” said the Orangeburg Democrat, now in her 24th year in the S.C. House of Representatives.
The S.C. Progressive Legislative Caucus, formed over the summer by Cobb Hunter and six House colleagues, got notification Friday that it is a nonprofit in good standing with the Secretary of State’s office.
The caucus will focus on often-neglected issues that are important to working families: equitable and fair funding for public education, raising the minimum wage and passage of an Earned Income Tax Credit in South Carolina to benefit the working poor.
Cobb Hunter emphasized the new caucus wasn’t seeking to take away from work done by her party.
“It’s simply giving us an opportunity to focus on issues that make a difference,” Cobb Hunter said Sunday at the fall retreat of the S.C. Progressive Network at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island. “[Through the years,] I have learned how to prioritize things. Some of the issues important to working families have gotten the short shrift.”
Cobb Hunter said fellow caucus members included six other House Democrats: Leon Howard of Columbia, David Mack of North Charleston, Walt McLeod of Little Mountain, Harold Mitchell Jr. of Spartanburg, Joe Neal of Hopkins and Seth Whipper of North Charleston.
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