COLUMBIA - The three candidates for the hotly contested vacant state Senate 34 seat spent $359,668 in the Republican primary race, final campaign expense reports show.

Most of that was spent by victorious candidate Ray Cleary, who listed $204,668 in spending. Cleary is the expected winner because Democrats are not contesting the district.

In the area's other contested Senate primary, incumbent Yancey McGill of Kingstree spent $130,000 to defeat a Democratic primary challenger who spent $1,400.

Campaign spending in the hundreds of thousands may seem outlandish to some for a job that pays $10,400 a year, but unlike a regular job, the pay is seldom the point.

Political analyst Neal Thigpen, a professor at Francis Marion University, said state Sen. Arthur Ravenel gave him the best reason for the attraction of these jobs when Thigpen asked Ravenel several years ago why he wanted to get back into the Senate after being in the state House, state Senate, and U.S. Congress.

"He said there is nothing as powerful and influential as a state Senate seat in a Southern state," Thigpen said. That is because legislators give cities and counties little power, and in South Carolina, the governor also has little power.

These are positions that can affect the everyday lives of many people, and especially the operations of businesses that tend to donate the most to candidates.

The Senate 34 race - the one Ravenel is vacating - was nowhere near the state's most expensive.

Three candidates in a Charleston Senate Republican primary spent more than $560,000. In that case, the loser, incumbent John Kuhn, spent the most at $322,827.

And in a three-way Florence County-based Senate Democratic primary, candidate Tim Norwood, who came in last, spent $604,771. Of that, $349,000 was his own money. Norwood's spending is believed to be a state record for a single candidate expenditure in a primary.

Nor is spending in the hundreds of thousands a new thing.

Four years ago, Republican Alan Clemmons of Myrtle Beach spent $172,351 trying to unseat Sen. Luke Rankin of Myrtle Beach. Rankin, then a Democrat, spent $239,329. Rankin is now a Republican, and Clemmons won a House seat two years ago.

Much of Cleary's money went for professional campaign consultants, TV ads and mailings. McGill spent his money the old-fashioned way: on scores of people who distributed campaign literature and carried voters to the polls on primary day.

David Maring, who also ran in the Senate 34 race, spent $140,692. Ricky Horne, who dropped out of the race and endorsed Cleary, spent $14,327.

Maring, a retired judge, received more donations than Cleary, a dentist. Maring had $142,754 in donations to $139,409 for Cleary. The difference is that Cleary put in almost $40,000 of his own money and borrowed $50,000 more, while Maring did not borrow any.

During the campaign, Cleary supporters complained Maring received massive amounts of money from lawyers because of his resistance to lawsuit reform, while Maring supporters said Cleary got much of his money from medical people.

The reports don't bear out the accusations. Cleary received about $15,000 from health care people or organizations, while Maring received about $30,000 from lawyers. Cleary also got money from some lawyers, and Maring had some donations from medical people.

In the hard-fought, three-way House District 106 Republican primary race, it's hard to say how much was spent because winner Nelson Hardwick's final report was not on file in the House Ethics Committee office last week.

Hardwick's pre-election report listed $31,598 in spending.

Hardwick said Saturday he filed the final report, due July 10, in time and his wife called the office to verify it was received. The committee's clerk was on vacation last week, and it is possible the report had not been put in the file.

Hardwick said he thinks he spent another $6,000 to $8,000 after the pre-election report.

His opponent Allen Deaton spent $16,014. Bill Blankenship, the third candidate in the race, did not file either his pre-election or July 10 report.

Deaton had mainly smaller donations, but Hardwick reported several in the $1,000 maximum amount. Many of those were from developers, builders, realty agencies and similar occupations. Hardwick is a civil engineer.

The other contested House primary in the area was District 103, where two Democrats vied for the chance to oppose incumbent Republican John "Bubber" Snow. A lifelong Democrat, Snow switched parties in the spring.

Morris Johnson, a former Georgetown County Council member who has run for the House in the past, reported spending $1,000 of his own money. He lost to Carl Anderson, whose final report was also not on file. Anderson, who could not be reached, listed expenses of $1,415 as of May 19 pre-election report.

Spending like that in the House 106 primary is not uncommon either.

Four years ago, incumbent Rep. Tracy Edge, R-North Myrtle Beach, spent $64,000 to defeat Democrat "Fat" Harold Bessent, who spent $42,563. Republican Johnny Rowell spent $51,000 trying to unseat Rep. Vida Miller, D-Pawleys Island, who spent $23,000.