By Jessica Holdman
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — Court of Appeals Judge Letitia Verdin is set to be the next justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court after her remaining competition withdrew Thursday.
With her expected election next Wednesday, the Palmetto State will no longer have the nation’s only all-male high court. It will join 18 other states with an all-white high court, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Verdin, 53, of Greenville, is the only candidate remaining for a seat on the state’s highest court after Appeals Court Judge Blake Hewitt, of Conway, dropped out six days ahead of a vote by the joint General Assembly, legislative staff confirmed.
His departure came two days after Circuit Court Judge Jocelyn Newman, of Columbia, submitted her letter exiting the race.
South Carolina is one of only two states where the Legislature picks nearly all judges. Virginia is the other.
It is normal for candidates to withdraw from a judicial race in South Carolina once they realize they don’t have enough support from legislators to win.
Verdin already had more than enough votes to win the three-way contest outright heading into the long holiday weekend, according to her chief vote-counter.
Traditionally, when only one candidate remains for a joint assembly, legislators elect the judge by acclamation without actually taking a vote. However, that’s not what happened last month, when the GOP-controlled Legislature refused to seat former Rep. James Smith of Columbia, Democrats’ 2018 gubernatorial nominee, to a spot on the Circuit Court.
But such a move is highly unlikely to happen again next week.
The election of Verdin — who has 15 years of experience on the bench — will mean four out of the state’s five justices will be from the Upstate. Only Justice George James, who lives in Sumter, lives in a different region.
Verdin will fill an opening created by the retirement of Chief Justice Don Beatty, who turned 72 last month. By law, judges in South Carolina must retire from full-time work by Dec. 31 of the year they turn 72. Beatty will retire when his term ends July 31.
Beatty, too, is an Upstate resident. The former state legislator, who was first elected to the Circuit Court in 1995 straight from the House, hails from Spartanburg.
While Beatty’s impending retirement created the vacancy, the election is actually to fill the seat of Justice John Kittredge, of Greenville, once he replaces Beatty as chief justice.
The state Supreme Court hasn’t been all white since Beatty was elected an associate justice in 2007. A decade later, he became South Carolina’s second Black chief justice since Reconstruction.
The first was Ernest Finney Jr., also a former House member, who was first elected to the high court in 1985, elected chief justice in 1994, and retired in 2000.
Jessica Holdman writes about the economy, workforce and higher education. Before joining the S.C. Daily Gazette, she was a business reporter for The Post and Courier.
S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
