SC GOP Special Election Debate (August 3rd, Columbia) Analysis and Response
Monday night’s SC GOP Special Election debate was more of a candidate forum asking each of five candidates to answer a series of questions on high-level issues. Judi Gatson of WIS-TV did an excellent job keeping the participants on time and moving swiftly through the topics.
In this post, I’ve captured the gist of the question and a summary of the GOP candidates’ responses then added my own response. The exercise does two things. First, it recounts the experience as a journalist might (albeit with some editorial snark) for those who missed it. Second, it gives me a chance to state my own positions for the benefit of voters.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, I am the only GenXer on the ballot. Even after next Tuesday’s special primary and the (likely) subsequent run-off. The SC GOP field is four Boomers and a Millennial. I think my generational super power is cutting through the theater and being as pragmatic as I can about how I would govern.
As always, leave comments below or reach out via socials to continue the discussion.
Question 1
The first question was whether the candidates thought it was more important to support the President or to represent South Carolina. This was an interesting first question because it played out through the rest of the questions as candidates repeatedly drew connections between their positions and the President’s agenda.
Every candidate said they support the President though Sanford recognized a break with him on some issues like the authorization of war. Fry, Graham, and Lynch were absolute 100% support the President and Norman said he liked the America First agenda and thought the President had done a good job with it. None of them talked about whether the President was doing what’s best for South Carolina.
The Senator’s job is 1) to represent the people of South Carolina, and 2) check and balance the Executive branch. Unwavering obedience to the President’s agenda, even one that sounds good in marketing like “America First” is not the right answer.
Represent the state of South Carolina, not the party that got you elected. Keep the Executive in check, do not be complicit in an authoritarian takeover of government. This administration is doing some good things, for sure. There are also some terrible things that are actively hurting South Carolinians and we need a Senator who will say so and do something more than pray about it.
Question 2
The second question was about affordability – the buzz word of this campaign season – and the candidates were asked what they would do to bring prices down.
Support the farm bill, bring jobs back to America, bust up monopolies, secure the border, and cut taxes. So expand government, inject it into markets where we have intervened before, like agriculture and healthcare, all while cutting taxes. Sanford said you can’t agree with the President on all matters and not see the spending problem.
If we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep getting what we’ve always gotten.
Prices are high because we owe money. The national debt has eclipsed GDP. We owe more than we make. The costs of goods and services in the economy are distorted because government intervention causes prices to go up: in healthcare, supply chains, and agriculture. More government is bad policy. And rowing the boat toward the waterfall is dumb.
As your Senator, how would I bring prices down? I would address the national debt through real reform. Reduce spending across the board, demand agencies discontinue failing programs and consolidate redundant ones. Slow the growth of Social Security through smart, surgical reform. End the fraud and abuse of Medicare and Medicaid and start to sunset government-subsidized healthcare. Over time, a decade or so, we should be asking less of our government and more of our entrepreneurs.
Question 3
Question three was about the national debt, which had already been mentioned by a few of the candidates looking to differentiate themselves. What would they do to address the $40 trillion national debt?
Everyone knew the numbers – $39 trillion, interest exceeds defense spending. Some knew fake numbers: 70% of immigrants are on welfare, $500 million in waste and fraud. It was suggested DOGE could be resurrected, that government spending needed to be balanced with cuts, curbed or restrained. But how, nobody said. Grow the economy was everyone’s favorite go-to. Bring jobs back to America.
My answer: There are three ways to address the debt. One, we can increase revenue – that means raise taxes but it could also mean simplifying the tax code and eliminating fraud.
Two, we can cut spending – Social Security is the biggest driver of our national debt with Medicare and Medicaid in a close second place. We must, must, must address these two programs and stop their growth. Servicing the debt is the third biggest expense and defense is fourth; we have to stop devaluing the dollar by dumping more government money into the economy and stop funding foreign wars that destroy equipment, choke off supply routes, and drive up prices.
