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Flattop Bob Conley vs Lindsey Graham: Republican vs Republican in SC Senate Race
The South Carolina Democratic Party did not pay any attention to challenging Lindsey Graham in this year’s US Senate election. Apparently the cost of running a winning campaign combined with the enormous fundraising advantage Graham enjoys as an incumbent ruled out a serious contest in the state’s other national election this year.
This is fundamentally unserious, it indicates the extreme unhealthy state of the two major parties and democracy in general. When more than 90% of incumbents are returned to office, the position of challenger to a sitting U.S. Senator becomes essentially worthless. The role was not sought by a mainstream state Democrat like Inez Tannenbaum. Instead two outsiders entered the primary, probably only interested in the contest as a political platform for future organizing. One candidate was backed by the SC AFL-CIO, the other by a collection of political outsiders who ought not have been competitive.
When choosing between two underfunded candidates with similar sounding names, voters in the Democratic primary nearly split the vote. It seems unlikely that the majority of voters knew who they were voting for, given the virtual media blackout on the Senate race.
Robert M. “Bob” Conley won the SC Democratic primary on June 10, 2008. At the time SCDP chairman Don Fowler said, “That’s the Democratic Party. We welcome anybody.” The writer of the AP article proved more prescient than Fowler:
“Democrats didn’t put much effort into recruiting a big-name candidate to take on Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in November. Now, it’s possible their chosen politician will be tough for many in the party to support.”
Tough to support is an understatement. Conley was a member of the Horry County GOP Committee until he won the Democratic Primary. That in itself would not rule him out from being a DP candidate, but Conley is seriously out of step with the majority of DP voters.
Conley is endorsed by neoconfederates, and he is proud enough of the support to include youtube videos of these endorsements on his campaign website. Neoconfederates position themselves as small government isolationists. Support for the CSA as a social model is implicitly a position of apology for slavery and a carefully rebranded exposition of white nationalist extremism.
Whatever else his campaign may run on (and its taken on an isolationist foreign policy and a return to the gold standard), the association of Conley with the neoconfederates completely alienates the African-American South Carolinians who are a majority in the SCDP and without whom no Democratic victory is possible. Unquestionably, the majority of Conley’s voter’s were African-American citizens who would never have supported a Confederate apologist had they known who he was.
Democrats had the opportunity to run Michael Cone on the Working Families Party line, as he had previously been endorsed by that ballot-qualified party.
The South Carolina Working Families Party has declined to forward its nomination of Mr. Cone to the SC Electoral Commission, so Cone will not appear on the ballot. The SC WFP hasn’t updated its webpage to reflect the fact that none of its nominees won the DP primaries. Nor did they forward the nomination of Eugene Platt, who had been endorsed by the Green Party, and who is being opposed by the SCDP.
Conley’s support runs the gamut from neoconfederates to the fundamentalist religious right. He has been endorsed by the southern secessionists such the Southron Liberation News Service, Charleston radio host and local columnist the “Southern Avenger”, and by the Constitution Party’s presidential nominee, Pastor Chuck Baldwin.
The decision to roll over after the selection of Conley was hardly justified. Less than 1,500 votes separated Cone and Conley and a recount was necessary to determine the final result. By his own account, Conley raised and spent only $30,000 to the end of June. Cone raised less money but spent about as much, leaving his campaign with $9,500 debt. Conley apparently won the race based on chance rather than any substantive factors. Cone has removed his campaign website, but on the google cache of his Issues page, he defines himself as a Populist and endorses national health care. Cones’ issues page is otherwise light on specifics, something he may have been thinking of when he told AP reporter Jim Davenport that he wished he’d paid more attention to his opponent.
Cone could have campaigned on national health care, if nothing else, and might even have taken a reconciliation stand on immigration and distinguished himself from the exclusionary panic of Conley and the unworkable compromise of Graham. The failure to run even a token campaign against Graham on the WFP line is an acknowlegement that no candidate would have offered much an alternative to the Republican and a contempt for the political process.
No one doubts that Graham will win the election. He’s raised more than $10,000,000. The DP’s decision to throw the Senate election in SC concedes the political space of state’s other national election to apologists for slavery. The party would have formulated any kind of challenge to Graham, given is lackluster effort in the primary. It has turned the field of civil liberties and anti-war vote over the the right wing. The only possible reason for not contesting the election of two anti-immigrant, anti-health care candidacies would be because the SCDP would rather trust to the ignorance of the polity than contest the election.
Graham will be 90 years old in 2045. The SCDP is apparently willing for Graham to hit Strom Thurmond’s seniority before they spend the money necessary to seriously contest the election. Alternatively, they might admit that the political system is sick and needs serious reform to overcome the powers of incumbency – not likely considering how they sought to block third party candidacies while rolling over on the hijacking of their ballot line by right wing extremists.
