From staff reports
Michael B. Moore, a Democrat running for the U.S. House of Representatives in South Carolina’s 1st congressional district, will formally launch his campaign for Congress with events across the Lowcountry on Thursday, March 7, beginning with an appearance in Beaufort.
“For more than a year, I’ve been hearing from the Lowcountry’s working families and sharing my own hopeful vision for the future of SC-01,” Moore said in a news release. “Now, with eight months to go until Election Day, we’re confident that our campaign has the resources, resolve, and grassroots support needed to win in November. Our official launch later this week is just the first step in the fight to flip this swing district.”
Moore will begin the day in Beaufort with a small gathering in the courtyard of Tabernacle Baptist Church at 10 a.m. It was there, in 1976, that a 13-year-old Moore unveiled a bust of his great-great-grandfather — Beaufort native, Civil War hero and Reconstruction-era Congressman Robert Smalls — and delivered a speech commemorating the dedication of the artwork.
According to Moore, it was also there that he decided to one day run for office and rededicate his life to public service, following in the footsteps of his famous ancestor.
Attendees can RSVP at https://bit.ly/3TnYolI for the Beaufort event.
Moore will then travel to Charleston for a larger event with family, friends, and supporters in the Poinsette Room of the Francis Marion Hotel at 5:30 p.m. Grammy-winning musician and South Carolina native Charlton Singleton will provide music, and former South Carolina Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth will recite an original poem written for the occasion.
Moore will deliver remarks and take questions from the audience at 6:15 p.m. Attendees can RSVP at https://bit.ly/49H1CGq for the Charleston event.
The hosts of Moore’s campaign launch include a variety of Lowcountry residents, including Beaufort County Councilman York Glover; Beaufort County Black Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Marilyn Harris; the Rev. Kenneth Hodges; former Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling and Anita Singleton Prather.
A citizen candidate and forward-thinking business executive with nearly four decades of private sector experience, Moore was also the founding president of the International African American Museum, which opened its doors in Charleston in June 2023, and has served on several nonprofit boards. Recognized as one of Charleston Business Magazine’s “50 Most Influential,” the City of Charleston honored him with “Michael Boulware Moore Day” in 2019.
Aside from his great-great-grandfather Robert Smalls, Moore’s other ancestors include South Carolina lawyer and legislator Samuel Jones Bampfield, and Judge Harold Boulware — who litigated the Briggs v. Elliott school segregation case and served on the legal team that won Brown v. Board of Education.
After graduating from Syracuse University, Moore earned an MBA from Duke University and received an honorary Doctorate in Public History from Dickinson College. He has a wife, Karla, four sons – David, Lucas, Israel, and Robert – and a new granddaughter, Sasha.
Moore seeks the seat held by Republican Nancy Mace in South Carolina’s 1st congressional district. Adding drama to the race, in January 2023, a panel of three federal judges ruled that S.C.-01 is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and that South Carolina’s Republican legislature intentionally removed tens of thousands of Black voters during the redistricting process that followed the 2020 census.
In May, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case, and the justices heard oral arguments in October. Last summer, the Court rejected Republican attempts to gerrymander state congressional maps in Alabama, Louisiana, and North Carolina.
Democrat Joe Cunningham flipped the district in 2018, and Mace defeated him in 2020 by a margin of less than two percentage points.
Before facing Mace, Moore will have to surpass a Democratic challenger, Charleston attorney Mac Deford, a Coast Guard veteran and graduate of The Citadel.
Mace also faces opposition from her own party in the form of four challengers:
Mount Pleasant Republican Catherine Templeton, former director of the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation and the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) chief, both under Gov. Nikki Haley; Mace’s former chief-of-staff Dan Hanlon, who worked in the Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration and was a staff member of former Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.); Austin Anderson, an Uber driver who calls himself a “gay, anti-establishment Republican;” and U.S. Marines veteran Bill Young.
The S.C. Republican and Democratic primaries will be held on Tuesday, June 11, 2024.
