COLUMBIA, S.C. — On what felt like one of South Carolina’s hottest June days, Barbara Bowman stared at a red, brick duplex tucked behind a busy Sumter County thoroughfare last Saturday, unsure whether she’d find any residents living in the senior neighborhood who were not registered to vote.
“My theory is just to knock and step back,” Bowman, marking her third year as Sumter County’s Democratic Party chairwoman, said as she waited for seconds that felt like minutes in the 90-degree weather for someone to answer.
Call it luck or attribute it to Bowman’s persistence, but a woman stepped outside of her home in a bright robe and told Bowman not only had she never registered to vote in South Carolina, but she had never voted in an election before.
“This is when I start really liking this,” Bowman said, beaming.
In May, the South Carolina Democratic Party embarked on a monthslong pilot project called “Register 46,” led by party fixtures Christale Spain and Marcurius Byrd. The goal, eventually to expand statewide beyond Greenville, Sumter and York counties, is to identify and register roughly 400,000 unregistered likely Democratic voters in all 46 counties ahead of the 2022 cycle and for future elections.
The undertaking of this data-driven, labor-intensive project is new for the state party that says it’s done licking its wounds from the 2020 losses and is ready to find solutions to the party’s election shortcomings, party Chairman Trav Robertson said.
The program may be a turning point for South Carolina’s Democratic Party that in 2020 launched a broad coalition of highly engaged political candidates and recorded the state’s most expensive Senate race, only to see its efforts collapse in November. On election night, Democrats and Jaime Harrison fell short in ousting longtime Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and watched a Lowcountry seat in Congress flip back to red after shocking political observers in the 2018 midterms by turning the seat blue.
And, to further gut the party, Republicans flipped five State House seats, three of which were in the Senate. And Democrats watched Republicans in five months use that power to pass a restrictive abortion ban now blocked by the courts, expand a gun rights measure and restart executions, with redistricting to come this fall.
“Rebuilding a party and rebuilding candidates and changing the psychology is not for the faint of heart,” Robertson told The State in an interview last week at the party’s Columbia headquarters. “When Steve Spurrier (former Gamecock Football head coach) came to South Carolina, he said, ‘I’m not just here to win football programs, but (to) change the psychology of the fan base and change the psychology to a winning psychology,’ and that is part of what we have to do here.”
To change the psychology of their state’s voting electorate, South Carolina Democrats say their party must first confront the problems they have before piling on solutions.
Robertson, an Anderson County native who succeeded Harrison to become party chairman in 2017, has no problem doing that.
“Jaime losing sucks. Us losing Senate seats sucks,” said Robertson, referring to Harrison’s 2020 loss to Graham and the loss of three Democrats in the state Senate, which lowered the minority party’s membership to 16 compared with the Republicans’ 30. “But you also have to be pragmatic and understand that Democrats did not get where we are overnight. It was a 30-year culmination.”
Three uncontrollable factors soured Harrison’s chances ahead of November 2020, according to Robertson: the COVID-19 pandemic, a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy and, lastly, an intensifying culture war where the GOP had all the catchy slogans.
Even during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, the GOP found a way to seize the moment. When Amy Coney Barrett, then a conservative nominee for the nation’s highest court, held up a white sheet of paper showing she had no notes and had been reciting case law from memory, Robertson said that’s when he remembers thinking, “I knew we were in trouble.”
“We had planned to field ... probably the largest field operation in the history of Democratic Party politics in South Carolina. COVID just got in the way,” Harrison, who now leads the Democratic National Committee, told The State on Tuesday. “We had the resources, we had the plan. I made the call in the end not to put people in jeopardy. It’s something that I live with, I’m comfortable living with. ... Elections are important, just not that important.”
By 2022, with the COVID-19 outbreak behind them, Democrats hope to retake the governor’s office after more than two decades, on top of other statewide offices, and pick off enough voters in a race against U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, the Senate’s sole Black Republican. They also hope to field 124 candidates — a chunk of whom are incumbents — to win seats in the South Carolina House.
But some of those earlier themes could very well return in the 2022 cycle, threatening the party’s hopes.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban next year, along with a potential possibility that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, 82, decides to retire, setting up what could be a bitter confirmation hearing. Donald Trump also remains a Republican Party favorite, and his expected visit to South Carolina and his influence could cast a shadow over an election year that Democrats want to — need to — do well in.
Harrison is less concerned, noting Trump will not be on the 2022 ballot and the potential excitement around Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls Joe Cunningham, a young former member of Congress who proved able to sway GOP voters, and state Sen. Mia McLeod, the first Black woman to run for governor. Democratic activist Gary Votour also has announced his bid.
Harrison said that has excited the Democratic Governors Association.
“You’ve got some really interesting dynamics there to make this a race to watch,” Harrison said.
Trump’s future influence, however, is the “unknown,” Robertson said.
“I think September (when the Legislature gets on redistricting) changes a lot of this,” he added.
In the meantime, Robertson said Democrats are working to capitalize on the foundation that Harrison’s campaign built last year.
That includes the voter registration pilot program and fielding candidates. In April, Spain, who is helping lead the party’s registration efforts, formed a South Carolina-focused political action committee with the goal of reengaging and registering voters before 2022.
It also includes landing one point person in every South Carolina precinct by the year’s end, Robertson said.
“People here do not understand the positive nature from the presidential nominating process to Jaime’s campaign ... that we helped create outside South Carolina,” particularly from the perspective of donors who want to invest in Democratic parties and candidates, evidenced by the party’s financial status, Robertson said.
To that end, Harrison’s campaign, while unsuccessful, transferred millions of dollars into the state party.
Now over at the DNC, Harrison announced in May the launch of a new $23 million investment into state parties and the “Red State Fund” — which South Carolina, a traditional red state, has qualified for — that will offer state parties direct resources and grants.
But party veterans also are being careful to balance expectations of immediate success after neighboring Georgia Democrats’ 2020 wins.
Georgia’s political landscape has changed, illustrated after the state went for President Joe Biden and flipped two U.S. Senate seats to Democrats. This was done, in large part, by aggressive voter registration efforts led by community leaders and former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who worked tirelessly on voter registration and to get the vote out in key Democratic areas, particularly in the metro Atlanta area.
“There are lessons we can learn from Georgia, but if you’re going to do the comparison, be honest and transparent and real about the comparison,” Robertson said. “I’m not saying that that’s a difficult hurdle to overcome, but I’m saying if you want to make a comparison to Georgia, you’ve got to help us invest in these programs, and it’s not just something that’s going to happen over a two-year cycle. ... You’re talking about a 10-year operation here.”
So, is the party shedding its old skin, rebranding, or is it simply taking the foundation it created in years prior and building on it?
Robertson hates questions like that, he says.
“I think it’s like going to the buffet at the Palmetto Pig, you get to pick what you want to eat and make the perfect plate of food,” Robertson said. “We’re trying to become a new Democratic Party, just like we’ve all been trying to become a new South. There are fundamental things that we keep and then there’s some changes that we have.”
Sure, Harrison lost in a stunning fashion that even Robertson didn’t prepare for. But for a clear-cut example of the impact of Harrison’s race and the investment that followed throughout it all, Robertson nods toward his office door, a large window.
“You walked in here and you saw staff,” he said. “I do not recall the last time the party had staff after November like this.”
