SPECIAL CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION GETS “FLAGGED …”
The special election for South Carolina’s fifth congressional district – a.k.a. the “Fightin’ Fifth” – just got flagged.
Sheri Few – a social conservative activist whose candidacy has done far better than we ever expected – invoked the Confederate flag in a new advertisement slamming two of her opponents.
According to Few, S.C. Speaker pro tempore Tommy Pope and former S.C. Rep. Ralph Norman started a “war on our history” when they voted to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the S.C. State House in July 2015.
“When Ralph Norman and Tommy Pope voted to take the Battle Flag down from the Confederate Memorial in Columbia, they started a war on our history,” Few says in a new thirty-second spot slated to start this week. “Now they’re renaming streets and colleges and destroying monuments to Confederate soldiers. And it started with Ralph Norman and Tommy Pope’s vote.”
Few adds that she’s running for Congress because she believes “it’s time for leaders to stand up and stop political correctness, and fight for what we believe.”
In addition to Few, Pope and Norman, three other “Republicans” are running for this seat: Indian Land attorney Kris Wampler, Camden businessman and S.C. State Guard leader Tom Mullikin and former SCGOP chairman Chad Connelly.
Three Democrats – Alexis Frank, Les Murphy and Archie Parnell – are also running, as are American party candidate Josh Thornton, Green party candidate David Kulma, Libertarian Nathaniel Cooper and fusion candidate Bill Bledsoe, who is campaigning as both a Constitution and Libertarian party candidate.
To be clear – we supported lowering the flag from the State House grounds. In fact, we were the first media outlet in the state to call for it to come down. Our argument? That the flag never should have been raised in the first place (thus enabling it to be hijacked by white supremacists).
How do voters in this special election feel on the subject? We’re about to find out …
The fifth district (map) covers the northern central portion of South Carolina – including the booming suburbs of Charlotte, N.C. It has been reliably Republican since it was redrawn prior to the 2012 elections – although former S.C. Rep. Mick Mulvaney won it from Democrat John Spratt during the Tea Party wave of 2010.
Mulvaney vacated this office when he was confirmed in February as the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Partisan primary elections for the seat will be held on May 2 with runoffs scheduled for May 16 (in South Carolina’s partisan primaries, runoff elections are held in the event no candidate receives a majority of votes in the initial round of balloting)
The special election itself is scheduled for June 20 – with the leading vote-getter in that race becoming the next congressman.
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