The two candidates fighting to succeed retiring state Rep. JoAnne Gilham in the District 123 House seat that includes most of Hilton Head Island have at least one thing in common: When they're running for office, they don't worry about bad karma.

The last time Richard Chalk ran for public office, he got 3 percent of the vote. And when Greg Wynn decided he wanted to run for the seat, he originally was told he was too late to get on the ballot and had to go to court to get that decision overruled.

Chalk, who won the Republican primary in June, moved to Hilton Head in 1999 after nearly 20 years in North Carolina. While he was there, he served in the state House from 1985 to 1989. He then served in the Senate from 1989 to 1990 before losing a re-election bid that year.

He probably would have been unopposed in the November election except for a last-minute scramble by Wynn, who had to rush to the county elections office July 15 to turn in petition signatures that could put his name on the ballot. The county's elections director told him he was a minute past the state-mandated deadline, but Wynn sued and won, receiving a place on the ballot as an independent.

In speeches to crowds and also on his campaign literature, Chalk stresses his North Carolina experience, telling the Hilton Head Rotary Club on Thursday: "I think that that background legislatively puts me in a good position to be able to represent the interests of Hilton Head well in the state legislature."

As a member of the North Carolina legislature, Chalk sponsored some unusual legislation, including a bill that would prohibit schoolchildren from working later than 9 p.m., later changing that limit to 11 p.m. Each time, the bills failed.

In 1985, he also co-sponsored a bill that would have allowed school boards to fire a teacher that engages in "public homosexual activity" or encourages public or private homosexual activity. Chalk explained his vote this week, saying: "That was a long time ago. ... You go put your name on a lot of things specifically when you're young and don't know a whole lot about what's going on. I don't believe that people need to be making their sexual preferences an issue in the classroom, but somebody's private life is their private life, and there are many teachers doing a good job for our students who are homosexual."

Wynn has tried to paint Chalk as an outsider who isn't familiar with the Hilton Head community.

"You can learn how the ropes work in Columbia, but you can't learn how the community thinks from Columbia," Wynn said. "Mr. Chalk has no record with this local community."

Chalk defends himself by noting that he grew up in South Carolina and worked for Republican campaigns before he moved out of state as an adult.

Wynn has pointed to Chalk's opposition to the town's real estate transfer fee, a 0.25 percent tax collected when a home is sold, as one way Chalk is out of touch with what local residents want. Chalk responds that while he is "philosophically opposed" to the tax, it's a moot point because he wouldn't be voting on it as a state lawmaker.

Both candidates have tried to make education their primary issue. Chalk has said he favors programs that increase "school choice" by offering tax incentives to parents who home-school their children or send them to private schools but has never supported out-and-out vouchers.

"Something's got to be done to shake up the educational system in this state," Chalk said.

On the other side, Wynn opposes vouchers and also is against pouring more money into public schools. Both candidates want to thoroughly examine how schools spend their money and the standards children must meet to advance to the next grade level.

Wynn has advocated an increase in the state sales tax on cigarettes that would be used to pay rising Medicaid expenses. He also has said he'll vote for Beaufort County's 1 percent sales tax for capital improvements. At this point, the state doesn't have enough money to pay for all the county projects that it should, he said, so local residents and visitors need to foot the bill.

Chalk has refused to take a position on the local sales tax, insisting that the matter was not one that he would vote on as a legislator in Columbia.

"That is not our issue, that's an issue ... that the voters are going to vote on," Chalk said. "It's not anything that the state legislature is going to deal with."

In 2001, after longtime Congressman Floyd Spence died in office, Chalk ran for the seat, which stretches over 11 counties, but finished fourth out of five candidates in the Republican primary. He got 1,455 votes -- less than 3 percent of the total -- in the race that ultimately was won by Joe Wilson, then a state senator from Lexington County.

Chalk says his loss in that race was largely because he was still fairly new to the area.

"It was one of those situations where you stand on the edge of the cliff and you jump or you back up," Chalk said of the 2001 race. "Folks did not know me, I had not gotten involved in the Republican party even locally. 9-11 hit and took the opportunity to build any kind of momentum."

But he credits the failed race for introducing him to local Republicans and now is confident going into the Nov. 2 election.

"I feel pretty good about it," Chalk said. "I was very pleased with the results of the primary, and based on voting history and the effort we've made, we'll do well on November 2nd."

Wynn acknowledged that with the strong Republican base through most of Beaufort County, it may be difficult for an independent to win. But he said he was glad he had at least given the race a shot: "How do you know if you don't try?"