By Tony Kukulich
Democratic candidate for Governor Joe Cunningham got a standing ovation before he uttered his first words when he appeared at the Beaufort County Black Chamber of Commerce Wednesday morning, Aug. 24.
All Cunningham had to do was walk through the door and the 100 or so enthusiastic supporters were on their feet.
“I think that Cunningham and Casey will bring forward motion to our state,” said Kathleen Hughes, chair of the Beaufort County Democratic Party. “In a state where things haven’t changed too much over the years. We still have terrible education. We still have terrible roads. I think Joe and Tally can make a real difference in that by increasing our revenue on the statewide level.”
Cunningham wasted no time getting to the key issues during his brief appearance. He started with education and teachers’ salaries.
“We are losing our best teachers in droves,” Cunningham said. “We understand that it’s because politicians are failing our teachers. They’re being disrespected and underpaid, and we all know that when we fail our teachers we fail our kids.”
He promised an across-the-board salary increase of 10% for all teachers and said he intended, if elected, to raise starting salaries for teachers from $36,000 per year to $50,000 per year by 2030. That initiative will be funded by bringing new revenue streams to the state.
“I want to legalize marijuana in the state,” Cunningham said. “Also I want to legalize sports betting. These are things that are happening in South Carolina. They are legal in other states. We want to use that money to pay our teachers what they’re worth.”
In the 2018 election, Cunningham narrowly defeated pro-Trump candidate Katie Arrington for South Carolina’s District 1 seat in the U.S. House of Representative after Arrington defeated incumbent Mark Sanford in the Republican primary. The victory was considered a major upset and marked the first election of a Democrat in the district for more than 40 years. However, his tenure in the House was short lived.
Republican Nancy Mace once again turned the seat red when she edged Cunningham in the 2020 general election by less than 5,500 votes of the 427,000 votes cast.
With his eye on the state’s top job, Cunningham will challenge incumbent Republican Henry McMaster. McMaster has been governor since 2017 when he succeeded Nikki Haley after she resigned to accept a role in the Trump administration as the United States ambassador to the United Nations. In the June primary, Cunningham easily defeated a crowded field of five Democrats vying for the opportunity to challenge McMaster. Mia McCleod finished second in that race with 30.8% of the vote compared to Cunningham’s 56%.
Cunningham’s remarks in Beaufort took aim at McMaster and asserted that after 40 years as a politician, McMaster had failed to deliver positive results for the state.
“We’re dead last in roads,” Cunningham said. “We’re at the bottom with healthcare. We’re at the bottom with schools, teacher pay. Every single metric for quality of life, we’re at or near the very bottom.”
Tally Casey, Cunningham’s running mate and candidate for lieutenant governor, accompanied him and she spoke first to attendees.
“We are at a point in history where our freedoms are at stake,” Casey said. “We are looking at a position where our daughters have less rights than we did. That’s unacceptable. If you think they’re going to stop at women’s rights and reproductive rights, no. They’re going to come after our rights to love and marry whether they are of the same gender or of a different race. That is not acceptable.”
Casey is a political newcomer seeking her first elected office. Educated at Princeton University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Casey also has the distinction of being the first female fighter pilot in South Carolina. As a member of the South Carolina Air National Guard, she flew F-16s during three combat tours in Iraq. The married mother of three is CEO of Wyche P.A., a Greenville-based law firm.
Speaking after the event, Casey said her role in the campaign was to be a champion for women.
“I was in the military,” she said. “I was a fighter pilot. If South Carolina can trust me to drop bombs and take out surface-to-air missiles with a $30 million airplane, they can trust me to make decisions about my own life.”
Other tenets of Cunningham’s platform are the elimination of the state income tax, improving the state’s road and imposing term limits and age limits on politicians. However, it’s evident that Cunningham has made his pro-choice position central in his platform. Whether voter concern over the Dobbs decision and the McMaster’s attempts to outlaw all abortion will be enough to deliver Cunningham another political upset will be decided in November.
“This is one of the biggest things that Tally and I agree on,” he said. “We trust women to make their own healthcare decisions. There might not be a bigger contrast between our campaign and Gov. Henry McMaster’s.”
Tony Kukulich is a recent transplant to the Lowcountry. A native of Wilmington, Del., he comes to The Island News from the San Francisco Bay Area where he spent seven years as a reporter and photographer for several publications. He can be reached at tony.theislandnews@gmail.com.