== Further Reading ==
See Baldwin’s endorsement on Hunter’s radio show here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnK8pw2yyMg
Google Search for State Working Families Parties showing identical templates and language: http://www.google.com/search?q=Working+Families+Party+South+Carolina&rls=com.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7DKUS
SC Working Families Party: http://scwfp.org/endorsements.php
Individual donations to the Robert M. Conley campaign to June 23, 2008: http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/can_ind/S8SC00126 (mostly from outside the state of SC)
Committee donations to Robert M. Conley campaign to June 27, 2008: http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_rcvd/C00448845/ (single $5000 donation from the National Committee For An Effective Congress, a DP clearinghouse for funds. The donation belies the Wikipedia assertion that the NCEC “backs candidates who support freedom of choice, separation of church and state, gun control, equal rights, and environmental protection”. Conley opposes “abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, and amnesty for illegal immigrants…“. The NCEC uncritically backs the DP: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?ID=D000000146&Name=National+Cmte+for+an+Effective+Congress.
Eugent Platt fights to stay on SC ballot as a Green
UPDATE July 22, 2008: I clarified some reasons for respecting the earlier nominations of candidates seeking a second ballot line in a subsequent contest. I’ve amended to include the situation of Michael Cone, as well as that of Eugene Platt.
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South Carolina has its first elected Green. Eugene Platt is a member of the James Island Public Service District Commission and has been since 1993. He had been seeking the Democratic, Green and Working Families nominations for the SC State House District 115, and when he lost the low-turnout Democratic primary, Platt decided to continue as a Green into the general election. He had previously resigned his position in the Democratic Party and became Lowcountry coordinator for the Green Party.
SC state law allows electoral fusion, but according to this Ballot Access News post, it is prohibited under the following circumstances: under section 7-11-10 of SC state law if a candidate, seeks the nomination of and is nominated by one party then seeks the nomination of a second party, but loses the second nomination, the first nomination is invalidated and the candidate cannot appear on the November ballot under either party designation.
This is apparently a variation on the ‘sore-loser’ principle, which presumes to keep spurned primary nominees from seeking to punish their inter-party rivals by splitting a party’s vote in the general election. The different political parties represent more or less different ideologies; but still may have complementary interests. Electoral fusion permits a candidate to build a coalition of shared interest across part of the political spectrum. If the appeal to endorsement of a second party does not succeed, then the candidate still has a platform for political office. Except, apparently, in South Carolina, where the state electoral commission has interpreted section 7-11-10 to permit a party which rejects a coalition to negate the candidacy of another party.
Another situation, aside from Platt’s, where the SC state electoral commission’s interpretation would interfere with the political expression is in the U.S. Senatorial election. The South Carolina Working Families Party nominated Michael Cone to oppose Lindsey Graham in November. Cone was also seeking the Democratic nomination, which he lost to Bob Conely, by 1,049 votes out of the 147,287 cast. Conely is apparently a Republican and a former Horry County GOP Committeeman. Conely is a supporter of Ron Paul and has picked up support from some Southern separatists – two positions that don’t comport with those of many South Carolina Democrats. I do not know if the WFP intends to run a candidate on its own, but the party should, in order to give the tens of thousands of Democrats who voted for a registered Democrat in the Party’s primary a candidate representing their positions. By permitting the party that holds the later primary to veto the choice of the earlier party, the state electoral commission’s interpretation of the statute denies political expression to both Greens and Democrats.
Given that the political opinions of South Carolinians are much broader than the choices would suggest, section 7-11-10 shouldn’t be used to exclude failed primary candidates with real policy differences from competing in the general election. This is an argument for Cone to appear on the Working Families candidate and for Platt to appear as the Green in their respective contests.
Three local news stories have appeared on Platt’s challenge in the Charleston press. A ruling from the state Electoral Commission should be forthcoming in a week.
By Robert Behre
The Post and Courier
Thursday, June 19, 2008The State Election Commission will decide next week if state House District 115 candidate Eugene Platt may appear on the ballot this fall, but his odds appear dim.
Platt, who lost the June 10 Democratic primary to James Island lawyer Anne Peterson Hutto, hopes to run in November as a Green Party candidate.
Before he can run, he must clear two hurdles.
One, state law appears to prohibit candidates from running in a general or special election if they already have lost a primary race.
Two, Platt signed a pledge with the Democratic Party vowing that he wouldn’t run again this fall.
As far as the pledge goes, Platt said Wednesday, “That was probably one of the papers that was presented to me along with the others.
“Obviously I signed it not knowing the full ramifications, not anticipating a situation like this. The Green Party feels such a pledge would not be enforceable.”
Platt said he has resigned from the Democratic Party, and “I no longer consider myself as a Democrat.”
State law might prove an even greater obstacle. The Election Commission staff cited a section of law indicating that Platt may not appear on the ballot since he lost his primary race, but the commissioners will consider the request on June 27.
If Platt loses, then Hutto will face only incumbent Republican Rep. Wallace Scarborough on Nov. 4.
Green Party organizer Gregg Jocoy said the commission’s decision will set an important precedent, and he noted that Platt was nominated by the Green Party in May, a month before the Democratic primary.
“Our right to have our candidate on the ballot in November shouldn’t be subordinated by the Democratic Party’s decision who it wants on the ballot,” Jocoy said. “Eugene’s campaign is vital to the growth of the Green Party in the Lowcountry.”
Platt, who has run for state and federal legislative seats and lost several times, said he is weighing whether to seek re-election as a James Island Public Service District commissioner at the same time he runs for the state House seat.
Reach Robert Behre at 937-5771 or at rbehre@ postandcourier.com.
Some Carolinian 