TOM MULLIKIN REFUSES TO PARTICIPATE IN FORUM MODERATED BY WINTHROP UNIVERSITY POLLSTER …
One of the candidates running for South Carolina’s recently vacated fifth congressional district seat is refusing to participate in a debate because he claims the moderator is biased against U.S. president Donald Trump.
Tom Mullikin – who visited with Trump at his Winter White House in Palm Beach, Florida last month – says the selection of Winthrop University political science professor Scott Huffmon as moderator of a debate hosted by a local GOP women’s group is “unacceptable.”
“His outspoken opposition to President Trump’s candidacy and administration are well known and documented,” Mullikin wrote on his Facebook page. “He has been unable to shelve that bias in his polling, both last fall and last month, creating false narratives about President Trump’s support in South Carolina.”
Mullikin has a point about Huffmon’s polling …
Last fall, Winthrop released a poll showing Trump narrowly leading Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in South Carolina. When the dust settled, Trump won the Palmetto State by a whopping fifteen points. More recently, Huffmon’s polling showed Trump with weak South Carolina approval ratings – data we described (charitably) as being “up for debate.”
Mullikin is one of seven announced candidates for the “Fightin’ Fifth,” a seat which became vacant last month after the U.S. Senate confirmed former U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Mulvaney won the seat in the 2010 Tea Party “wave” election – defeating former U.S. House budget chairman John Spratt.
In addition to Mullikin, former SCGOP chairman Chad Connelly, social conservative activist Sheri Few, Midlands community advocate Penry Gustafson, former S.C. Rep. Ralph Norman (a developer from Rock Hill), S.C. speaker pro tempore Tommy Pope and attorney Kris Wampler.
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