By Paul Gable
Cam Crawford won the Republican primary special election for the Horry County Council District 6 nomination.
Crawford gathered 547 votes (53%) to 482 votes (47%) for opponent Kirk Hanna. The totals are uncertified at this point. They will be certified by the Horry County Election Commission Thursday July 2, 2015 at 10 a.m.
Hanna topped Crawford by 31 votes in the first round of the primary two weeks ago, but Crawford reversed that result to win by 65 votes in the election that counted.
Still to come is the special general election on August 4, 2015 where Crawford will be the only name on the ballot as there is no Democratic nominee. However, a write-in challenge to Crawford is always possible.
However, a successful write-in campaign is extremely unlikely, which means Cam Crawford should be the next Horry County Council member from District 6 after the August election formalities.
The election heated up in the last few days as revelations that Peter Bishop, a one-time employee of Hanna’s construction company Hanco of SC, was arrested on June 11, 2015 for submitting nine fabricated and forged soil compaction reports to Horry County Code Enforcement while working at Hanco.
Over the last 36 hours of the campaign, a mail piece intended to be negative to Cam Crawford, surfaced in some District 6 mailboxes.
Both campaigns denied any knowledge of the large postcard size mailer. However, as the alleged sender, the LGBT Association of Horry County, does not exist, those claims, for one camp, appear to be false.
Speculation that Hanna campaign manager Jay Specter may have been responsible for the mailer, something Specter unequivocally denies, surrounded the final 36 hours of the campaign.
Specter threw the blame for the piece on Crawford’s wife, state Rep. Heather Ammons Crawford, early on election day.
Nevertheless, there was more talk about Specter over the last 36 hours of the campaign than about his candidate Hanna. This may have had nothing to do Hanna’s defeat, but it is never good for a candidate when he isn’t the center of attention in the last days of a campaign.
And so it goes in Horry County politics.
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