Editor’s Note: Special correspondent Danielle Blyn is providing updated coverage throughout the week from the Democratic National Convention.
CHICAGO, updated | South Carolina native Jaime Harrison channeled his best version of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim “Coach” Walz in rallying South Carolina delegates about their part in a winning November political campaign.
“If this is a team sport, if we have our MVP and Madam Vice President Kamala Harris,” said Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “If we have our coach in Tim Walz, any championship team has to have some good role players. That’s where all of you come in.”
He said Vice President Kamala Harris was “going to hit every shot.”
Jaime Harrison Credit: File
“She’s going to channel Michael Jordan on the stage tonight. The mission, how we win this championship, won’t be just on their shoulders, but it’ll be on ours.
“What I want you all to do, when you pack up from here, and you go back home to South Carolina: You get people to knock on doors, get people registered, the last few days.”
Harrison highlighted the work that he did while he was running for U.S. Senate, donating money to every Democratic campaign that was operating at the same time as his.
“I do it not because I want my name in the headlines,” Harrison said. “I do it because I’m raising my two black boys in South Carolina. My grandma is in South Carolina. My family is in South Carolina. My roots and my heart are in South Carolina.
“We are going to channel the ancestors, find all the strings where we didn’t know we had it, make sure that we understand that hope is still alive, that we are going to do every single thing, everything that we have, to make sure that Kamala Harris is a 47th president of the United States. Are you ready, South Carolina?”
Harris is scheduled to give the keynote address Thursday night to close the rousing Chicago convention.
Updated, 4:45 p.m. | Michael B. Moore, the Mount Pleasant Democratic challenger this fall to GOP U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace is seeking to reclaim a job seat his great-great-grandfather held during Reconstruction.
Moore
“There was a Democrat in this seat just four years ago,” Moore said Thursday at a state delegation breakfast at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
“I think slowly but surely Democrats are making inroads,” he said. “I think the party’s doing a wonderful job of galvanizing Democrats, figuring out ways to support Democrats.”
South Carolina’s First Congressional District has been dubbed the closest thing that the Palmetto State has to a swing seat in Congress. Moore may be an underdog, but if Democrats, particularly African-American voters, turn out in large shares for Vice President Kamala Harris, that could boost Moore’s chances as well.
Moore’s great-great-grandfather, Robert Smalls, was born into slavery but freed himself and others in an act of bravery that paved the way for President Abraham Lincoln accepting former slaves to fight for the Union. Look for a story in Friday’s City Paper that highlights a new state commission dedicated to erecting a statue on Statehouse grounds in honor of Smalls.
A win in the First Congressional District, Moore said, would make him the fourth in five generations of his family to hold office.
This year, South Carolina Democrats are fielding a candidate for every House race in the state including deep-red districts.
“It’s a contact sport, it’s a participatory sport, we need people of all walks of life to stick their neck out and to get in and fight for things that they care about,” Moore told the breakfast gathering.
“Just get involved,” he said. “It’s my first time running. Every day I’m learning new things. Don’t be afraid to jump in and speak out for what’s important.”
Danielle Blyn, a junior political science and journalism student at Syracuse University, will be reporting from Chicago during the convention for the Charleston City Paper. She is covering the DNC as part of a program with Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Born and raised in southern California, she says she hopes to move to Washington, D.C., to pursue a career covering the White House.
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