Primary Elections in SC Punish Women
But let's meet up for book club and be radical killjoys together
We had our state primary elections on Tuesday, and while I was happy to see some extreme Republicans like Adam Morgan (aka Mr. Let’s Throw Women in Jail for Having Abortions) lose, in many other races, extreme Freedom Caucus candidates (that lovely group for whom our SC Republican party isn’t fascist enough) easily won. These polarizing results are typical for primary races, where the least centrist candidate is often more supported by voters who are engaged enough to even vote in the primaries. But this is a problem here, where primary races in South Carolina often serve as the de facto election, because districts are so heavy gerrymandered and/or because Democrat opponents (if there are any) have faced real challenges financing and running effective campaigns. In other words, in most places, if you win the Republican primary, you win the general election.
It’s especially distressing to see this extreme voting in the cases of the sister Senators, who in their opposition to a total abortion ban were promised punishment in the form of primary challenges, by their own party. Penry Gustafson and Sandy Senn both lost, and Katrina Shealy faces a runoff. This puts us even closer to the possibility the legislature will now have enough votes to pass a total abortion ban. It’s a real loss to the state (and women and children especially) to not have these experienced legislators in the Senate. Their treatment by their own party, that clearly tolerates no stepping out of patriarchal lines, shows that there really is no space in the South Carolina Republican party to advocate for women.
In some sort of good news, the legislature realized how truly awful it looked to be the only state with an all-male state Supreme Court and voted unanimously to place Letitia Verdin on the high court. Not to be too progressive, her appointment reverts the court to an all-white group, with Justice Beatty’s retirement. She is the third woman ever elected to the SC Supreme Court. Progress, I guess. Here’s hoping she has a judicial backbone (unlike the legislative sycophants Justice Few and friends).
Speaking of elected officials, our state superintendent of education Ellen Weaver (who loves her some Moms For Liberty with a side of Heritage Foundation), decided to try to sneak her white supremacy policy moves in by quietly removing the ability for every high school in the state to offer AP African American Studies.
at has a good response here.
This election season is really going to be something—I’m getting through it by volunteering for Kathryn Harvey’s campaign (if you want to help from out of state, send money :)). She’s running against serial philanderer William Timmons, whose love for women seems to stop at the bedroom. If she’s elected, she’d be only the second woman to EVER represent the district (and for those of you who think it might be hopeless—that woman was Democrat Liz J. Patterson, who served three terms in a Republican district). After Patterson was defeated in 1993, there were ZERO women representing SC in Congress until Nancy Mace (bless her heart) was elected in 2021.
Unlike South Carolina, Mexico instituted electoral reforms to work towards gender equality and they just elected Claudia Sheinbaum. Why can’t we have nice things, y feliciaciones México.
Reminder if you haven’t already to RSVP to our very first Hot Feminism book club gathering, June 20th from 5-7 in west Greenville. I’ll send out the exact location to the emails in the RSVP form, or you can reply to the newsletter email to let me know if you’d like to come. We’re reading Sara Ahmed’s The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. Come even if you haven’t done (all) of the reading, just to hang out with fellow feminist killjoys (especially challenging to be one in the South, with our expectations of girls and women to be polite little ladies).
Also thanks to my friend Erin for passing along this issue of The Bitter Southerner, created entirely by women. I love them.
Hope you have a good weekend ahead, and welcome to new subscribers! If you want to upgrade to paid, subscriptions help me to pay guest writers and artists (weren’t the last two pieces fab, thank you to Molly and Hannah!), buy local media subscriptions (you should too), and helps subsidize the expenses of summer childcare so I have time to write and not just mom (although that has been really fun lately—these kids are a blast). Thanks for reading, and for your support of Hot Feminism.
There are too many days I am embarrassed to say I live in SC