The most unusual candidate for S.C. Senate this year may be Ron Wilson, the national commander of the 30,000-plus-member Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Running as a Republican for an Anderson County seat in Tuesday’s primary, Wilson openly promotes the right of secession. He also wants to have “Confederate Southern Americans” designated a specific minority group, like Hispanics or African-Americans.

“Confederate Southern Americans are a separate and distinct people,” Wilson said in a statement posted on the Internet. “As a people, Confederate Southern Americans are tired of being the ‘whipping boy’ for the rest of the country’s racial problems.”

Wilson, an Easley resident, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

However, in his Internet posting, Wilson has qualified his remarks on secession. While he believes states have the right to secede from the Union, he said he is not “in any way an advocate of modern secession.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based group that monitors what it calls the “Radical Right,” has placed Wilson on a nationwide list of “40 to Watch.”

“Wilson has radicalized the Sons of Confederate Veterans,” said Law Center spokeswoman Heidi Beirich, who called Wilson a “neo-Confederate.” By that, she said she meant someone who wants to return to pre-1860 United States and is dismissive of slavery.

Beirich said her organization has no complaint with the Sons of Confederate Veterans as a heritage organization devoted to the preservation of monuments and to honoring Southern soldiers in the Civil War.

But Wilson is changing the mission of the organization, she said, describing his proposal to designate “Confederate Southern Americans” as a distinct ethnic group as “goofy legal theory.”

A former Sons of Confederate Veterans commander, Patrick Griffin III, of Darnestown, Md., disputed the Law Center’s assertions.

“I characterize them as an organization that has an ax to grind and needs the ax to stay in business,” Griffin said. “They have misperceived what the SCV is all about.”

The organization, Griffin said, is “not being radicalized.”

Griffin described Wilson as sometimes “blunt” in his speech, but a good leader who has the group’s best interests at heart. Wilson has been active in fund raising and in raising members’ awareness on issues, he added.

In filings with the Senate Ethics Committee, Wilson says he has raised $75,000 in the District 3 race. That compares with $173,000 raised by attorney Chuck Allen, and $177,000 by pharmacist Kevin Bryant, his two primary opponents.

One Wilson contributor is Lexington County restaurant owner Maurice Bessinger, who gave Wilson $1,000. Several years ago, major food chains yanked Bessinger’s barbecue sauce from their stores when it was revealed that Bessinger distributed pamphlets at his stores saying that slavery was God’s will for blacks and that blacks were happier being slaves in America than free in Africa.

Wilson’s opponents — Bryant and Allen — declined to discuss him. However, both acknowledged Wilson has a base of support with hundreds of Sons of Confederate Veterans members and their families who live in the Anderson area.

“Don’t count Wilson out,” said political scientist Neal Thigpen of Francis Marion University.

Not many people vote in primaries, Thigpen said, and if a candidate can get his voters to the polls, he can win. “This is where more extreme candidates can be tough — in primaries.”

In an editorial Wednesday, Anderson County’s leading newspaper, the Anderson Independent-Mail, endorsed Allen in the GOP primary.

A former Democratic member of the House who switched to the Republican Party, Allen is a moderate who supports public education and can work with different constituencies, the newspaper said.

The newspaper described Wilson as having a “mind-set that should bother voters who want a representative for all the people” and noted he had “associations with groups that have advocated secession from the United States.”

Since assuming the post of commander in chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans two years ago, Wilson has suspended more than 300 members who are political moderates, said Walt Hilderman of Eutawville, one of the suspended members.

“He will suspend people that disagree with his politics,” said Hilderman, who wants the group to honor Confederate soldiers — not get involved in Southern politics.

“We are being led into modern political turmoil, and it means we are gaining modern political enemies,” said Hilderman, who is running for commander in chief, even though he has been suspended.

By the time Wilson’s term as commander expires later this summer, he might be the Republican nominee for state Senate.

If none of the three GOP candidates wins a majority in Tuesday’s primary, the two top vote-getters will face each other in a runoff June 22. The GOP primary winner faces opposition in the fall from the winner of the Democratic primary between Ed Allgood and Mike Mullinax.

Griffin said that if Wilson was elected he would do a good job. “I think he would represent his constituents well.”