UPDATED, 11 a.m., 4/18/25 | For South Carolina Democrats, 1st Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe’s April 10 announcement that he was switching parties was just another verse in a song they’ve been hearing since 1962 when party-switching Midlands U.S. Rep. Floyd Spence first penned the music. Two years later, U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond wrote the lyrics when he switched.
“I am here today because I can no longer in good conscience wear the label of Democrat,” Pascoe told a group of Dorchester County Republicans recently, citing his pro-life, pro-death penalty record as a prosecutor. “I stand here today proudly as a new member of the GOP.”
But despite the tune’s basic familiarity, insiders in both parties told the Charleston City Paper that Pascoe’s defection raises questions that make it more than the same old song. He might, for example, be angling to run for attorney general in 2026, realizing that running as a Democrat would be pretty much a guaranteed losing proposition. Democrats haven’t held a statewide constitutional office in two decades.
So for Republicans, the question is simple: Will their polarized primary voters still welcome a Democratic turncoat at a time when the GOP controls every statewide elected office and enjoys supermajority status in both houses of the state legislature?
But for Democrats, the questions run deeper: Is this finally rock bottom? And if so, how, exactly, can they start turning things around?
‘Lifelong conservative’ or ‘dead man walking’?
With regard to the question for Republicans, many GOP leaders and Democrats agree: Pascoe’s got nowhere to go but down.
“I think it’s going to be a hard sell [in the GOP attorney general race],” said Luke Byars, senior partner at First Tuesday Strategies, one of the state’s leading GOP consulting firms. “Pascoe has a better relationship with Joe Biden than any South Carolina Republican I’ve ever seen … and that’s not going to take him far in a GOP primary.”
Democratic party leaders were even more dubious.
“This isn’t surprising to anyone who knows Pascoe,” former S.C. Democratic Party Chair Trav Robertson said. “It’s nothing more than political expediency by a guy who won’t be in office much longer anyway. He’s a dead man walking.”
But another leading Palmetto State GOP consultant, Push Digital’s Wesley Donehue, who’s now working for Pascoe, says those arguments are just flat wrong.
First, he says, Pascoe is no liberal Democrat — he’s just a conservative who’s finally in the right party.
“David Pascoe is probably the most hard-core conservative prosecutor in South Carolina,” Donehue said. “I mean, just last week, a cop killer was put to death by a firing squad because of David’s prosecution. The guy is just as tough on crime as you can get.”
Pascoe has a better relationship with Joe Biden than any South Carolina Republican I’ve ever seen … and that’s not going to take him far in a GOP primary.”
Luke ByArs, senior partner at First Tuesday Strategies
And as for GOP complaints that Pascoe was a Democrat who endorsed Biden in 2020, Donehue fired back with a historical reminder — and a few choice words of his own.
“Donald Trump was a Democrat who wrote checks to Hillary Clinton,” Donehue said. “And I don’t see the same people talking shit about Donald Trump.”
Tough questions for Democrats
Regardless of what happens to Pascoe, it’s hard these days to overstate the challenges facing Palmetto State Democrats.
Not only do Republicans currently control every constitutional office, Democrats haven’t won a statewide election since 2006. GOP supermajorities in the state legislature are growing, not shrinking. And in last year’s elections, the GOP began winning local races in longtime Democratic strongholds, as S.C. Republican Party Chair Drew McKissick told the City Paper last December.
“[In 2024], we picked up four sheriff’s seats, a probate judge, four clerks of court, three county coroners, one auditor, one solicitor, three county treasurers and 13 county council seats,” McKissick said. “In rural counties around the state, places where Republicans have never won before, we’re winning and have Democrats switching parties.”
But even as Democrats acknowledge the scale of the problem — one party activist called it “a damn disaster” — they also argue that the party’s weakness in statewide elections could be turned around with better candidate recruitment and a clear message on the impact of Trump’s economic policies in South Carolina.
Regarding candidate recruitment, Robertson, the former party chair, is blunt.
“We live in a world now where everybody has a right to run for office, but not everybody has any business doing it,” he said. “As chairman of a party, I can fix a lot of things, but I can’t fix dumbass.”
What’s more, he says, that problem could be addressed by a single strong candidate at the top of the ticket, creating a halo effect for every other Democrat on the ballot.
But just as important, he argues, Democrats need to take the fight to Republicans on the economy — particularly with Trump’s tariffs threatening major S.C. industries.
“When Donald Trump’s national economic advisor [Peter] Navarro says that BMW is bad and detrimental to America, he obviously doesn’t have a damn clue what that means for South Carolina,” Robertson said. “And it’s not just BMW — it’s going to decimate Scout Motors and Boeing and Volvo and Mercedes. It’s going to decimate the port.”
To put that in perspective, he notes, the port at Charleston supports one out of every 10 South Carolina jobs, and exports represent more than 10% of the state’s economic output.
“That’s going to give Democrats a serious opening,” he said.
‘Above all, try something’
Another possible opening Democrats say they’ve spotted? The recent unwillingness of many GOP officials to take unfiltered public questions in traditional in-district town hall meetings.
That’s why South Carolina’s lone Democratic congressman, U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, has scheduled town halls in two of his GOP colleagues’ backyards: April 22 in Spartanburg and April 24 in Beaufort. Those districts are represented by Fourth District Republican U.S. Rep. William Timmons and Charleston-area Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, respectively.
It’s also why the state Democratic Party is calling out GOP U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on social media for what it calls “hiding.”
“You can’t keep hiding behind closed-door Republican events,” the party wrote in response to an April 15 post by Graham on X. “Let us know when you’re ready to face the rest of your constituents.”
Will the issue help Democrats break through? Party insiders say they aren’t sure — but given the circumstances, it’s a place to start.
Or as President Franklin Roosevelt, father of modern Democratic party, famously put it at the height of the Great Depression in 1932:
“It is common sense to take a method and try it,” Roosevelt said. “If it fails, admit it frankly and try another — but above all, try something.”
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