COLUMBIA--Black legislators walked out on judicial elections Wednesday, protesting years of little progress in getting black judges elected.

Twenty-nine Legislative Black Caucus members walked out as the last votes were cast in two elections that had black candidates. Both lost by wide margins.

"We're very tired of being left out in terms of diversity," said Rep. David Mack, D-Charleston and the caucus chairman. "Today we got whitewashed."

Blacks hold just six of the state's 141 judicial seats.

In electing judges, the Legislature "looks at race first and that's a problem," Mack said. It happens during every judicial election, he said, "and we're sick of that."

"A lot of this is about judicial philosophy, not race or gender," House Speaker David Wilkins, R-Greenville, said. Race isn't the issue, he said.

The walkout, the first for the Black Caucus, "might keep the public spotlight on the issue, but it doesn't do anything to solve the problem that they perceive," Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, said.

Gov. Mark Sanford wouldn't comment on the walkout. "It's a legislative issue," Sanford spokesman Will Folks said.

But black legislators want action, not more waiting. Republican leadership in the Legislature, "keeps promising that things are going to get better," Sen. Kay Patterson, D-Columbia, said. Instead, he said, things are getting worse, "they're not better."

The Legislative Black Caucus has 32 members. Two were out sick and one, Sen. Kent Williams, D-Marion, didn't leave with the other members, said Rep. Leon Howard, D-Columbia and chairman-elect of the caucus.

As black legislators walked out, they were greeted by more than a dozen members of the South Carolina conference of NAACP branches. They held signs saying "More diversity in the courts. We care, we want you to be fair."

Lonnie Randolph, the state group's president, said the NAACP will stand beside legislators as "they continue to overcome oppression and bigotry."

Mack said difficulty in electing black judicial candidates appears to be because of flaws in the way judges are chosen.

Last year, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Greenville native and head of a national civil rights organization, threatened to sue the state over its system of electing judges, saying a popular election would result in more diversity. "That system of selecting judges violates the intent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965," Jackson said Tuesday. He said his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is still reviewing a possible legal challenge as well as a "street challenge."

Black caucus members stayed to vote as they continued to build a record that could be used in a court fight, said Jim Felder, director of the South Carolina Voter Education Project.

Howard hopes a bill he has sponsored will put more black judges on the bench. It says the Judicial Merit Selection Commission can send the names of all qualified candidates to the Legislature for consideration.

That screening committee now is allowed only to send three candidates forward as nominees.

JUDICIAL ELECTIONS

Judicial elections Wednesday resulted in two black candidates losing the only contested races for judgeships and prompted a Legislative Black Caucus walkout. The following judges were re-elected or elected Wednesday.

-- Court of Appeals, Seat 1, Paul E. Short Jr., re-elected.

-- Court of Appeals, Seat 2, H. Bruce Williams, re-elected.

-- Circuit Court, 6th District, Seat 1, Brooks P. Goldsmith, re-elected.

-- Circuit Court, 12th District, Seat 1, Michael G. Nettles, elected.

-- Family Court, 5th Circuit, Seat 1, Dorothy Mobley Jones elected, defeated Gwendlyne Y. Smalls, 99-63.

-- Administrative Law Court, Seat 2, John D. McLeod, elected, defeated Shirley C. Robinson, 97-64.

Source: The Associated Press