On Election Day I already had this piece written by four o’clock in the afternoon. I figured that I was writing about a sure thing, one of the races that just wouldn’t manage to become an upset. By nine o’clock, I was still complacent. With three percent of precincts reporting (more than enough to call the election in 2000), it looked as though Jim Hodges would remain governor of South Carolina for four more years. Just what I figured: the status quo maintained south of the border. The Democrats would hold the office of governor and the Republicans would keep Strom’s Senate seat with Lindsey Graham, who was a sure bet over Alex Sanders, a politician a bit too pink for even my Green Party-voting friend down in Columbia.
I turned off the television at nine. My husband thought it was important to drag me away from the election returns for at least an hour or two, since he recalled two years ago when I stayed up all night claiming, “I will not sleep until I know who the next president of the United States will be.” And let me tell you, that turned out to be a long November.
By the time I flipped on the TV at midnight to make sure everything was still proceeding as predicted, two big events (from my perspective) had occurred: one, we had the first Hispanic county commissioner-elect in Mecklenburg history (an exciting turn of events) and, two, Hodges had lost to Republican Mark Sanford in South Carolina (a turn of events I can’t claim yet as either bad or good, only shocking).
Who knew that South Carolinians wouldn’t vote for well-known corruption over unknown conservatism from the Low Country?
The thing is that a few months ago, I’d have told you that Governor Hodges didn’t have a chance in hell of beating anybody, due to idiotic gubernatorial decisions made willy-nilly during his tenure. As time went on and Hodges still looked good in the polls, I realized that all of this made absolutely no difference to the average South Carolina voter. After all, South Carolinians are quite forgiving of idiotic decisions. They sort of have to be, don’t they?
So, to hell with the fact that Hodges brought the lottery to South Carolina, despite pleas from socially conscious Democrats and the religious right that he not allow gambling to become a source of income for the state government. He accepted campaign funding from white supremacists, a group that just wanted to turn David Beasley out of office before he could do any more damage to the case for the Confederate flag. Hodges betrayed the Democrats in almost every possible way, in fact. Yet I didn’t think Sanford had a prayer.
For one thing, Hodges ran a very honest campaign. Although I didn’t see it until the night before Election Day, he ran one commercial that featured two trailer trash types talking about how Mark Sanford was so high and mighty, not a man of the trailer trash, like Jim Hodges. The trailer trash couple went on to discuss Sanford’s disdain for public education, adding that perhaps they should consider “trailer-schooling” their younguns. Ha, ha, ha, they laugh. My husband and I gaped at this ad, which included a redneck couple lounging on the couch while a couple of kids played on the floor; I was waiting for one of the actors to look up and say, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
But this was a real commercial. And as I said, I have to give Hodges credit for being truthful. I mean, if you’re running on the white trash vote, as he clearly was, you may as well own up to it. And what are the chances that your constituents are ever going to notice the edge of satire in your commercials? To them, high humor is a good fart joke.
So maybe this is how Hodges managed to lose after all. I don’t think his voters ever caught on to the element of satire pervading his campaign. But the betrayed Democrats just couldn’t find it in their hearts to vote for somebody who sold them out continuously over his four-year tenure. The Republicans came out in force for Sanford, as they would have for any Republican candidate. And the independents, the unconvinced and most likely the middle class decided that they’d had enough of Governor Yokel, man of the people.
North Carolinians, take note. For once, the good old boy system broke down in South Carolina. My lifelong experience with South Carolina told me that Hodges would win the gubernatorial race hands down, and yet he was given the boot in a big way. It may be that the lottery is working and South Carolinians are actually getting smarter. If so, we’re in big trouble. If we can’t make jokes at the expense of our neighbor to the south, we may have to pay attention to our own idiocy.
This article appears in Nov 13-19, 2002.
