- BIG STORY: Does Annie Andrews have a shot at U.S. Senate seat?
- ROUNDUP: PSC weighs $3B data center fight
- LOWCOUNTRY, Ariail: Deadly crossings
- BRACK: Chance encounter with past leads to questions
- MYSTERY PHOTO: Yellow house
- FEEDBACK: Send us your thoughts
Does Annie Andrews have a shot at U.S. Senate seat?
By Jack O’Toole, Statehouse bureau | Sometimes, the elephant in the room really is an elephant — as in the South Carolina Republican Party, the grand old pachyderm that’s stomped every Democrat running statewide for the past 20 years.
That’s right. There are Palmetto State voters — tens of thousands of them, in fact — who literally weren’t alive the last time a statewide Democratic candidate uncorked the champagne at an election-night victory party.
So how does Dr. Annie Andrews, the Lowcountry pediatrician turned Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, deal with the elephant at the center of her campaign?
Directly.
“Yes, we can absolutely win,” she told the City Paper this week, patiently ticking off the internal polling and fundraising data that show her in a dead heat with any potential Republican nominee. On Aug. 11, voters in a special Republican primary will pick her opponent following the unexpected recent death of the incumbent, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
“I’m tied with all these Republicans because people are tired of a broken Washington, D.C.,” she said. “They’re looking for something different — and as a doctor and a mom and someone who represents a generational shift in leadership, that’s exactly what I’m offering.”
Of course, this isn’t the race that she, or anyone else, was expecting.
A month ago, Andrews was focused on beating Lindsey Graham — an uphill race, to be sure, but one whose outlines were clear. Now, she’s in uncharted territory, watching from the sidelines while the GOP’s snap primary plays out.
Still, given the invariably low turnout in special elections, Andrews expects the GOP to serve up a candidate that’s a better fit for the party’s MAGA grassroots than its rank-and-file November voters.
“The people who are going to show up and vote in the primary are the most dialed-in, most hyper-partisan Republicans in South Carolina,” she said. “That’s why a more moderate, reasonable Republican like Mark Sanford, sadly in my view, doesn’t stand a chance.”
Sanford, the former congressman and governor who briefly challenged Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2020, is currently polling a distant fourth in the race. Last week, he was endorsed by the City Paper’s editorial board. Other high-profile candidates in the Aug. 11 race include U.S. Reps. Ralph Norman of York and Russell Fry of Myrtle Beach and the current incumbent, Graham’s sister Darline.
And it’s precisely the growing gap she sees between MAGA and Main Street that the Andrews campaign campaign, with its relentless focus on pragmatic solutions to everyday S.C. problems like affordability and health care, was designed to exploit.
“When I’m talking to center-right Republicans, they feel like their party left them and they’re looking for an alternative,” she said. “I believe South Carolina can become central to the story of how we turned the page on this hyper-partisan and hyper-divisive era of American politics.”
What’s more, she noted, she comes by that view honestly. After all, her own father is a lifelong Republican – and once a proud Lindsey Graham donor.
From pediatrics to politics
Like the famous Hemingway character who went bankrupt “slowly, then all at once,” Andrews’ political origin story starts with small moments in the life of a doctor — the patient struggling to pay for life-saving care, the mother leaving her child’s bedside to work a third shift — followed by an abrupt transformation.
“Everybody who makes a big pivot like I have from the practice of medicine to politics has that moment that drove them off the sidelines,” she said. “And for me, it was the shooting on Feb. 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.”
Why that one, and not the many before it?
“That was the first school shooting I experienced as the mother of a school-aged child,” she said quietly. “My oldest daughter was in kindergarten that year, so it just hit me differently. And I knew right then that I needed to find a way in, a way to be a part of solving these problems future generations of Americans were facing.”
Three years later, Andrews found her first way in — an uphill run for Congress against the famously fractious GOP U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace in the heavily gerrymandered 1st District.
“Nancy Mace really didn’t pull any punches,” Andrews said. “I got to see the ugliest side of politics in that race.”
But she also learned a lot, she said, from how to raise money to how to spend her own time.
“Mostly,” she said, “I learned how to confidently run the kind of campaign I want to run and to talk about the issues I want to talk about.”
Which may explain why she’s been so clear in this race about what she stands for — and what she doesn’t.
In the past two weeks alone, she’s publicly condemned U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a “grifter and conspiracy theorist,” and called some of the Democratic Socialists of America’s more controversial positions, such as prison abolition, “unAmerican and unhinged.”
“That’s not the far-left of my party,” Andrews said, when asked about the latter comment. “The DSA is a separate party — the Democratic Socialists of America — and I’m not a socialist.”
And with DSA candidates winning high-profile Democratic primaries around the country, Andrews said her GOP opponents will try to tar her with the socialist brush — as indeed, some already have.
