By Paul Gable
Misinformation and desperation are seeping into incumbent campaigns as we move toward primary voting Tuesday.
We have seen the SCGOP ignore campaign finance and ethics regulations to send numerous mailers supporting the reelection of Alan Clemmons and Heather Crawford.
Why would the SCGOP feel the need to insert itself into the contests between Republican candidates?
Obviously the party leaders in Columbia are afraid of losing two representatives who will do exactly what they are told to do.
Doing what they are told to do in Columbia doesn’t help the constituents Clemmons and Crawford are supposed to serve in Horry County. That’s why the panic.
In the past several days Clemmons and Luke Rankin have posted individual pictures of themselves with President Trump. Those were photo ops taken when the president was in Horry County during the Hurricane Florence flooding.
Both reportedly talked up the Interstate 73 project to the president during that trip. If Clemmons and Rankin are as close to President Trump as they would like you to believe, where are the federal dollars to build the interstate?
In similar fashion, one of the SCGOP mailers for Crawford and Clemmons touted an endorsement of them by the governor. Again, if they are so close to the governor and the legislative leaders in Columbia, for that matter, where are the state dollars to build I-73?
Clemmons has consistently stated I-73 is his number one priority as a legislator. Yet, year after year, no money comes from the state for the project.
Meanwhile Clemmons represents a declining Myrtle Beach that he appears to ignore as the number of empty commercial buildings in the city continues to rise every year.
One of the SCGOP mailers for Crawford attempted to present her as ‘working hard’ to solve the flooding problems in her district. She has done nothing other than clean out some ditches to help the citizens devastated by repeated flooding events since 2016 nor to mitigate future flooding. Again, no state grants have been forthcoming to help these needed initiatives.
While ignoring their constituents, Clemmons and Crawford have found time in the past eight years to use their campaign accounts to fund travel around the country as well as repeated trips to Israel and Egypt.
Maybe Clemmons and Crawford are trying for an endorsement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also.
Rankin represents that same declining Myrtle Beach as Clemmons in addition to sharing with Crawford some of the most flood stricken areas in the county.
Despite trying very hard, Clemmons has been unable to get another job so he is back to asking his second choice, the voters of District 107, to elect him again.
These three incumbents are sharing meaningless, faux endorsements by politicians and party leaders who have nothing to do with Horry County while failing the constituents they have been elected to represent.
While attempting to fool the voters these three incumbents are forgetting the famous quote from Abraham Lincoln, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Since 2016, voters have become more and more disgusted with professional politicians who expel a lot of hot air while forgetting the citizens they are supposed to represent. The voters are becoming less and less fooled every year.
Speak Up…