STATEHOUSE REPORT |  ISSUE 25.19  |  MAY 8, 2026
  • BIG STORY: S.C. GOP  divided over remap risks of
  • ROUNDUP: Turner leaves conservation legacy in S.C.
  • LOWCOUNTRY, Ariail:  How would you like it?
  • BRACK: Meet the legislature’s Cowardly Numbskulls
  • MYSTERY PHOTO:  Pretty course
  • FEEDBACK: Send us your thoughts
BIG STORY

S.C. GOP  divided over risks of redrawing congressional districts

News analysis by Jack O’Toole | With just three business days left in the legislative session, Republicans in the South Carolina Senate tapped the brakes Thursday on a last-minute plan to gerrymander 17-term Democratic U.S. Rep. James Clyburn out  of his congressional seat.

The plan, which would have to begin with a special session to redraw the lines after the legislature formally adjourns for the year on May 14, appeared to be dead as recently as Tuesday, when Gov. Henry McMaster announced that he wouldn’t call lawmakers back into session on the issue.

South Carolina Statehouse | file photo Credit: Sean Rayford file photo

In his announcement, McMaster noted statewide primary elections are set for June 9, with candidates actively running in districts that were redrawn in 2022. What’s more, military and overseas ballots for those races have already been sent — and some have been returned.

But in the face of intense personal and public lobbying by President Donald Trump and grassroots GOP activists across the state, S.C. House Republicans revived the redistricting push on Wednesday, passing a resolution to authorize the special session in an  87-25 party-line vote.

Now what?

So what slowed the plan’s momentum in the Senate? Concerns among GOP officials that carving up the state’s only Democratic congressional district could wind up endangering the six safe U.S. House seats Republicans currently enjoy. 

Or as Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey put it earlier in the week: “I think if you try to get 7-0, you’re more likely to get 5-2. Trying to get cute with this is more likely to cause a problem than be beneficial.”

Massey reiterated those concerns Thursday, telling reporters that the proposed map he’s seen, which members said originated in the White House, could put several GOP seats in play — and hurt Republican candidates at every level.

“If you’re making three or four seats competitive, you’re going to get better Democratic candidates, and you’re going to get more money for those candidates,” Massey said. “And when more money gets spent on the Democratic side, you’re going to affect down-ballot races.”

He added, “If we’re going to spill all the blood that’s necessary to do something like this, we can’t stay in the same position, and we surely can’t go backwards.”

Nevertheless, with the president pushing for the plan — Massey said he’s spoken with Trump twice on the issue — the resolution to allow the special session could still reach the Senate floor as early as Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the powerful Democratic congressman at the center of the redistricting effort pushed back hard in a Thursday social media post, noting that it’s “not happening because voters demanded it, but because Donald Trump requested it.”

“This fight is bigger than one district,” Clyburn said. “It’s about whether our democracy belongs to the people, or to politicians who change the rules when they don’t like the results. We cannot let them succeed.”

A Supreme Court decision … and Indiana

The S.C. redistricting fight isn’t taking place in a vacuum, experts note. 

In fact, they say, it’s just the latest round in a state-level tit-for-tat gerrymandering contest that’s been playing out between the two parties since Texas Republicans redistricted in 2025 and California Democrats answered in kind earlier this year.

So far, eight states have redrawn their lines in what political observers say has mostly been a draw, with each party picking up 10-12 seats.

That appeared to be where the fight would end until an April 29 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court struck down two majority-minority districts in Louisiana as illegal racial gerrymanders — opening the door for Trump to argue that GOP lawmakers across the South had a duty to eliminate all minority-majority districts.

“We should demand that state legislatures do what the Supreme Court says must be done,” Trump said in a May 3 social media post. “The byproduct is that the Republicans will receive more than 20 House Seats in the upcoming midterms!”

And while the same Supreme Court upheld S.C.’s congressional map as a legal “partisan gerrymander” in 2024, Trump has nonetheless included it in his push to eradicate all the heavily Democratic districts created a generation ago to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Still, most S.C. GOP leaders appeared to be politely resisting the president’s entreaties – until the returns started coming in from Indiana’s Republican primaries Tuesday night where Trump allies knocked off five of the seven GOP legislators who refused his demand to redistrict earlier this year.

All 124 S.C. House seats are on the ballot in 2026. Senators won’t face voters again until 2028.

 “There’s certainly been talk about it,” Massey reportedly said of the Indiana results. “Probably primarily on the House side.”

Gerrymandering or ‘dummymandering’?

Democratic political operatives in S.C. say they see opportunities opening up that would have been inconceivable under the existing map, which piles Democrats into the 6th district to create double-digit Republican advantages in the other six. 