“They’re going to try to associate me with this DSA movement,” she said. “But I don’t support the DSA or its platform. And that’s not the last time you’ll hear me say that.”
It’s the affordability, stupid
It seems hard to remember now, but in 1992, Republicans had been in the White House for 20 of the past 24 years — an electoral run not unlike the one the GOP is on here in the Palmetto State.
That’s why then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s Democratic campaign was so ruthlessly disciplined about not being dragged off-message by the daily barrage of new issues and stories. That campaign’s mantra, captured in a legendary sign at its national headquarters?
“Change versus more of the same. The economy, stupid. Don’t forget health care.”
It’s hard to talk to Annie Andrews and not hear the echoes of that long-ago exercise in message discipline.
“When I’m talking to voters, it’s really two things that we’re talking about — affordability and health care,” Andrews said. “And to me, the health-care piece is part of the affordability conversation, because if you can’t afford to see the doctor, you’re never going to be able to thrive economically in any other way.”
As Andrews continues, you can feel the underlying MAGA versus Main Street theory of her campaign start to take shape.
“Grocery prices are high because of inflation and tariffs, gas prices are high because of the war Trump started with Iran, and our health care system is on the brink of disaster because of the Republican Medicaid budget cuts,” Andrews said, noting that every major S.C. GOP official has supported all of it.
“That’s why they’re going to try to associate me with the DSA,” she added. “They don’t have a record to run on, and they haven’t delivered for South Carolina.”
Asked what she’d want every South Carolinian to know about her before heading to the polls this November, her answer was simple.
“I’m a pediatrician who’s worked on the front lines of our health care system for 20 years,” she said. “I’m a mom of three public school kids in Charleston County. I’m a pragmatic problem-solver and a public servant.”
She paused briefly, and then finished her thought.
“And I’m not a career politician,” she said. “I know South Carolina deserves a senator who will wake up every day and think about South Carolina first and fight for South Carolina first — and that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
Jack O’Toole is Statehouse bureau chief for Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
PSC weighs $3B data center fight
By Jack O’Toole, Statehouse Bureau | The South Carolina Public Service Commission (PSC) took up a philosophical-sounding question on Wednesday that’s anything but academic in a state where data centers and proposals for more are increasingly under siege by environmental and citizens groups: When is a power utility facility a power utility facility?
At issue before the commission: Does Valara Holdings have to win PSC approval for its planned $3-billion, 900,000-square-foot data center in Spartanburg County, since it will be powered by its own 457-megawatt natural gas plant?
Under state law, attorneys for the Southern Environmental Law Center told commissioners, any “major utility facility” generating more than 75 megawatts must go through the PSC’s siting and environmental approval process.
But Valara lawyers argued that, under another section of the state code, a power generation facility only becomes a “utility” when it sells electricity to the public.
“Does the Utility Facility Siting Act pertain to purely private self-generation that does not serve the public?” Valara attorney Andrew D’Antoni asked. “We believe the answer to that question is no.”
Meanwhile, Ben Mustian, deputy director of the Office of Regulatory Staff, which by statute represents the public interest in matters before the commission, urged members to stick to the plain language of the law.
“You go through this legal gymnastics to say ‘OK, it doesn’t apply to them,’” Mustian told commissioners. “Or as we read the statute, you just say ‘It says what it says.’”
The commission has said it will issue a final ruling by Sept. 4.
In other recent news
U.S. SENATE: Sanford revisits pig stunt two decades later. In 2004, Mark Sanford (in)famously carried a pair of pigs, Pork and Barrel, into the S.C. Statehouse to spotlight his concerns about legislative overspending. On Thursday, as part of his U.S. Senate race, he introduced the state press corps to two new porkers: Debt and Deficit.
- State Supreme Court says Ford can stay on ballot
- Fry, Graham’s PAC trade jabs in U.S. Senate race
- Candidates for special GOP primary debate on stage
- 8 GOP candidates make case for U.S. Senate seat at Charleston meeting
- Scott says he thinks Darline Graham will win Senate race
- GOP special primary echoes 1954 Senate race
Federal judge tosses Murdaugh’s lawsuit against former court clerk. Alex Murdaugh’s lawsuit against Becky Hill was thrown out by Judge Richard M. Gergel Wednesday.
A conversation with state health officials on the West Nile Virus outbreak. Radio host Reagan Knight spoke with S.C. Department of Public Health’s Dr. Martha Buchanan, the bureau director of communicable disease prevention and control, about the state’s West Nile Virus outbreak.
S.C. State to name building for Clyburn. S.C. State University said it is honoring U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn by naming its new STEM center for him.
S.C. Child Care Scholarship program paused. South Carolina families who relied on federal pandemic-era funding to pay for childcare are facing new financial pressure after a key assistance program has been paused.