Third, we can grow the economy. Government efforts to grow the economy always fail because they favor certain industries, push money into sectors and distort them, or end up costing taxpayers more through indirect expenses (like tariffs). To grow the economy, the government has to do less, not more. Stop subsidizing industries, stop “investing” in specific firms, and stop raising barriers to entry on free markets. Let companies compete. Let entrepreneurs thrive. Remove regulations that protect politically-connected cronies and the big companies they chair at the expense of smaller, more agile start-ups. Let Americans innovate and build, that is how our economy will thrive. That is how we will win economically. Not through political handling, but through truly free markets.
Question 4
Question four was about the South Carolina energy grid and how to balance encouraging energy-intensive businesses while ensuring affordable water and electricity for South Carolina citizens.
Graham and Fry agreed with Trump’s statement that states need to get on board with data center builds.They framed it as competing with China and said data centers are a national effort. Norman and Sanford said data centers should be local decisions and operators ought to pay for the energy usage and explain water usage. Norman blamed energy monopolies for costs and identified nuclear energy as the future. Lynch was the sole dissent on data centers, saying Flock cameras and the growth of the surveillance state were an adjacent issue that only he was talking about.
My answer: Local control matters and South Carolina is lucky to have a statewide organization, SCETA, well-educated on data centers and willing to guide municipalities on making the right choices. Citizens should get informed about the benefits and challenges of building data centers, and full transparency is needed at all levels. Mr. Lynch is right to be concerned about the expansion of the surveillance state and very few conversations about data centers discuss what data is actually being collected and stored. It’s worth it to consider who the data center will belong to and whether the community has a voice in what data is being collected.
A bigger issue may be the security threat those data centers pose. Are we suggesting private companies build nuclear power facilities and, if so, are they expected to sell or share that energy with the community? What security considerations do such builds need to have and what is the step-by-step process for erecting that infrastructure and modernizing and securing the grid? Again, the SCETA can help research and educate South Carolinians on this issue. As Senator, I would depend on their counsel for legislation related to data centers and grid modernization. Ultimately, it must be good for South Carolinians or I will not support it.
Question 5
Question five was about the SAVE Act and the candidates’ willingness to eliminate the filibuster in order to pass it.
This was where the field split. Norman and Fry, both of whom have served in the House of Representatives while the SAVE Act has been crafted and debated, and Graham who said this is where she diverges from her late brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, all said to end the filibuster. Lynch said the SAVE Act could pass if it were a clean bill and Sanford said Republicans need to win the votes.
I am adamantly opposed to ending the filibuster. This is the sixty-vote threshold needed in the Senate to pass legislation. Let me be perfectly clear about this: Good legislation doesn’t need to be pushed through, strong-armed, or pork barrelled to death. Write good laws. Bad legislation shouldn’t pass, no matter how desperately the president wants it to.
The filibuster also protects us from terrible appointees in the Executive and Judiciary branches. It’s a critical tool to ensure the Senate does the right thing, not the partisan thing. Disrespecting it to follow the President’s urgency is just evidence of a proclivity for authoritarianism and a dereliction of duty. The Legislative branch writes laws, the Executive branch works within them, not the other way around.
Question 6
Question six focused on healthcare and asked the field how they would fix America’s broken healthcare system.
In this response, it was clear nobody on the stage had a plan. Sanford and Norman identified health savings accounts as a means by which consumers could fund their own medical expenses. Fry talked about investing in rural health care to improve access. Graham promised to protect medicare for the elderly, nearly violated HIPAA by disclosing her own daughters’ struggles with medical bills, and suggested transparency in billing was the answer. And Lynch talked about price fixing in the industry and shared his business’s struggles with finding plans for their employees.
We have to deconstruct healthcare:
- First, health care is skilled labor by qualified providers and is NOT a right.
- Second, health care should be made accessible with modernization like remote access and entrepreneurship like direct-pay and consumer-driven models.
- Third, health insurance should be for catastrophic expenses like cancer, acute trauma, and multi-service efforts like surgery with hospitalization and rehab. Providers and patients of everyday care and preventative care should be able to transact business affordably.
- Fourth, we should decouple health insurance from employment, you shouldn’t have to be employed to get insurance you can afford. Let’s have a free market where you can bundle health insurance with home and auto, or purchase it in a cooperative like Costco or your church congregation.
