It’s a race for SC governor, but national politics infiltrate Cunningham, McMaster contest

A few days after the U.S. Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill aimed at lowering health care costs and addressing climate change, Sen. Lindsey Graham stood beside Gov. Henry McMaster in his office.

In front of reporters, Graham called on Joe Cunningham, McMaster’s challenger in the November election, to take a position on the bill touted by Washington Democrats.

Cunningham declined, and has not taken a stance on the law.

In recent weeks, the McMaster campaign has continued to criticize Cunningham, a former Lowcountry congressman, for not saying whether he supports the federal legislation.

It’s just one example of the way national issues have crept into the state’s race for governor.

On the left, Democratic gubernatorial candidates started talking about abortion rights after a U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked. Cunningham’s campaign has pushed McMaster to say where he stands on gay marriage, an issue the governor said is just a distraction.

McMaster keeps pointing to how Republican governors handled COVID-19 differently than Democratic leaders during the pandemic, and how it has helped economies in GOP-led states.

While Republicans in South Carolina have historically benefited from highlighting national issues in statewide races, that may not hold true this election cycle due to national sentiment about abortion rights, political observers say.

‘We’re running for governor’

While speaking to reporters during a campaign stop in Columbia in August, Cunningham was asked about a statement from McMaster’s campaign regarding his failure to take a stance on the Inflation Reduction Act.

“Does he know what office we’re running for?” Cunningham said. “We’re running for governor. I’m not in Congress anymore and I ask what has Gov. McMaster done on inflation? We called on him to temporarily suspend the gas tax, and he refused to. He hasn’t done anything to address inflation.”

Cunningham said President Joe Biden, who has a 32% approval rating in South Carolina, according to a Winthrop University poll, isn’t on the ballot. Cunningham hasn’t sought to campaign with the president arguing the election should be about issues South Carolinians care about.

“At the end of the day, Gov. McMaster needs to run against me, not Joe Biden,” Cunningham said. ”We’re putting out ideas and our campaign is a campaign of new ideas versus no ideas.”

But McMaster said today’s political climate forces state and local races to deal with national issues.

“There’s a clear dividing line in the philosophy, the understanding, the approach to government and the understanding of the Constitution,” McMaster said. “The people, when they make a decision on which party they’re going into, they’re making a declaration of what they believe.”

On the campaign trail, McMaster takes shots at Democratic policies pushed out of Washington.

“We know what the Biden administration is doing, not for us but to us,” he said last week at an event with U.S. Sen. Tim Scott. “The Biden administration is raising taxes and you know they always say, ‘it’s paid for.’ That means somebody is going to pay for it. They never explained that .... It comes from two places, either we borrow it or it comes out of your pocket.”

At public events, the governor will argue that South Carolina’s economy and other states run by Republican governors are doing better than states with Democratic governors coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Politico analysis found states with Republican governors that had fewer shutdowns were able to rebound economically more quickly than states with more restrictions.

“The Republican governors used common sense. They followed the Constitution. They realized that people have rights, people have the ability to make choices for themselves,” McMaster told reporters recently. “The Democratic governors, almost everyone saw things differently, believed in big government, shut everybody down, including churches, including manufacturing plants. They insisted on children being masked against their parents wishes in schools.”

Talking national issues usually helps Republicans

Gibbs Knotts, a political science professor at the College of Charleston, said national issues have come to dominate state and local politics in recent years, a trend that has benefited Republicans in the South.

“Every time when they run, it’s against Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or Mike Dukakis or Ted Kennedy or Walter Mondale,” Knotts said. “South Carolina voters are typically more in sync with national Republicans than they are with national Democrats. That’s a good thing for Republicans when things go national.”

Knotts said, however, the politics surrounding abortion in wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade could swing that pendulum the other way.

States have the ability to determine whether abortion is legal within their borders, making what was once a national issue more of a state issue. So where candidates stand on abortion access has become even more relevant.

“It may have a little of a backlash effect because obviously the Dobbs decision and abortion politics,” Knotts said. “What the Supreme Court did has the potential to really help the Democrats in South Carolina.”

A referendum last month in Kansas to remove the right to an abortion in the state’s Constitution failed. And a recent Winthrop University poll of 11 southern states found 77% of respondents, including 71% of Republicans believed abortion should be available if the pregnancy threatens the life of a mother; and 65% of Republicans said victims of rape and incest should be able to get an abortion.

Cunningham’s campaign has made the Dobbs decision, and how it allows states to limit access to abortion, a central part of its message.

He has promised to fight against abortion restrictions and veto any abortion ban that would come to his desk if he were elected. The stance comes as state lawmakers debate whether to put in place further abortion restrictions in South Carolina.

“Think about it. Gov. McMaster is telling women here in South Carolina if they get raped and get impregnated that they have to carry that baby,” Cunningham said. “They’re telling women that if they have an ectopic pregnancy, if they have a complicated pregnancy, God forbid, a pregnancy that threatens their very own life, they have to carry that baby to term. It’s got mothers and parents across the state concerned.”

Even though McMaster previously said he didn’t want exceptions in an abortion ban, he later clarified his comments and said the exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother and a fatal fetal anomaly in the state’s heartbeat law are reasonable.

In wake of the Dobbs decision, Democrats fear the Supreme Court may also overturn cases that upheld the rights for interracial marriage and same-sex marriage. To guard against that possibility, the U.S. House passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which was pushed by Democrats. The bill now sits in the U.S. Senate.

As Democrats in Washington seek to codify the right of gay people to get married on a federal level, Cunningham’s campaign pushed McMaster to take a stand on whether he believes states should have the right to determine who can get married. In 2006, South Carolina voters amended the state’s Constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. McMaster was the honorary chairman of the committee that led that effort.

The governor this year has characterized national Democrats’ efforts to define marriage as being between any two people as a distraction and it’s not an issue in the state.

Paying teachers and law enforcement more

Despite national issues creeping into the race for the governor’s mansion, both leading candidates also have talked about how they want to handle state issues.

Cunningham has said he wants to raise the state starting teacher pay to $50,000 a year from $40,000 over two terms, address conditions on the state’s roads, and legalize marijuana and sports betting.

“Our state is last in roads, near the bottom of teacher pay, jobs and health care,” Cunningham said on the stump. “Every single metric of quality of life that we should be on the top of, we find ourselves near the bottom.”

Legalizing marijuana and sports betting are part of his “freedom agenda.”

“The ability to use marijuana, it’s already happening, the ability to place a football bet, it’s already happening. These are things that are going on already and we’d like the state to earn some income off of it,” Cunningham said in an interview.

McMaster has highlighted what his administration has done while in office, citing raises for law enforcement personnel and teachers in recent years, as well as the state’s growing economy. He said he wants to see teachers paid even more, but has not specified how much of a raise they should receive.

“We want the people of South Carolina to know that their government is working for them, that we are attempting to remove obstacles to opportunity, to provide education, provide clean environment, provide excellent law enforcement, we’re not going to defund the police,” McMaster said.