S.C. tax-free weekend begins today with savings on school supplies, clothing and computers. South Carolina’s annual tax-free weekend is underway, giving shoppers three days to save on back-to-school and other qualifying purchases.
Deadly crossings
Award-winning cartoonist Robert Ariail has a special knack for shining a light on critical issues in just the right way. This week, he comments on the sad cases of pedestrians dying along South Carolina highways. The Palmetto State has the nation’s fourth most dangerous roads, according to one report.
- Love this week’s cartoon or hate it? Did he go too far, or not far enough? Send your thoughts to feedback@statehousereport.com.
Brack: Chance encounter with past leads to questions
Commentary by Andy Brack | Riding along in the rolling hills of the Ozark Mountains is a lot like traveling in Oconee and Pickens counties. Soothing, curvy highways slide across the dense, verdant landscape. The differences: More poverty, fewer stores and a lot less people.
So when the Tahoe’s navigation system reported the town where my great-grandparents lived almost 100 years ago was just six miles off the highway, it was a no-brainer to steer east to Ravenden Springs, Ark.
The road got worse. Interspersed between bumps and lush forests were large pastures with few cows. Suddenly came the city limits, population 119.
Just past what seemed like a worn post office, a man fiddled in his yard. He was the only person visible during a 20-minute exploration. At a crossroads (no stoplight) to the left was a dip across a bridge that led to two different churches joined in the middle, a volunteer fire department and a few small old cottages that needed tending. On the other side of the crossroads was a rickety, empty store next to an empty building, an American Legion and a building with a caved-in roof.
The city hall/water department was next door in a tan metal structure with a red roof. Parked in front was a silver town truck with capital letters on the tailgate: “IN GOD WE TRUST.” So much for separation of church and state.
My 89-year-old mother remembers visiting her grandparents in this town that just seems sad. She recalls the four storefronts had a connected wooden walkway – like in the Old West – because the dirt roads got muddy when it rained.
Around the corner was her favorite building – a one-room stone structure that then housed the town’s jail. Today, the sole window has no bars. In the background is an odd house that’s half log cabin and something else completely that’s painted maroon.
Across the street is an empty modern playground below a closed stone school built in 1941. One end of the school now houses a library that’s apparently been open four days a week since 2022. My mother says when she was a child, townspeople would watch movies at the school but she wasn’t allowed to go because she was too little.
Her grandparents lived in Ravenden Springs. They moved there from eastern Missouri sometime after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Why they moved is a mystery that likely will never be solved. There’s nobody left to answer questions – and my mother was too young to know much more.
That side of the family is kind of a mystery because her father – my grandfather – died three years before I was born in a Faulknerian tractor accident outside Macon, Ga. He stopped the tractor while plowing to move a big rock and, let’s just say, he died.
His father, who ran a Missouri hamburger restaurant at one point, and mother may have moved to northeast Arkansas because they picked up some pasture land during the Depression. The area also apparently was popular with Seventh-Day Adventists, which also may have been a lure.
My grandfather, an educator at the start of the Depression, eventually started work on a master’s degree in agricultural economics at the University of Arkansas. He got the degree in 1935 and my mother thinks her grandfather may have been raising some cattle with him. Makes sense. Around that time, he and my great-grandmother would have been approaching 60.
While Ravenden Springs seems much like a sparsely populated ghost town these days, it apparently got started around 1880 after a minister’s dream about a nearby mineral spring. The water apparently healed his ailments, leading a businessman to build a 40-room resort. That led to seasonal spa visitors and “boom years,” but by the 1930s – about the time my great-grandparents moved there – the town started to decline as a summer resort.
This week’s chance encounter with the past certainly led to more questions than answers. Next time I’m nearby, I’ll remember to go when the library is open.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a question? Send to: feedback@charlestoncitypaper.com.
Yellow house
Here’s a mysterious building somewhere in rural South Carolina. What is it and where? What’s the largest employer in this county? Please send in your best guess – and your name and hometown – to feedback@statehousereport.com. And if you have a mystery photo to share, send that along too (but tell us what it is because we’re horrible guessers.)
Last week’s mystery, “Six big columns,” showed the Chester County Courthouse, which was finished in 1852. What was pretty amazing is that longtime sleuth Bill Segars of Hartsville was actually in Chester County when he saw the mystery picture – and he snapped another photo of it!
Others who identified the image were Philip Cromer of Beaufort; Steve Willis of Lancaster; Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; and Jay Altman of Columbia.
- 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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Statehouse Report, founded in 2001 as a weekly legislative forecast that informs readers about what is going to happen in South Carolina politics and policy, is provided by email to you at no charge every Friday.
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- Statehouse bureau chief: Jack O’Toole
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