Office holders feel ire of Myrtle Beach area voters

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.

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Voters voice need for bus system in Horry County

Horry County voters decided Tuesday that Coast Regional Transportation Authority should get a dedicated funding source through county property tax revenue.

"I'm very relieved," said Coast General Manager Myers Rollins, as the election returns came in showing that with 94 percent of the precincts reporting at 10 p.m., Coast won 63 percent of voters' support.

Rollins and many Coast staffers, friends and community groups waged a grass-roots campaign for the past 16 weeks, seeking support for the advisory resolution that asked whether the county should give up to 6/10ths of a mill - valued at about $1 million this year - to the area's only mass transit system.

Each year, Coast has to rely on municipal and county governments to budget money so it can continue ferrying workers by bus to their jobs, seniors to their doctors' offices, students to college, veterans and the disabled to their service appointments and tourists to the beach.

But local funding has grown increasingly shaky as cities and counties struggle to meet their other obligations during the recession.

"I am very excited about the referendum passing. This is a defining moment for Coast RTA, and the community needs the service," said Coast Marketing Director Yvette Jefferson.

Through it all, though, Coast has had some staunch supporters, from its regular riders all the way up to Horry County Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland.

Gilland, who is leaving office in January, said all she can do is push for funding from the outside, now, because "I won't be there when all the budgeting happens."

Gilland said she would celebrate with Coast supporters and "somewhat breathe a sigh of relief."

Because the referendum is nonbinding, there's "no guarantee they will budget the money, or any money, for Coast next year."

County Councilman Jody Prince, District 10, who will be on council as the budget is worked out next year, said he will support funding for Coast.

Many of the people in his district, he said, have moved here from places where rapid transit is standard, so he wasn't too surprised the referendum won support.

So far this year, Coast RTA has served 576,908 passengers, up 35 percent from last year, though it has lost much of its funding from Myrtle Beach and Conway. Horry County dropped its funding by $200,000 to $500,000 this fiscal year.

Myers said having the millage from the county won't help Coast grow, only maintain current service levels.

But he said he will continue to look for more money that can be leveraged into more federal cash, as well.

"It's a wise investment for the community," Rollins said.

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Coast ATR takes his case to the voters

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That word-of-mouth campaign is what General Manager Myers Rollins has to count on as November nears and The Coast's future remains in flux. He's waging his own grass-roots campaign, doing two speaking engagements each weekday and speaking to a church every weekend about the referendum.

Rollins is used to speaking about the need for money, though, because every year as Grand Strand cities and counties are preparing their budgets, he has to show up with his hand out, asking for a share.

Though ridership has increased on a variety of routes in the past few years - Route 17 at Coastal Carolina University, for example, went from 97,981 passengers in fiscal year 2008 to 193,699 passengers in fiscal year 2009 - funding from cities and counties decreased.

Last year, local funding dropped around 15 percent, or $200,000, from $1.2 million to about $1 million, which meant layoffs, reduced routes and cutbacks in the capital budget.

Not knowing how much he's going to get until the last minute every fiscal year means Rollins is no stranger to making last-minute decisions about his own budget.

He's hoping the referendum will pass and the county will take the voters' advice and give him a certain stream of money he can count on and use to leverage federal funds.

But he can't use one of the most powerful campaign tools he has - the buses themselves - because The Coast accepts public funding.

"I can only spend what I can raise independently," Rollins said. So far, he has raised $2,000, which paid for campaign signs that went up this weekend.

Fortunately for The Coast, Rollins said, his speeches seem to be working.

At a recent appearance before a group of 150 seniors, Rollins said he knew he had no votes there as soon as he saw the audience.

But once he explained the services, "the message resonated with them," he said. "As I was leaving, one of the moderators said I had just earned myself 150 more votes."

Now all he needs is for half of those who show up at Horry County polls on Nov. 2 to agree.

The referendum question asks voters simply "do you favor the funding by Horry County, in an amount not to exceed 6/10ths of a mill ($1,080,000) annually, for the operations of a regional public mass transportation provider such as Coast RTA?"

It doesn't, Rollins points out, mean people will be taxed an extra 6/10ths of a mill. The county has options if the voters favor the dedicated funding:

It could dedicate some of its current millage;

It could continue to budget some money every year for an appropriation as it does now;

It could raise taxes by 6/10ths of a mill - $2.40 a year for every $100,000 of a home's appraised value.

