From staff reports
Five candidates are vying for two Beaufort City Council seats on Tuesday.
Michael J.D. Andersen
Andersen, 29, and his fiancé relocated to Beaufort in 2020 to start a family and to be closer to relatives in the area. He is pursuing an MBA with the goal of becoming a certified public accountant.
Andersen’s priorities are public safety, affordable housing and moving away from tourism and the military toward manufacturing and other high-paying jobs.
“Stephen Murray here has done a really excellent job, in my opinion, of trying to attract a lot of the businesses that aren’t here in the city to diversify our structure out of just tourism and the military,” Andersen said in September. If we’ve seen anything in the last two years, it’s that if we rely too heavily on one of those, specifically tourism, when we do have an example of a Covid shutdown, it puts a lot of people out of work. It puts a lot of people out of work, a lot of people have struck hard time paying for rent, they had a hard time putting food on the table and clothes on their backs, and by bringing these other primary Industries into the city, it will allow our future children to basically have an ability to not just stay here.”
Josh Gibson
Gibson is formerly the youngest person on the Zoning Board of Appeals and the President of the Old Commons Neighborhood Association.
Gibson wants to improve the services the City provides for it’s citizens. And he feels his 50 years here will help him better serve and lead the people of Beaufort.
And he is a big backer of the Blue. As a big supporter of the police, Gibson hopes to protect citizen self and arrest and convict more violent criminals.
“The reason that I’m running comes down to three simple words: I love Beaufort. That’s why I’m running. It just means so much to me, and I want it to … maintain its integrity and maintain everything it is that brings people who want to be here,” Gibson said in September. “I know that the thing that I think about Beaufort, where we are right now, is that we have what everybody wants, … we keep winning these awards: Greatest Small Town In The South, Greatest Whatever, Greatest, Greatest, Greatest – from Southern Living and other magazines, and stuff like that keep saying this is the greatest place, and so I think that we – that the focus that we should have… The word is out about Beaufort. …”
Wilma Holman
Holman came to Beaufort after retiring from a career at IBM. She worked for the Beaufort County School District and was the HUD Coordinator for 19 years at the Beaufort Black Chamber of Commerce.
Holman wants to have a more open dialogue with constituents, holding monthly sessions to hear their concerns and explaining decisions and policies to them, as well.
She wants to implement affordable workforce housing so that people that work in Beaufort can afford to live in Beaufort.
And Holman says she encourages development that will bring good jobs to keep young people in Beaufort. She supports ideas like the Beaufort Digital Corridor and the Beaufort Commerce Park that can help contribute to the creation of higher-paying jobs.
Mike McFee
McFee has served 14 years as City Councilman for the City of Beaufort and the last eight years as Mayor Pro Tempore. He s a businessman and realtor, as well.
In addition to maintaining the City of Beaufort as we know it, and making it a safe place for people to live, McFee believes the city needs to diversify its economic base away from tourism and government.
He told the League of Women Voters that stable, higher-wage jobs are key to keeping and growing the city’s younger professional population.
“I think we all can agree that we have growth issues, and traffic issues, in the city and into the connectors coming into our neighboring communities, and the islands of course, so I think cooperatively one of the most important things intergovernmentally, I think, is for the governments that work together – the sister city and town of Port Royal, City of Beaufort and the county, regionally on the northern side of the islands, really have to be in lockstep and be working together to make the most of what we have.”
Josh Scallate
Scallate, 31, is a native of Beaufort and a 2009 graduate of Beaufort High School. He graduated from the South Carolina Fire Academy in 2012, and completed the EMT program at the Technical College of the Lowcountry in 2013.
Scallate is a lieutenant with the Lady’s Island St. Helena Fire District, where he has worked since 2013. In 2018, he was named Firefighter of the Year.
At 22, Scallate lost his brother to a drug overdose and has since committed to public service. He recently ran for the Beaufort County County Council District 4 seat and lost. But he said he learned a lot from the process.
“I filed in March to run for County Council, and I didn’t win that race, but that’s OK because I learned a lot from that and I was able to get a lot of support in that race, and it’s one of the reasons why I decided to run for City Council is because I feel like I I owe the people who committed to voting for me in that race, to continue to fight, Scallate said in September. “I mean, I can’t just give up and sit down, you know, my goal was to really be and put myself in a position to help shape the future of Beaufort.”
