Harpootlian loses Senate seat, ‘sister senators’ lose ground and Freedom Caucus expands

Sen. Dick Harpootlian is seen during a South Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee meeting in Columbia, S.C. on Tuesday, March 15, 2022. (Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)

COLUMBIA — Midlands voters on Tuesday ousted the former state Democratic Party chairman who gained national notoriety as lawyer to Alex Murdaugh, in what had become one of the most closely-watched Democratic contests in South Carolina.

But it really wasn’t a good night for some GOP incumbents. In the House, several Republicans were ousted by challengers aligned with the hardline Freedom Caucus, which will likely increase the GOP vs. GOP sniping in that chamber. Incumbents tossed included a longtime Upstate chairman.

And the winners in the Senate almost guarantee an all-out ban on abortion will be back on the GOP agenda next year.

In the race to take over a redrawn Columbia-area Senate district, Rep. Russell Ott, D-St. Matthews, narrowly beat Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Columbia. They were vying for the seat of Sen. Nikki Setzler, the state’s longest serving legislator, who’s retiring after 48 years in the upper chamber.

The post-census redrawing of district lines moved that seat more into Calhoun County, which Ott and his father — former House Minority Leader Harry Ott — have collectively represented for 26 years.

Harpootlian hammered Russell Ott for voting with Republicans on anti-abortion laws over the years, a major issue for Democrats in the solid blue neighborhoods of downtown Columbia.

He painted Ott as a flip-flopper. In February of 2021, Ott voted for the Legislature’s first law that banned abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy. But since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, which made the law more than an ideological exercise, Ott has voted against Republicans’ abortion bans. He’s also worked to expand women’s access to birth control .

Ott, a well-liked Calhoun County farmer, in turn said Harpootlian was not making an effort to represent the whole district. He took him to task for his work representing Murdaugh, who was ultimately convicted of killing his wife and son, in a trial that took him away from the Statehouse for weeks at a time. Ott also knocked the high-profile lawyer’s penchant for colorful language.

Ultimately, Harpootlian said his campaign hit its goals for votes in Richland and Lexington counties, where he’s known best. But Calhoun, Ott’s home turf, saw a higher-than-expected turnout for its native son. Ott carried the rural vote, which pushed him to a 120-vote win over Harpootlian.

“I think the folks in Calhoun County want a senator. They certainly expressed that with their votes yesterday,” Harpootlian said.

In a press conference Wednesday morning, he conceded to Ott and said he’d support him in November.

“We went through a process yesterday; I lost,” Harpootlian said. “The process worked. I’m not accusing anybody of stealing anything. I’m not having a temper tantrum. I’m not expressing some doubt in our system.”

The senator was first elected in a special election in 2018, when he flipped a Senate seat held by a Republican for decades. His prior political stints included a seat on Richland County Council; solicitor of the Fifth Circuit, which includes Richland and Kershaw counties; and two separate terms as state Democratic Party chairman.

The post-census redistricting officially sent his Senate seat to the Lowcountry.

Harpootlian, whose wife is the ambassador to Slovenia , said he doesn’t know what he’ll do next, other than run his law firm.

“The tragedy from yesterday was such a promising political future was nipped so early in the bud,” the 75-year-old joked.

Who Ott will face in the purple district come November remains to be seen. Republican candidates Jason Guerry, who owns a construction company, and Chris Smith, a retired real estate agent who bills himself as a staunch conservative, will be decided in a run-off.

Pulling to the right

Meanwhile, across the Upstate, far-right candidates backed by the House Freedom Caucus flipped three seats held by majority GOP caucus incumbents.

Despite efforts by Republican leaders to shrink the caucus that’s been bashing them in the chamber and on social media, the primary results instead grew their ranks.

Less than 60 votes separated 30-year veteran Rep. Bill Sandifer, R-Seneca, from Freedom Caucus backed challenger Adam Duncan, a wrestling coach from Seneca who has not previously held office.

Sandifer has been chairman of the House Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee for 16 years.

Assistant Majority Leader Jay West, R-Belton, was ousted by Thomas Gilreath, a former National Guardsman and farmer from Belton who runs a grading and paving company. West was first elected eight years ago.

And Rep. Jerry Carter, R-Clemson, lost to Phillip Bowers.

Carter, first elected in 2020, previously defeated Bowers, a former Pickens County School Board member, in the GOP primary. The seat has historically been held by a moderate Republican. Bowers will face Democrat Eunice Lehmacher in November.

“We hated to lose three good members, but that’s the world of politics,” said House Majority Leader David Hiott. “Anytime you have elections, sometimes you have turnover.”

