By Lolita Huckaby
BEAUFORT
Were last week’s municipal election results indicative of an anti-Dick Stewart vote?
Some of the 1,218 voters who cast their ballot for the winner, Phil Cromer, probably thought so. It’s certainly likely that some of those voters were influenced by campaign tactics such as the five pages of incendiary verbiage paid for by Graham Trask in the pages of The Island News, leading up to the election. Ads with phrases like “Do you want Beaufort to be run by Dick Stewart” or “Want to Destroy Historic Downtown Beaufort?” most certainly had higher readership than the smaller ads paid for by the candidates themselves.
Interestingly enough, the name the 303 Associates’ retired CEO and (still) major developer in Beaufort and Port Royal really didn’t come up in the single debate held between the two candidates or in the published interviews that were designed to educate voters. Stewart, as he has always done, was just “out there,” influencing people’s thoughts on how the area is developing and what they can expect to see.
The backstory: Phil Cromer and Mike Sutton, both former members of Beaufort City Council, offered their services to run for mayor after former Mayor Stephen Murray resigned in September following a bitter fight with the Historic Beaufort Foundation and citizens concerned about the focus of City Council, especially in terms of historic preservation. Both men offered excellent credentials for the job, and after the single Chamber of Commerce-sponsored debate, one might have come away thinking,” well, the city won’t be in too bad a shape if either one of these guys is elected.”
One unfortunate result of last weeks’ election was the sad reality that only 1,857 votes were cast, 19.5 percent of the city’s registered voters. The same disappointing results happened a month earlier in neighboring Port Royal where only 17 percent of the voters bothered to come to the polls to elect a new mayor, Kevin Phillips over the incumbent Joe DeVito.
So folks like to complain about what their local government is doing to them – think tax increases, zoning changes, tree clear-cutting, police protection, road repairs – but when election time comes around, they don’t bother to vote for the people who are going to be making those decisions. It’s really no surprise although disturbing.
Going back to the Dick Stewart influence in the election, the extent that the votes for Cromer were a vote against Stewart, in the personae of Sutton who once worked with 303 Associates, could be construed as a response to the rapid development that Beaufort is experiencing, from infill housing to major shopping centers.
It’s a given that Beaufort and Port Royal are growing, thanks in part to the extensive advertising campaigns that promote our environmental beauty and encourage folks to visit, folks with money who then decide to buy houses here. And residents angry with the changes want someone to blame, so why not the developer of a planned three-story hotel with a rooftop bar, a four-story parking garage and a three-story apartment complex, all within the heart of the historic downtown?
To his credit, Stewart worked with USCB to provide the Boundary Street dormitories for students, helped finance the Port Royal Sound Foundation Maritime Center, brought new life to the Beaufort Plaza, established the Freedman Arts District and is co-chairman of the Beaufort-Jasper Housing Trust trying to come up with solutions for the area’s affordable housing shortages.
Stewart, who served as an elected official himself on Beaufort County Council in 2003, seems to prefer his new role as John Q. Citizen, although his influence in area development issues, as highlighted by the Chamber of Commerce’s recent CIVITAS award, given out right before the Chamber director announced his resignation, is obvious.
That influence was demonstrated last week at the city’s Historic Review Board meeting, one day after the election, when Stewart’s Freedman Artists District was on the agenda with a request to demolish two circa-1910 freedman’s cottages that they considered too expensive to repair enough to meet city codes. The HRB agreed to give the owners of the property 60 days to come up with a funding plan to accomplish the repairs, specifically approaching the Historic Beaufort Foundation.
Stewart didn’t leave the meeting with what he requested but he put the issue of restoring deteriorating historic buildings squarely in the hands of the HBF. He definitely influenced that discussion.
Headlines in two of the past four The Island News’ front page stories used the same word – “change” – to describe the election of Phillips in Port Royal and Cromer, in the city. Will there be changes under new leadership? That remains to be seen.
Lolita Huckaby Watson is a community volunteer and newspaper columnist. In her former role as a reporter with The Beaufort Gazette, The Savannah Morning News, Bluffton Today and Beaufort Today, she prided herself in trying to stay neutral and unbiased. As a columnist, these are her opinions. Her goal is to be factual but opinionated, based on her own observations. Feel free to contact her at bftbay@gmail.com.
