By Paul Hyde
When a motorist slammed into the back of my car a few years ago, I didn’t call the White House.
Actually, I didn’t call anyone. I was all shook up, and not in the pleasant way Elvis meant it.
Some kind soul dialed 911. Long story short, first responders showed up. They took good care of me, I regained my equilibrium, and all is fine. Even if the car was totaled.
But the incident was a stark reminder — if I needed one — of the life-saving importance of reliable and competent local government: In this case, police and paramedics.
Here’s a fact often lost in the heat of the political season: Local and state governments — and the people who run those governments — often impact our daily lives in a far more profound way than the federal government.
Yet, it’s the melodrama of national politics — and specifically presidential politics — that dominates our public life.
Our national pastime used to be baseball. Now, it’s presidential politics.
It has become our chief distraction, our obsession, even our drug of choice. No wonder some of us are called news junkies.
We’re bombarded relentlessly with campaign ads, news coverage and roaring arguments on TV, news sites, Facebook, X, Substack, radio, TikTok, Instagram, blogs and hundreds of podcasts. And there’s the desperate emails and texts from the candidates themselves pleading for donations.
Call it the Invasion of the Attention Snatchers. It’s often a spectacle of high drama and low comedy, but we love it.
Because most of the news coverage centers on one election — the presidential election — local and state politicians struggle to be heard above the fray.
And that’s the problem. The presidential election sucks all the air out of the room.
Here’s the obvious irony: Our vote is most powerful in helping to decide local and state elections.
Meanwhile, our nation’s Electoral College (don’t get me started!) places the lion’s share of presidential-election power in just seven swing states. All votes matter here in South Carolina, but they matter more in local and state elections.
Who are these people?
If we had any doubt about the vital importance of state and local elected officials, we need look no further than the Hurricane Helene disaster, which devasted South Carolina, particularly the Upstate.
State and local government workers arrived first on the scene — rescuing folks, tending to the injured, providing water and food, removing trees on blocked roads and setting up shelters.
Local first responders ran toward danger to save lives and get our communities up and running again. The feds showed up later, but the state and local folks came first and stayed long after FEMA departed.
Many other issues have devolved to the states, including abortion policy, our nation’s most contentious issue. Crime, too, is mostly a state and local issue. Health care, prisons and infrastructure are core state issues.
State and local governments largely oversee education as well. They’re the keepers of the American Dream.
Elections, of course, are an essential democratic institution, and those, too, are run by state and local officials.
The irony is that many of us know far less about state and local government candidates in our own neighborhoods than we do about two presidential candidates.
I can well imagine that many of us in South Carolina (I’m speaking of myself, too) open our ballots and, after voting for president, gaze in bewilderment at all the down-ballot races.
Who are these other people? They’re candidates for Congress, state Senate, state House, county council, city council, sheriff, solicitor, county coroner, clerk of court, county auditor and county treasurer, to name a few possibilities. Don’t forget the soil and water district commission candidates.
There may be a half-dozen school board candidates, too. And local ballot questions.
And there’s a state ballot question this year as well.
It’s staggering. We often end up voting along partisan lines and for whoever seems to align with our presidential pick. It used to be said that all politics is local. Now, it seems all politics is national.
I personally don’t believe that’s the best way to cast an independent, informed vote. And many races are non-partisan, particularly school board and other local races.
What to do?
So, what’s a conscientious voter to do? Despite the decline in local media, many local news organizations still do a great job of providing local coverage and creating voters guides.
The South Carolina Daily Gazette — about to celebrate its first birthday — has been a godsend on our state’s media landscape, and reporter Abraham Kenmore recently produced a useful voters’ guide.
The League of Women Voters of South Carolina, among other nonpartisan groups, offers an insightful perspective as well. Information about candidates, of course, can often be found on their own websites and Facebook pages. We voters should always try to catch local candidate debates and forums. We can view our sample ballots on the SC Votes website.
There’s the old-fashion idea, too, of actually calling or writing candidates.
Truly informed voting, across the board, is not easy, but we only cheat ourselves with anything less.
Paul Hyde is a longtime journalist and teacher in the Upstate. He worked 18 years for the Greenville News as a columnist, editorial writer, education reporter and arts writer. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Clemson and Harvard universities. He has written for the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News and USA Today, among other publications. He currently is a regular contributor to the Greenville Journal, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Classical Voice North America.
