STATEHOUSE REPORT | ISSUE 22.40 | Oct. 6, 2023
BIG STORY: Trump holds big S.C. primary lead, poll says
MORE NEWS: 12 counties encounter censorship efforts over last 3 years
LOWCOUNTRY, Ariail: Feeling a little dumber
COMMENTARY, Brack: How you might become a conservationist
SPOTLIGHT: SC Clips
MYSTERY PHOTO: This one might surprise you
FEEDBACK: On the bums in office
Trump holds big S.C. primary lead, poll says
By Andy Brack, news analysis | While a new Winthrop Poll shows former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley has moved into second place in the February 2024 race to win the GOP presidential primary, most media reports missed how former President Donald Trump actually increased his lead.
In the university’s April poll, Trump led with 41% of GOP voters. But in the new October poll, just over half — 50.5% — said they preferred the former president. In April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had a 20% showing, but that dropped in October to 12.1%, which allowed Haley to push into second — even though her share of the vote went down from 18% to 16.6%.
On a national level, Haley is enjoying a lot more attention due to two generally positive debate performances where she distinguished herself from the pack.
“But she and everyone else is still being lapped by Trump,” said Winthrop University pollster Scott Huffmon. “Trump is using the criminal and civil charges [he faces] to position himself as a persecuted martyr figure and his base is eating it up.”
Huffmon said DeSantis continued to disappoint many Republicans.
“He flew a little too close to the sun and courted a bit too much controversy and his ‘summer campaign reboot’ seems not to have materialized,” Huffmon said.
College of Charleston political scientist Gibbs Knotts said Trump remains the odds-on favorite to win South Carolina’s early GOP primary.
For a different candidate to prevail here, the field needs to be much narrower, he said. The choice would need to be between Trump and one or two candidates.
“Second, someone needs to have a better than expected showing in Iowa and/or New Hampshire,” he said. “If Haley did well in New Hampshire, that could springboard her to a strong showing in South Carolina.”
An unknown is whether Trump is convicted of a crime by the time S.C. GOP primary voters head to the polls, he said.
“If Trump is convicted of a felony, I think that would hurt his prospects,” Knotts said. “I just don’t think the Florida case or the D.C. case will be finished before the S.C. primary on Feb. 2.”
Furman University political scientist Danielle Vinson added the indictments seemed to be helping Trump.
“Unless Haley or one of the other candidates not named Christie starts openly explaining why people should not vote for Trump, I expect he will win,” she said. “Right now, the narrative in conservative circles seems to be that Trump is being persecuted by the prosecutors and Democrats, and Republican voters seem inclined to circle the wagons and support him.
“If one of the other candidates doesn’t change that narrative, Trump will win.”
She added, however, that if Trump’s support collapses, Haley is being viewed increasingly as a fallback candidate.
- Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
12 counties encounter censorship over last 3 years
Staff reports | Twelve out of the state’s 46 counties have experienced some kind of book banning or censorship effort in the last three years, according to a new review by the ACLU of South Carolina. The organization’s interactive infographic below summarizes what has gone on around the state:
“Book banners like to portray these books as inappropriate, but their words ring hollow,” the ACLU’s Paul Bowers wrote. “They are often challenging age-appropriate children’s books that simply acknowledge the existence of, for example, same-sex couples or transgender people. Similarly, they seek to make basic discussions of racism and U.S. history off-limits in public school classrooms.”
ACLU of South Carolina offered the book banning summary during Banned Book Week, which seeks to draw national attention on the harm of censorship. The weeklong focus in policy circles as well as libraries and bookstores ends. Oct. 7.
In other South Carolina News:
VP Harris to speak Oct. 11 in Charleston. Vice President Kamala Harris will speak 1 p.m. Oct. 11 at the Sottile Theater at the College of Charleston as part of a national college tour to connect with younger voters before the 2024 election.
Lowcountry lawmaker pushes for metal detectors in schools. S.C. Rep. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston, is pushing for weapons detectors in every public school across the Lowcountry.
Mace among 8 in House GOP to vote to oust speaker. Eight conservative Republicans, including Lowcountry Rep. Nancy Mace, joined Democrats in a historic vote to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. She was the only South Carolina Republican to join the GOP-led revolt that resulted in the removal of McCarthy, the first speaker in U.S. history to be ousted.
McMaster says CCSD ‘needs to follow the law’ amid turmoil. S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster chastised members of Charleston County School Board after a bipartisan group of lawmakers accused them of violating state laws.
S.C. speaker forms committee to examine how state chooses judges. S.C. House Speaker Murrell Smith created a special committee to study how the state chooses its judges.
Evangelical foster agency can continue to work in S.C. A federal judge ruled Sept. 29 that South Carolina can continue to work with an evangelical Christian foster care agency that rejected applications from potential parents who do not share their faith. The ruling stated that the foster care agency did not violate the constitutional right against establishment of a religion.
Feeling a little dumber
Award-winning cartoonist Robert Ariail generally has a biting or funny comment about the great state of South Carolina in his weekly cartoon. This week, Ariail takes on two GOP candidates in the party’s second presidential debate. Love the cartoon? Hate it? What do you think: feedback@statehousereport.com.
How you might become a conservationist
By Andy Brack | Pay attention to what’s going on in your yard for long enough and you may just become a dyed-in-the-wool conservationist, Tennessee writer Margaret Renkl suggests. But not really in a blue or red, conservative or liberal political way. More in a holistic, natural way.
