Political candidates this year rode an overwhelming wave, says one area political analyst, and incumbents, especially Democrats, got caught in the crush.
"This year, and not just [in South Carolina], if you were a Democrat and an incumbent, you were endangered," said Neal Thigpen, former chairman of the political science department at Francis Marion University. "Even in other big Republican sweep years, there's usually a Democratic holdout, but this year, it was a clean sweep."
That wave began to swell as the economy continued to tank, was fueled by tea party support of Republicans, and took down longtime elected officials from school board members all the way up to the U.S. Congress.
Democrat Vida Miller, from state House District 108, lost her bid for another term to a 22-year-old Republican. U.S. Rep. John Spratt, the 14-term Democrat from District 5 who has been the House budget chairman, lost to GOP challenger Mick Mulvaney. And MaryEllen Greene, a 12-year Horry County Schools board member, lost District 2 to Republican Karen McIlrath.
Spratt, Thigpen said, suffered likely because of his friendship with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose approval rating had fallen into the single digits.
Sally P. Howard, chairwoman emeritus of the Horry County Democratic Party, said she doesn't see much change coming to the way things are run in South Carolina.
"That was the main difference between [gubernatorial candidates Vincent] Sheheen and [Nikki] Haley. He would have been the 'change,' and she'll be more of the same we've had. We know she didn't get along with the legislators when she was one and didn't get along with the Republican ones either."
She said Congress is a different story, though.
"I think it's going to be very messy for a while," Howard said. "When you have so many new ones and so many mad at each other, it's going to be something to watch, and I hope the voters will be watching. I do hope they will get to work for the good of the country and not themselves or their parties."
Many people said there was a message of backlash against the current administration.
Howard said some Republican candidates in South Carolina ran against the president instead of their opponents.
But Pelosi was more a target than Obama in the congressional races, Thigpen said.
Miller, he said, fell victim to her own incumbency.
"She has always been pretty strong because she's local, but I've always felt that if there was a strong Republican challenger in that district, that could cause her trouble," he said.
Miller, 60, said she "knew it was going to be a close race from looking at the poll numbers," and she was right. There was only a 623-vote difference between her and winner Kevin Ryan.
She said she thinks the anti-incumbent and anti-Democratic mood of the country helped Ryan win, and while Georgetown County Republican Chairman Tom Swatzel agrees, he also said Ryan has "a good message for conservatives that, I think, resonated with voters."
Ryan said he thinks mood helped with voter turnout.
"We were the beneficiaries of that sentiment," he said. "People were obviously ready for a change at all levels of government."
Howard was puzzled about Miller's loss. "Why in the world voters would choose [Kevin Ryan], with no experience, over Vida Miller, who has an excellent voting record, is beyond me," she said.
But Swatzel said, "Any voter that had encountered him personally, chances are he probably won their vote because he's very engaging."
And Ryan said voters knew about things like his lack of experience and his young age and chose him.
"I think they know I will do a good job for them," he said.
In the Horry County school board race, experience didn't help incumbent Greene, who lost the seat for District 2 that she had held for 12 years. Greene's loss also will mean the loss of her spot on the board of directors for the S.C. School Boards Association, a state-level post for which an election will be held.
Greene, who could not be reached for comment Wednesday, switched from the GOP to the Democratic party this year and lost to the Republican candidate, newcomer Karen McIlrath. After filing, Greene said the move was to make a statement that school board elections should not be a partisan issue and should be about the kids. District 2 voting was split even more by petition candidate Rivers Lynch, a popular teacher whose students launched his candidacy.
Howard said the economy affected the election results, and that people are angry.
"People are just unhappy. They always think change - change anything, something - will fix everything, but it's not that easy," she said. "As we have seen, it's not easy for leaders of either party to fix things. I heard people during this election season saying, 'It's been two years and you haven't fixed anything.' The American people are impatient. They want what they want right now."
Thigpen agreed the economy is a leading reason people voted how they did, and, he said, it was a message to President Obama who "took his eyes off the ball" with his health care reform.
That was when, he said, the tea party movement began to get energized.
The public perceived that Obama spent all his time on health care, and while that perception is debatable, Thigpen said, what people wanted to see was the president's focus on jobs and the economy.
"Movements like that, on the left or the right, don't happen when the economy is good," Thigpen said.
He said the tea party ended up having a big effect on election night results. "The Republicans could have the biggest pickup since before World War II," he said. "It beats the Democratic pickup in 2006, and it dwarfs the GOP pickup in 1994."
No matter who's in power now, though, chances are they won't be as popular in two or three years. "There's a certain number of Americans," Thigpen said, "who hate Congress. No matter who's running it."
Staff writer Vicki Grooms contributed to this report.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Falluja's Cancer Catastrophe.
No comments:
Post a Comment