"There are three very strong reasons having a bus service is critical. One, we have a lot of people who cannot afford cars and car insurance, and they depend on it to keep an income coming in," said Horry County Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland.

"Two: retirees. More of them, as they get older, are using their cars less and they expect a reliable bus system," she said. "The third is tourism -we will never be a world-class tourist destination without a quality, reliable public transit system. People expect it."

Gilland, long an advocate for The Coast, said the county should simply dedicate a mill, which would give the RTA a steady $2.1 million a year it could count on.

"I could leverage that into enough federal money for us to actually grow," Rollins said. The Coast's future plans include more buses and routes, including an airport express and a park-and-ride system.

Right now, the annual $4.2 million budget is only enough to maintain operations. The $1 million the county is talking about wouldn't support growth, he said, but "it's better to get in the door than to leave the door closed."

As it stands now, he said, he never knows how much money The Coast will have from year to year, and he spends 70 percent of his working time going from one municipality and group to another chasing money to run the nonprofit bus system, rather than working on increasing and improving service.

But it's not because The Coast is doing something wrong, said public transportation expert Processor Kenneth Boyer, from Michigan State University.

"Public transportation is not financially viable out of the fare box anywhere in the world," Boyer said. "London, Berlin, Paris, all those cities we admire for their public transit systems - they are all subsidized. Only a small part of their revenue comes from the fares. Once people recognize that public transportation isn't going to operate at a profit, they can begin to have a more rational conversation about it."

It's a conversation bus riders wish would have been held before this year, when cities and the county had to trim their budgets and slashed The Coast's funding enough that it had to cut routes.

That's a pinch Halverson feels three nights a week when she's got to bum rides home from work because there is no bus to take her.

"I've already been telling people to complain about the cuts," she said.

Halverson and people like her - who work for low wages and don't have cars - are just some of the people Rollins is trying to help by keeping the bus system active and convenient.

"We don't pay our service-industry workers a lot of money," Gilland said, " the workforce that built this place. A lot of them cannot afford to operate a car, but they have to get to work every day to wait tables, change beds, clean hotel rooms."

Others include the seniors who take the bus to medical appointments and to go shopping, the tourists who use the buses rather than trying to drive in an area where they are unfamiliar, veterans who take the bus to get V.A. services and the disabled who depend on transit to see their doctors.

"Public transit is a public service," Rollins said, "and it's part of the infrastructure of the county. Roads get the 1-cent Riding on a Penny money, schools get their tax money, but no such allowance has been made for the buses."

A skeptical public

Gilland said problems with the general manager before Rollins - who ended up in jail because of misuse of money - left some people not trusting that their tax money will be used responsibility, and some in the western part of the county have had to do without buses for so long, they don't really see a need for it.

Rollins said some people he has spoken to object to paying for buses because, they say they don't use them.

"I've never, in six years, called the police, called the fire department or called EMS," he said. "But I pay for them every year. That's what you do in a civilized society."

Besides, he said, millage money pays for school buses, yet most people who pay taxes don't use those, either.

Boyer said people who use buses subsidize drivers, too.

"Let's say you don't pay for parking at your mall. Stores have to charge higher prices to pay for parking services, and people who ride the bus to the mall pay those prices, too, even though they aren't using the parking lots," he said.

Others object because they say they see empty buses in the mornings that should be full.

Rollins said people often don't understand that because the Coast hub is in Conway, the buses have to get to where their routes start in the mornings and get back to the hub at night with no riders - they are out of service at that point.

When buses are running regular, reliable routes, as they do at Coastal Carolina University, they are full and ridership is growing.

"I can't meet the demand at CCU. Those buses are packed," Rollins said.

"Three years ago, I had a bus going from Conway to Myrtle Beach every hour, and ridership was great."

As it is, The Coast RTA has served 576,908 passengers so far this year, up 35 percent from last year, though it has lost much of its funding from Myrtle Beach and Conway. Horry County, dropped its funding by $200,000 to $500,000 this fiscal year.

Other times, when people see only a few heads through the bus windows, they might not realize that bus could be providing paratransit - taking nonambulatory people to hospital or doctor appointments. It's a special service the bus system provides.

"That bus is a lifeline for those people," he said.

If the nonbinding referendum doesn't pass this fall and the county doesn't dedicate funding, he said, he's not giving up.

He'll keep chasing money.

"I've had three job offers and I have not taken them.

"I'm here. This is a quality-of-life issue for me, too," Rollins said. "I have one of the few jobs where, every day, I get to see the fruits of my efforts."

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