Your SC politics briefing

Welcome to your weekly South Carolina politics briefing, a newsletter curated by The State’s politics and government team.

Also, if you haven’t gotten in your last Whig moments — THIS IS IT. The beloved underground bar across the street from the State House closes Saturday.

Now the news.

There’s been a wave if you will of leadership changes and political future announcements, starting with Congress:

▪ Sen. Mitch McConnell will stay Senate Republican leader after a 37-10-1 vote. Sen. Lindsey Graham said he voted for McConnell’s challenger, Sen. Rick Scott. He told CNN he “voted for change,” but accepts the results.

“I also believe it is imperative we change the way we govern the conference,” Graham tweeted.

▪ Rep. Kevin McCarthy was nominated by House Republicans to be speaker in the next Congress by a 188-31 vote but the California Republican will face a tough job in the new year after Republicans only won the 218 seats they needed to control the House. Democrats will hold 211 seats.

▪ House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn will no longer be the third-ranking Democrat in the new Congress, according to news reports, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she will not seek reelection to leadership. The Columbia Democrat will run for assistant Democratic leader in the next Congress, reports said.

▪ Former President Donald Trump is running for president in 2024. He made his official announcement Tuesday, and some high-profile Republicans in South Carolina are already putting their support behind him despite that the field isn’t set. Gov. Henry McMaster and Congressman-elect Russell Fry are two who said they’ll support him. But others have concerns. “I do want to see other Republicans in the mix for the simple reason I think he’ll probably lose the general in 2024,” Trump’s former acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told us.

GOP clinch supermajority in SC House

The red wave may have not happened nationally but in South Carolina it sure did.

SC Republicans will enter the 2023 legislative session with a two-thirds supermajority in the House for the first time since the 1870s.

Republicans flipped eight seats and ceded only one district to Democrats to cement an 88-36 advantage in the House. The seven-seat gain is the party’s largest since 1994, when Republicans picked up eight seats in the lower chamber on election night and another three members moved to the GOP before reorganization in what ended up being the last time Democrats controlled the House.

But Republican expansion is not the only takeaway:

▪ In a state with a population that is 51% women and 27% Black, the incoming House will be 16% women and 21% Black.

▪ 22 of the 27 new members are men and 25 of the 27 are white.

▪ The chamber will now have four fewer women and six fewer Black members. Black women, in particular, will have their representation in the chamber cut most dramatically, dropping from 11 members to five, a 55% reduction.

▪ Representatives-elect Wendell Jones and Fawn Pedalino will be the House’s lone new minority members. Jones, a Greenville pastor and businessman, is a Black Democrat, and Pedalino, a Republican small business owner and real estate agent, identifies as Native American and is a member of the Natchez-Kusso Tribe.

▪ The House Freedom Caucus is projected to grow from about 14 members, adding at least seven, possibly 12 more

Buzz Bites

▪ A newly installed Berkeley County School Board voted to fire its attorney and superintendent, ban critical race theory and set up a panel to review books, according to multiple media reports.

▪ Congressman-elect Russell Fry, a former state lawmaker, has been chosen to become the freshman class president — the first SC representative to be elected since Jim DeMint in 1998.

▪ Judge Michelle Childs took her oath Thursday to sit on the prestigious DC Circuit

▪ Former South Carolina Rep. James Smith has joined Nelson Mullins’ Columbia office as a partner, per firm.

▪ South Carolina Judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin found herself the center of both praise and criticism before the Senate Judiciary Committee as she seeks a seat on the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

▪ If a nuclear emergency had occurred earlier this year at the VC Summer atomic power plant, the facility would not have been able to rely on an important piece of equipment to help prevent an accident, federal regulators say.

▪ For the second consecutive year, South Carolina sportsmen killed a record number of black bears during the state’s often-criticized bear hunting season.

▪ Conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA at Clemson will host Nikki Haley on Nov. 29.

▪ South Carolina’s annual educator supply and demand report is out, showing teacher vacancies were up 39% at the start of the school year, a new record, even though the number of teaching and service positions was down.

▪ A federal court has approved a $1.1 million fine against a troubled South Carolina paper mill that generated nearly 50,000 odor complaints in less than two years.

▪ A petition has been filed through the SC Supreme Court to bring a lawsuit against SLED over automatic license plate readers that are alleged to be part of a vast and growing system of “unlawful and unaccountable surveillance.”

▪ Richland County Council is in early talks on a possible manufacturing deal that would be the biggest economic development project in the county’s history.

▪ The SC House Freedom Caucus is suing a local school district and its superintendent alleging the district violated a one-year state law that seeks to prohibit schools from teaching concepts associated with critical race theory.

Mark your calendar

Nov. 29

Closing arguments in federal court over redistricting of SC’s US House map

Dec. 6-7

SC House organizational session

Jan. 5

SC Supreme Court hears arguments over state’s execution methods

Jan. 10

2023 SC legislative session starts

Jan. 11

Inauguration Day

Before we adjourn

We’re going to end your week with a little parking drama. But, of course, there’s a political connection.

As construction at the University of South Carolina’s Campus Village trudges on, nearby neighbors on Whaley and Pickens streets are not thrilled that plans for a $210 million parking garage with nearly 950 spaces were scrapped.

Why? Next fall, 1,800 students will live at Campus Village.

So why did it get slashed for a 237-space “transportation hub?” Enter state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, a resident of the Wales Garden neighborhood, which sits directly adjacent to Campus Village.

“The university accommodated me as the senator for that area,” Harpootlian said. “(It) went with a different approach, which is offsite parking, which I believe in.”

Pulling the newsletter together this week was Maayan Schechter (My-yahn Schek-ter), senior editor of the The State’s politics and state government team. You can keep up with her on Twitter and send her tips on Twitter at @MaayanSchechter or by email mschechter@thestate.com.

To stay on top of South Carolina politics and election news, you can chat with us on Facebook, email us tips and follow our stories at scpolitics.com.