It might start with a pot of flowers just outside of a window where you can watch it bud, bloom and go to seed from the kitchen or office.
“Those things are helpful to our wild neighbors,” she said during an interview ahead of a Southern book tour promoting The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, which is available Oct. 24. “Once you start being helpful, it’s a very self-reinforcing process.”
Let’s say you start with growing zinnias. At some point, you see bees flying around it. As you observe more and more, you might start thinking about planting milkweed for next year’s butterflies or a native holly so migrating birds can have something to eat other than the birdseed that squirrels might rob. You might plant a native fruit tree or an oak to feed all sorts of critters.
“And then suddenly, you’re a conservationist,” she noted. “Then you talk with your neighbors about not spraying for mosquitoes [because chemicals harm bees]. It’s a very self-fulfilling thing to do and it makes you want to do more and it gives you a great deal of pleasure to do it.”
Renkl, who has lived in her Nashville neighborhood for 27 years, has let her yard go native. It once had a traditional lawn with hedges and such. From the front it may still look similar, but the backyard is infrequently mowed – maybe once a year or so – to give natural habitats to animals that use land without knowing that humans see it as something that can be owned.
Renkl, who offers a weekly column in The New York Times on everything from squirrels that plant pumpkins to shopping malls and politics, uses her new book of 52 essays as a way to share her fascination with cycles of life throughout the year.
“At the most fundamental level, everything that lives ultimately will die and everything that dies will ultimately feed the living,” she said this week in a wide-ranging interview. “I don’t think we as human beings are comfortable with that idea.
“We like to prettify nature and want it to be very sanitary and think some things are good and some things are bad.”
But that’s not how nature works. For example, you might consider a rat or a spider or a mole to be a nuisance that you don’t want in or around your home. But from another perspective, it’s just an animal trying to live its life however it can. It doesn’t know much about property lines or inside or outside.
“The creatures we consider a danger or a nuisance are only trying to live their lives,” Renkl writes, “and they often play beneficial roles to humans in the process. Possums eat ticks. Moles aerate the soil and eat tree-damaging grubs. Spiders eat flies, snakes eat mice, and skunks eat yellow jackets. Wasps eat the caterpillars that eat the tomato plants.”
Throughout the book, she reminds us that nature is everywhere.
“We like, in our minds these days, to think it’s at the end of a drive somewhere. But even if you are living in the densest urban jungle, the natural world is there. It’s in the sky above you and in every crack of a sidewalk.”
This new book about messy gardens, dead leaves and flowers, crows, the anticipation of spring, berries, rabbits and decay is an ebullient passionate call to open your eyes and look freshly at what’s around you. But be careful. If you do, you might bloom into a real conservationist.
Renkl will preview her new book 5:30 p.m. Oct. 18 at Blue Bicycle Books in Charleston and 6 p.m. Oct. 19 at Converse University in Spartanburg with Hub City Books.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
SC Clips
Statehouse Report is brought to you weekly at no cost thanks to our underwriters. In the spotlight today is SC Clips, an affordable, daily information digest that provides you with the South Carolina news you need every business day. Subscribers receive a daily email news round-up before 10 a.m. that provides a link to each day’s edition of SC Clips.
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This one might surprise you
Here’s another old industrial-looking building somewhere in South Carolina. What is it? Where is it? Send us your guess of what this photo shows – as well as your name and hometown – to feedback@statehousereport.com.
Last week’s mystery photo, “Identify this old building,” got a lot of interesting guesses, including several people who thought it looked like the old state prison in Columbia. But the photo was, in fact, Graniteville Mill in Aiken County.
Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas, explained: “Graniteville Mill was one of the largest mills in the South during the antebellum period. According to a historical marker at the site, the mill “ was chartered in 1845 and opened in 1847. It was founded by William Gregg (1800 – 1867), a Virginia native and advocate of industrial development who chose this site for its proximity to waterpower, granite deposits and the S.C. Railroad. The company provided housing, a school, a store, and land for churches, creating a model mill village.”
“The original mill, canal, school house and a number of original Gothic Revival houses still exist and form the core of a National Historic Landmark community that became widespread throughout the Piedmont South during the late 19th century.”
Others who correctly identified the old mill were: Chris Smith of Wellford; Charley Hutchins and Jacie Godfrey, both of Florence; Parker Sessoms of Summerville; Melinda Smith of Oregon; Jay Altman and Elizabeth Jones, both of Columbia; David Lupo of Mount Pleasant; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Pat Keadle of Wagener; Don Clark of Hartsville; and Candace Chisholm.
>> Send us a mystery picture. If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com and mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
On the bums in office
To the editor:
I do agree with the content of this article; however, so often candidates are “wolves in sheeps’ clothing.” Voters may not be aware of the nature of the candidate or may be led to believe in a candidate who is not qualified or may even be unfit for office.
Even the worst candidates can be especially convincing and appealing to some! It’s almost like the candidates “bait” before the election with wonderful promises but if they win, “switch” after the election, and forget they ever committed, and even worse, adamantly deny that they fulfilled their promises or blame their performance and lack of fulfillment on someone else or “the other party.”
I don’t know the answer to the troubling issues we face but hope that going forward, the voters try harder to make better choices. Our citizens are so divided that I wonder how much more our nation and state can stand of the discord, hatred and disrespect being spewed by our politicians.
– Miriam Mitchell, Seabrook, S.C.
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