Specifically, they say, the 1st, 2nd and 6th districts would be competitive under the so-called White House map, with the GOP advantage in each district  dropping to three to six points.

“This is an extreme overreach by the Republicans,” said Charleston-based Democratic consultant Lachlan McIntosh. “They’re heading into the worst political environment they’ve seen in a generation, and this map would create three very, very competitive districts.”

He added, “They know this is a bad plan for them. But they’re willing to sacrifice their political power just so Daddy Trump won’t yell at them.”

That’s a concern would-be gerrymanderers would do well to take seriously, according to Winthrop political scientist Scott Huffmon, who said that parties have been known to shoot themselves in the foot with unwise redistricting in the past.

“It’s not my term, but when you attempt a gerrymander that backfires, it’s called ‘dummymandering,’” Huffmon said. “And not denigrate anyone, but there’s a darn good chance that one or more of those new Texas districts wind up being dummymanders.”

In the 2025 redistricting, Texas Republicans expected to pick up five new congressional seats. But based on the latest polling, experts say they might be lucky to pick up two.

As for S.C. Democrats’ view that they could be more, rather than less, competitive under a new map, Huffmon is cautious, noting that it would take a Blue wave of Democratic turnout, including independents and soft-leaners. 

“If all the Democrats vote, and Republicans don’t have a massive turnout because they think they’re dominant anyway and maybe they’re not so thrilled with the way things are going, then yeah, competitive districts are realistic,” he said.

But regardless of any political outcomes either way, S.C. League of Women Voters Vice President Lynn Teague said her group opposes the proposed redistricting.

“Convincing people to vote when they’ve seen conscious, obvious, blatant attempts to rig the maps is just very hard,” Teague said. “The constitutional purpose is to see to it that all the people of South Carolina are represented in Washington. And this would send exactly the wrong message.”

A House Judiciary subcommittee will meet today to begin discussing a new map, along with a proposal to move the congressional primaries to Aug. 11.

  • Jack O’Toole is Statehouse bureau chief for Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper.
  • Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
ROUNDUP

Turner leaves conservation legacy in S.C.

Staff reports | Ted Turner, the iconoclastic Atlanta media mogul who founded CNN, had a big conservation impact on South Carolina.   He died Wednesday at age 87.

Not only did he purchase and conserve thousands of acres of South Carolina land, but his role as an early adopter for conservation helped convince others to protect the state’s special places, according to people who knew him.

“We are so grateful and so indebted to his conservation legacy,” Chris Crowley, owner of Coastal Expeditions tours and who also serves as Awendaw’s mayor, told The Post and Courier.

Turner in 2000. Credit: Wikipedia.

Crowley’s company routinely ferries visitors to St. Phillips Island, which Turner bought in 1979.  At 4,680 acres in Beaufort County, it was the state’s largest-held private island until Turner sold it to the state at less than market rate in 2017.  

Turner, who was one of the nation’s largest landowners with 2 million acres in holdings, helped set a standard for conservation by placing his first South Carolina property, 4,200-acre Hope Plantation in Colleton County, in a conservation easement in 1988.  

At the time, the agreement to restrict development was a pretty new tool, but soon became a vital strategy for conservationists who eventually established the wildly-successful ACE River Basin.  It is at the confluence of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers south of Charleston where more than 300,000 acres is protected today.

Turner also paid $2.9 million for Kinloch Plantation, a 5,800-acre hunting preserve near Georgetown, in 1982.  It now is protected permanently through an easement with Ducks Unlimited.

In other recent news

ELECTIONS: SCETV to host 3 election debates in 2026 primary. Coverage will include the GOP primary debate for attorney general plus the gubernatorial debates for Democrats and Republicans. 

STATEHOUSE: Legislature poised to raise their own pay in final days of session. South Carolina legislators are poised to give themselves their first pay raise in decades in the closing days of the 2026 legislative session.

$2.7B sale of idled nuclear reactors marks ‘major step forward.’ The global investment firm that’s aiming to finish the two partly built reactors at the V.C. Summer nuclear power plant is working with a Midlands energy company to take the $2.7 billion deal to the next phase.

S.C. colleges push to trim expenses. Earlier this year, legislators proposed requiring the state’s four-year universities, as well as all University of South Carolina satellite campuses, to phase out academic programs that lose money.

Rain isn’t helping S.C. farmers, and neither is much else. Farmers in the state are battling a triple threat: expensive fertilizer, high fuel costs and dry weather.

DPH confirms second measles case in Saluda County. The South Carolina Department of Public Health reported a second measles case in Saluda County Monday. The new case reportedly is unrelated to the state’s measles outbreak that ended April 26.

