Democrat Bauer ousts 10-year Republican Rep. Finlay in Richland SC House race

Democrat Heather Bauer, who ran her campaign solely on the right to abortion access, defeated 10-year Republican incumbent Rep. Kirkman Finlay who represents the sole swing district in Richland County.

Bauer won with 51% of the vote to Finlay’s 49% — a 234 vote margin, according to unofficial results.

The Columbia-based district covers Heathwood, Forest Acres, parts of Shandon and Rosewood, as well as the areas of Lake Katherine and the Hampton and Old Woodlands neighborhoods behind the Veterans Hospital.

“This race proves a very big point that if you take our rights, we’ll take your seat,” Bauer told reporters Wednesday, hours before an effort to pass further abortion restrictions in the Legislature died. “I hope that this campaign can be a good strategy for other Democrats across the state to prove a point the next session.”

Finlay did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Drew McKissick, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, told reporters Wednesday the party plans to contest the House District 75 race results all the way to certification.

In a rough night for South Carolina Democrats that prompted one Richland lawmaker to call for an immediate “come to Jesus” meeting among party leaders, Bauer was the lone Democrat to flip a Republican seat.

Republicans picked up seven seats in the House, expanding their advantage to a clear supermajority while flipping five seats held by Black Democrats in the process, two by double-digit margins.

Incumbent Democratic lawmakers Anne Parks, of Greenwood, Kimberly Johnson, of Clarendon, Chardale Murray, of Charleston, Krystle Matthews, of Berkeley, and Shedron Williams, of Hampton, all fell to Republican opponents.

Republicans also won three seats held by Democrats that had been transformed into safe red districts during last year’s redistricting cycle.

The net gain of seven seats and the replacement of Newberry Republican Rep. Rick Martin, who has been suspended since his arrest last year on misconduct and delinquency of a minor charges, gives the GOP an 88-36 advantage in the lower chamber.

Bauer, who ran for the same House seat in 2020 but lost in the Democratic primary, made abortion access a key focus of her campaign, repeatedly tying Finlay to Republican-led efforts to further restrict access.

Her strategy mirrored efforts employed by Democrats nationwide after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June that overruled the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade and further empowered states to restrict access to abortion.

Bauer, 38, previously told The State newspaper that she favored a law modeled on Roe, which legalized abortions up to about 24 weeks.

The South Carolina Legislature last year passed a law banning the procedure at six weeks of pregnancy, or when a fetal heartbeat is detected. That law has been temporarily blocked by the state Supreme Court as it mulls whether the law violates the state constitutional right to privacy.

“This is like a state of emergency for women in South Carolina,” Bauer, who works for Benefitfocus, a publicly-traded software firm that manages employee benefits and has an interest in a martial arts studio off Shop Road and is a fitness and martial arts practitioner, told The State newspaper ahead of the Nov. 8 election. “It’s about freedom, it’s about women deciding what they do with their own bodies.”

Bauer told reporters defending reproductive rights and health care will be a priority for her in the House, as will working to invest in infrastructure, education and teachers and growing the city by working to expand the downtown convention center.

Bauer’s win is a major upset in the South Carolina House.

Bauer, who last year made an unsuccessful run at Columbia City Council, did not have the same level of name recognition as Finlay nor an equivalent war chest.

Ten-year incumbent Finlay, 52, a large land and restaurant owner — he owns Doc’s BBQ, Millstone at Adams Pond and Pawleys Front Porch in Five Points — sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, a powerful legislative panel that gets the first crack at drafting the state budget each year.

He is the son of the late Kirkman Finlay Jr., the former mayor of Columbia and Columbia city councilman.

Finlay Park, located downtown behind Columbia’s post office, was named for his father.

Finlay ran his campaign primarily on his record, touting efforts to raise teacher pay, tax cuts, and investing in road repairs, broadband access and sewer infrastructure. Finlay also helped lead a successful push to get a $20 million state earmark to help alleviate traffic problems caused by railroad trains running through Columbia.

In previous election cycles, Finlay had been able to fight off challengers. His most recent race was in 2020, when he won by 257 votes against Democrat Rhodes Bailey. But Bauer’s campaign push to make Finlay the face of the anti-abortion movement appears to have given her the boost needed to put the district back in Democrats’ hands.

“Everybody’s got a different district and they’ve got different priorities in those districts,” House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, told reporters Wednesday, noting Republicans overall grew their majority in the chamber. “Every district is unique and you’ve got to run to what the citizens that you represent want, but at the end of the day, the majority of the House of Representatives believes in protecting life and I think we stood up for that.”

Smith added Finlay ran a good campaign on issues important to South Carolinians, but said, “unfortunately sometimes we come up short.”

Senior editor Maayan Schechter and staff writers Joseph Bustos and Zak Koeske contributed to this report.