Hiott, R-Pickens, said the Freedom Caucus wins won’t change much for the House Majority Caucus, and he has to respect the decision of voters in those districts who ousted incumbents. He also said Republicans may pick up a few seats in November.

“They picked up one or two but that doesn’t really change the fact that we’re in the majority,” he said of the Freedom Caucus.

A dozen other Republicans in the majority caucus who faced Freedom Caucus challengers held on to their seats, including Rep. Neal Collins, R-Easley, who won by what might be his widest margin in recent history, with nearly 55% of the vote.

In addition to the three Upstate seats the ultra-conservative caucus gained, it held on to 15 others. Plus, Freedom Caucus candidates are still in the race for two contests going to a run-off, meaning the group could ultimately grow to 20 members.

Rep. R.J. May, a founder of the chamber’s Freedom Caucus and a political consultant who worked on several of the campaigns, claimed victory against establishment Republicans.

“I think the voters’ voices across South Carolina were heard last night,” he said.  “They want a government that is more conservative, that is more efficient, and they’re tired of politics as usual from the ruling coalition of moderate Republicans and liberal Democrats.”

Most races in South Carolina are decided in the primary, and districts won by Freedom Caucus candidates are heavily Republican. May also has his eye on expanding the caucus to the state Senate.

“There’s a number of candidates we’re in talks with who will hopefully join our effort,” he said, while declining to name anyone. “We’ll be having those conversations with them … to see if we can’t make this a bicameral effort.”

For the first time since being elected governor, Henry McMaster picked sides in Statehouse GOP primaries. All three challengers to Freedom Caucus members he endorsed lost. Incumbents he endorsed who lost include West and Sandifer.

“The governor has had a historically successful working relationship with the General Assembly, and last night’s returns show no indication that this will change,” Brandon Charochak, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement Wednesday.

Senate hopefuls

In addition to Ott, several other House members made bids for a Senate seat. But they didn’t win the necessary 50%-plus-one votes to win outright. Those contests will be decided in June 26 run-offs.

In heavily Democratic Richland County, Rep. Ivory Thigpen, D-Columbia, will face off against Richland County councilman Overture Walker in the race for the seat being vacated by Democrat-turned-Independent Sen. Mia McLeod.

Rep. Jason Elliott, R-Greenville, will go up against Ben Carper, a real estate broker with a background in teaching who is backed by the chancellor of Bob Jones University, a private conservative Christian college in Greenville. Ahead of the race, Carper said he planned to work with the Freedom Caucus, according to the Greenville News .

Also of note are races involving South Carolina’s GOP female senators.

All of the chamber’s women, who called themselves “sister senators” voted against last year’s six-week abortion ban. (At the time, there were five. A sixth was sworn in this year.) While they ultimately lost their bid to block the final version, they were successful in helping defeat the near-total ban passed by House Republicans that would have made abortions illegal from the moment a pregnancy is medically detectable.

But it also earned all three of the Republican female senators primary challenges. Freshman Sen. Penry Gustafson , R-Camden, was trounced by a challenger.

Charleston Sen. Sandy Senn’s highly contested race against a Johns Island House member, Rep. Matt Leber, is headed to an automatic recount with less than 1% of the vote separating them.

Sen. Katrina Shealy, the Senate’s only chairwoman, led a three-way primary, but the Lexington Republican was short of clenching the race. She is facing a runoff against Carlisle Kennedy, the son of former state Rep. Ralph Kennedy, who was ousted in a GOP primary in 2016.

In his own concession speech, Harpotlian made special note of the “sister senators,” expressing regret that one had been defeated and two still face uncertainty.

“That speaks volumes to where our state is, at least in the Republican primary,” he said.

Comeback attempts

Finally, South Carolina’s primaries also were littered with several former legislators hoping to return to office.

Seeking to reclaim his Spartanburg area seat, former Sen. Lee Bright, R-Roebuck, will go into a run-off against a House member seeking a Senate seat, Rep. Roger Nutt, R-Moore.

Former Rep. Kirkman Finlay won the Republican primary, setting up a 2022 rematch with freshman Rep. Heather Bauer, D-Columbia, to try to win his seat back. On the other hand, former Rep. Vic Dabney, R-Camden, was soundly defeated in his attempt to return.

In the race to fill Ott’s seat as he heads to the Senate, former Rep. Jerry Govan, D-Orangeburg, headed into a run-off Johnny Felder.

Felder is running for the seat once held by his father, former Rep. John Gressette Felder, for 24 years. He is also the great-nephew of the late state Sen. Marion Gressette, namesake of the Senate’s office building on Statehouse grounds and one of the state’s longest-serving legislators ever.

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