Ticket toppers: Wilson, Johnson make cases for governor

The late Lee Atwater likely wouldn’t have known what to make of it.

Opponents who don’t tear into each other — or even mention the other guy’s name?

That’s just not how Atwater, the bad-boy Palmetto State Republican operative who famously exported South Carolina’s gleefully savage brand of bare-knuckles politics to the rest of the nation in the 1980s, played the game.

And yet, in interviews last week, state Attorney General Alan Wilson and Rep. Jermaine Johnson, the respective Republican and Democratic candidates for governor, spoke earnestly and at length about their plans for the state — and didn’t talk at all about one another. If it wasn’t full-on Minnesota Nice politics, it was at least Palmetto State Polite.

“Look, this is a conservative state and I intend to be a conservative governor,” Wilson said. “But if we’re truly going to lift all boats with the tide here in South Carolina, it’s going to require us to sometimes reach across the aisle to people we don’t always agree with regardless of party.”
Johnson struck a similar bipartisan note when asked about his approach.

“The reason I have respect from Republicans in the General Assembly is because I communicate,” he said. “I spend time with them. I work with them. And while we may not always see eye-to-eye on everything, we can usually figure out a compromise that gets a victory for the people of South Carolina.”

Still, underneath the bipartisan rhetoric, there are two very different men running for governor of South Carolina — and each has a different story to tell.

Johnson: ‘‘People need to hear they can make it through the fire’

At some point, probably every poor kid in America dreams of being smart and talented and disciplined enough to take the school-and-sports express out of poverty and into the great American middle class.

Jermaine Johnson, born to working-class parents in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood on the Fourth of July 1985, was one of the kids who wasn’t just dreaming.

Courtesy Johnson Campaign

Growing up, he saw it all — and lived most of it. Intermittent homelessness. Drugs everywhere you looked. A brother killed by a gun.

And all the while, Johnson was playing basketball for prep schools that wanted his smarts and his talent — gifts that in 2004 landed him at the College of Charleston on a full athletic scholarship.

“Basketball saved my life,” he said simply.

And it taught him, he said, that he had to keep fighting — first for his future, and then for others.

“People need to know they can overcome these obstacles, they can make it through the fire,” said Johnson, now 41. “All these different experiences in my life have just given me a unique perspective on caring for people, on having that empathy for all South Carolinians.”

Eventually, those experiences led Johnson to start and lead the nonprofit New Economic Beginnings Foundation, which helps find education and job opportunities for troubled young people and veterans — and to run for a seat in the S.C. House, where he’s served since December 2020.

And you can hear the echoes of that life when he talks about his top three priorities as governor: improving the state’s 42nd-in-the-nation education system, fixing its “decrepit” roads and bridges, and expanding Medicaid to give 500,000 South Carolinians access to health care.

“When I’m governor, we’re going to start defining the success of South Carolina — not by how its businesses are doing, but by how its people are doing,” said the 6-foot-7 Johnson. “I’ve been hungry, I’ve been homeless, I’ve lived in motels. I’ll fight for everyday South Carolinians because I’ve never forgotten where I came from.”

Wilson: ‘The things that matter more than title, position or money’

When people hear that Alan Wilson is longtime 2nd District Congressman Joe Wilson’s son, they may find themselves imagining a life of silver spoons and easy advancement.

And glancing at a campaign biography — Eagle Scout, colonel in the National Guard, state attorney general before his fortieth birthday — it’s easy to see why.

It would also be wrong.

Courtesy Wilson Campaign

Born in West Columbia in 1973, Wilson lost his biological father, a Vietnam veteran who died in a helicopter accident during flight training at Fort Bragg, N.C., before his third birthday.

Soon he and his mother Roxanne were back in S.C., where she was teaching school and raising a toddler on her own — not an easy thing for a woman in that era or any other, Wilson noted with unmistakable pride.

Eventually, Wilson said, his mother met and married the man he calls “my second dad,” a young attorney named Joe Wilson, who adopted the boy and helped set him “on a pathway to public service.”

But it was two later experiences — witnessing the bravery of his fellow soldiers when his convoy came under attack in Iraq and helping his wife during a harrowing but ultimately successful fight against breast cancer — that Wilson called “very impactful.”

“The first event grounded me in my faith and taught me to appreciate and take full advantage of life,” Wilson said. “And the second taught me to have priorities — God, faith and family. Those are the things that matter so much more than title, position or money.”

Asked about his top three priorities as governor, Wilson talked about a “quality of life” agenda for South Carolina families — improving affordability, limiting the negative impacts of an exploding population with smart growth strategies and investing in infrastructure.

“My number one goal as governor is to make people’s lives better, which probably hearkens back to the Boy Scouts, who teach you to always leave the campsite better than you found it,” Wilson said. “I would do everything I could to make it easier for you to live, work and raise a family in South Carolina.”

And two things you probably don’t know

After so much time talking about the challenges they’d faced and their hopes for South Carolina, each candidate seemed happy to end on a question that asked them to be themselves for a moment.

What don’t most people know about you? What would they be surprised to learn?

“One of my favorite things to do is, my wife and I love to watch Hallmark movies during the holidays,” Wilson said with a laugh. “We just love the holidays. I’m like the Clark Griswold of Christmas. And at Halloween, we’re the house where you’ll have 300 kids lined up to come through because we just love to do it up big.”

As for Johnson, he said he’s always surprised when people think his basketball career ended at the College of Charleston.

“People don’t realize I was an actual athlete before I got into this,” Johnson said. “I played professional ball in the NBA D League, and then overseas for six years — Brazil, Canada, Portugal, Mexico. When you include the College of Charleston, that’s 11 years of high-level basketball — and these days, people only know the last six in politics.”

With two months left to go in the race, Lee Atwater may yet have his day. Both campaigns have certainly laid the groundwork for tough contrasts in prior statements, with Wilson calling the Democratic ticket the most “radical” in S.C. history, and Johnson observing that it’s rich when the party that’s controlled every level of state government for 20 years starts talking about change.

But for now at least, when the candidates are asked to talk about what matters most to them, it’s personal stories, positive agendas, Hallmark movies and roundball.

The first debate between the candidates will air statewide from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Oct. 6 on Gray Media stations and on the web. Voters will decide the race when they head to the polls Nov. 3.