- Finally, and most importantly, government needs to get out of the health insurance market. It’s government price-fixing, bureaucratic manipulation, and subsidies that have driven up costs, not individual care providers. While we’re at it, let’s address malpractice insurance.
What healthcare needs is innovation. Government intervention from Medicare to Obamacare has raised the barriers to entry for providers and innovators and secured fat-cat subsidies and contracts for companies fleecing taxpayers. Worse, states receive disproportionate payouts for Medicaid expansion enrollees and have been fleecing the federal government through bureaucratic failures. It’s got to stop.
Question 7
Question seven was about border security and whether the candidates support the deportation strategy deployed by the Trump administration.
This question gave the GOP what it loves most: a chance to blame others. Everyone agreed Biden caused this issue, Trump has been right to build the wall, and to round up and expel anyone here illegally. They also oppose sanctuary cities and would withhold funding from them, support local law enforcement with the resources they need to cooperate with ICE, and agree that illegal immigrants are driving up costs everywhere from housing to healthcare.
It was a symphony of predictable, inaccurate talking points.
My take: We need to simplify and decentralize the intake process for alien residents. Let’s use better software for that. We need to secure our borders with reasonable, lawful enforcement of existing barriers. We need better legislation that clearly defines resident status and funds the infrastructure necessary to decentralize record keeping. Individuals who reside here without legitimate status should be deported. We need compassion in our processes, not armed vigilantes hunting people down. ICE is an example of an agency acting on its own regulatory guidelines, not constrained by legislative oversight. Congress needs to enforce oversight and put an end to barbaric behavior. Fix the problem.
Keep in mind that there is no incentive for either party to actually fix immigration. If the problem ceased to exist, how would they fundraise on it?
Question 8
The final question was about the war in Iran. Given that we are now six months into a conflict we were told would be a matter of weeks, do the candidates think it’s time to end it?
Every candidate on stage agreed with the President that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Graham was the only one to explicitly state allegiance to Israel, but each one expressed a variation of disarming Iran because of the terrorist threat. Sanford said only Congress has the authority to declare war and the decision should have belonged to the legislative branch.
I fully support our military service members and respect the authority of the Commander in Chief to wield the military in defense of our nation.
I am opposed to foreign wars. I am opposed to military interventions. I am opposed to unprovoked invasions. I am opposed to using the US military and the brave men and women who serve in it to inflict our will upon sovereign nations.
Is it time to end the war in Iran? Yes. Every time we intervene in the Middle East, we make the world less safe for Americans. Not only can we not afford this military proliferation, the long-term effects of American interventionism have never been good. This conflict is making the world less safe and more expensive.
Conclusion and Acknowledgement
I recognize it is much easier for me to write my responses, 24-hours after the debate, and clearly articulate my positions on this list of topics. I commend the five participants for attempting to deliver in the 45-second response time comprehensive answers to the questions posed. I did not think any of the candidates suffered a complete face plant, which speaks to their preparation and professionalism.
We have very different ideas about how to govern. It’s the differences I hope to make clear between now and November 3rd.
It is very likely there will be another debate, once the GOP candidate is named. How likely I am to be included is uncertain. News outlets have metrics for “viability” they use to determine who gets to be on stage and being on the ballot isn’t one of those metrics. Typically it’s money raised and performance in polls. Keep in mind those polls often don’t include candidates like me for a variety of reasons, mostly tied to ad spend with the organization that conducts them.
Nevertheless, I will continue to make my case on every radio show, podcast, YouTube channel, and social media outlet that will have me. I’m also holding my own livestreams on Wednesdays. We just finished “Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees” about debt, financial infrastructure, and why tariffs don’t work. On Wednesday, August 12th, I’ll start “Loaded Dice” about the corruption of the two parties, their machinations to maintain power, and how government for the people by the people has long since ceased to exist in this country.
There’s hope.
In South Carolina this November, we can decide we’ve had enough.
I need one million votes to win on November 3rd and that means every vote counts. YOUR vote, your sister, her husband, his cousin, and his cousin’s girlfriend – every vote counts. And I’m hoping to earn one million of them.
One vote at a time.
Thanks for reading, thanks for sharing, and thanks for considering me for your next US Senator.
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