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Date Published: January 15, 2004
Beasley’s Senate bid a boost to rural S.C.
The Beez is back.
Former governor David
Beasley, who served one term in office before being ousted in 1998
by Democrat Jim Hodges (who was assisted by campaign funds from
video poker, lottery and Confederate flag partisans), has entered
the race for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate to succeed
the retiring Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings.
Once given up for
dead, politically speaking, Beasley is very much alive as he becomes
a serious challenger in a field of four other candidates, none of
whom has managed to gain much traction for various reasons, among
them being lack of name recognition on the scale that Beasley
offers. Those who have announced include U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint of
Greenville, former state Attorney General Charlie Condon, Myrtle
Beach Mayor Mark McBride and Charleston real estate developer Thomas
Ravenel.
Six years after being denied re-election in a state
that normally trends Republican, Beasley has returned from the
political wasteland with his reputation intact and even improved
because of his principled opposition to gambling in the state and
his efforts to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome,
which ironically came to pass during Hodges’ single term in office.
November polls showed Beasley beating the other four
candidates as well as Democrat Inez Tenenbaum, the state
superintendent of education, the likely nominee from her party. The
only drawback because of his late entry into the race would be
raising money; however, his strong showing in the polls coupled with
his attractive personality and ties to the Christian right in the
state should make the task more achievable. Money is still the
mother’s milk of politics, and he’s got a lot of ground to make up
on his rivals.
And there is also the continuing popularity
of President George W. Bush in South Carolina, which is a plus for
not only Beasley but any of the other Republican candidates when
voters go to the polls in November.
Coming from the rural
Pee Dee region (he lives at his family farm near Society Hill in
Darlington County) could be another drawback as he will be facing
candidates from the more populous and wealthier Lowcountry and
Upstate, but it could be a strength as well. As Hartsville
Messenger Editor and Publisher Graham Osteen noted in a
Wednesday editorial Beasley’s candidacy “bodes well for the future
of the overlooked rural regions of South Carolina. Beasley truly
understands what rural South Carolina is all about, and he’s sure to
be attuned to federal legislation and new ideas that will help lift
the state’s small towns and poor, isolated areas in terms of
educational, social and economic improvements. Too much of South
Carolina is still sinking into poverty as the metropolitan areas of
Columbia, Greenville, Charleston and the Grand Strand grow by leaps
and bounds.”
Beasley has an opportunity and a challenge to
prove that his 1998 defeat was an aberration and a temporary detour
in his political career. The race for the U.S. Senate has taken a
dramatic turn with his candidacy. In the months to come we will see
if he still has the magic from 1994 that propelled him to the
governorship from the state House of Representatives.
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February 6, 2004 