ROBERT ARIAIL’S LOWCOUNTRY

How would you like it?

Award-winning cartoonist Robert Ariail has a special knack for poking a little fun in just the right way.  This week, he showcases what leaky septic tanks do to the state’s waters.

COMMENTARY

Meet the legislature’s Cowardly Numbskulls

By Andy Brack  |  There’s a new caucus in the S.C. General Assembly of like-minded souls who want to make a real difference in South Carolina politics.

It’s not a revived Fat and Ugly Caucus, the bipartisan social group of lawmakers and insiders from more than a generation ago who drank lots of liquor and enjoyed a good time.  It’s not the MAGA-friendly S.C. Freedom Caucus that boldly seeks offbeat, wacky solutions that would make Attila the Hun blush.

No, this new political group is the Cowardly Numbskull Caucus.  Only Republicans who want to flout voting traditions and who are deathly terrified of President Donald Trump are admitted. Right now,, that means every Republican senator or House member who thinks it’s a good idea to redraw congressional maps in mid-decade – just to dilute the majority-Black 6th Congressional District in hopes of turning it red.

Earth to Numbskulls:  It won’t.  Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn will beat whoever you throw up against him, regardless of the lines.  And more bad news:  If you take Black voters out of the 6th District and move them into the Red-centric seats you wanted back in 2022, then what you’re going to do is make some of those districts more competitive for Democrats.  

In other words, all of these cynical machinations could backfire, especially as Trump’s poll numbers continue to tank because he hasn’t lowered prices on gas and food.  And he’s now gotten the country involved in a stupid war with Iran where we’re desperately negotiating to return things back to the way they were before we dropped thousands of bombs on the arid country.

Unsplash

Back to redistricting:  While we’ve never liked the current gerrymandered congressional maps that state legislators drew after the 2020 census, we really don’t like the intentional manipulation of district lines now that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled recently that race could not be a significant factor in redrawing district lines.  What the justices essentially did was give a green light to Southern legislatures to return to Jim Crow divisions in a mad attempt to hold onto the U.S. House in the fall.

(As an aside, if Republican policies were working in the country, there wouldn’t need to be so much manipulation of district lines to try to create new red districts.  But sadly, all the Republicans at the federal level can do is to resort to cheating voters by changing the rules in midstream.)

Which brings us back to the Cowardly Numbskulls.  Here’s the coward part:  It’s pretty sad how terrified they are that Trump will take vengeance if they don’t redraw the map to try to squeak out one more GOP House seat.  They’re probably having nightmares of having an endorsement being pulled by the increasingly mercurial Trump.  

Even longtime Trump supporter Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s governor, had the courage to say no to calling the General Assembly back into special session to redraw maps.  Why?  In part because candidates have already filed for the primary, currently scheduled for June 9.  Some absentee voters have already voted.  Candidates have been spending campaign cash in buckets to get name recognition.  

And here’s the numbskull part:  Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it’s good for the state of South Carolina and voters.  In the rush to redistrict, we’re seeing the true colors of those who want to turn back the clock, not move forward.  We’re seeing the erosion of our constitutional republic in favor of more authoritarian crap.

If Republicans in the legislature insist on this idiotic redistricting at mid-decade, there will be unintended consequences.  That’s what happens when numbskulls are in charge.

Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper.  Have a comment?  Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.

MYSTERY PHOTO

Green course

Here’s a verdant snapshot.  What is it and where is it?  Send your best guess – plus hometown and name – to: feedback@statehousereport.com.  

Last week’s photo, “Placid picture,” was an overhead view of a spillway and bridge at Gibson Pond Park in Lexington.  

Hats off to four sleuths who identified it:  George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Jay Altman of Columbia; Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas; and Frank Bouknight of Summerville.

Peel wrote the area around the park had gristmills and sawmills in the 1800s, later becoming a private resort in the mid-20th century.

“An earthen dam crossing the Twelve Mile Creek was originally built in 1930 to create the pond. However during a “1,000-year flood” in 2015, the dam failed and caused the pond to drain completely. In 2021, the city of Lexington, which had purchased the property in 2007, rebuilt the dam … and added the prefabricated truss pedestrian bridge, thereby restoring the pond and reopening Gibson Pond Park to the public in August 2021.”

  • SHARE: If you have a Mystery Photo to share, please send it to us – and make sure you tell us what it is!
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  • Have a comment?  Send your letters or comments to: feedback@statehousereport.com.  Make sure to provide your contact details (name, hometown and phone number for verification.  Letters are limited to 150 words.
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