Charleston, S.C. – Ted Cruz wins Iowa. Donald Trump wins New Hampshire. Then what?
It’s a question that Republicans are beginning to ponder this week as they travel here for Thursday’s presidential debate and the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting.
Unlike Iowa and New Hampshire, where a consensus among insiders has started to cement projecting Cruz and Trump victories, South Carolina remains an electoral enigma. The Palmetto State is more unpredictable than in past cycles due to a host of factors, including a larger and more ideologically fragmented field. But Republicans here say four candidates have both the money and organization to survive until the February 20 primary, and all four have competitive claims in the state: Trump sits atop the polls; Cruz has the most enthusiastic followers; Marco Rubio boasts the most experienced organization; and Jeb Bush enjoys the deepest reservoir of donor loyalty. Yet none possess traditional x-factors, such as deep southern roots or military experience, that would make them a natural favorite.
Add to that intangible uncertainty three looming developments — brutal attacks, major endorsements, and two debates — with the potential to make or break any of the candidates, and you get a state without a front-runner. All of this has Republicans here believing that South Carolina could offer an unexpected twist following two potentially anticlimactic contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.
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“South Carolina has a history of rough and tumble politics. It usually has a dark side to it — and it usually happens late,” says former state party chairman Katon Dawson. This, he says, accounts for much of the unpredictability here. In a state known for bareknuckle tactics — recall 2000, when George W. Bush’s allies spread scurrilous rumors that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child — the 2016 GOP race has been abnormally temperate. Jeb Bush’s super PAC is running ads depicting Rubio as a vote-missing flip-flopper. But nobody is going nuclear — yet.
“I think Trump would win South Carolina today. But nobody has laid a glove on him — not a piece of mail, not a robo-call,” Dawson says. “I suspect that’s going to change.”
Another source of perceived volatility is speculation over possible endorsements from Governor Nikki Haley and Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott — South Carolina’s three most powerful Republicans, and three of the most sought-after surrogates remaining in the GOP race. Many Republicans here expect all three will announce a choice before the primary.
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“I hope they all endorse, because I think people are waiting to see who they’re all for,” says Glenn McCall, South Carolina’s RNC committeeman. “I think definitely Senator Graham and Senator Scott will. But I also think our governor will.” (One South Carolina GOP veteran says of neutrality, “It’s not how people think here. You’re either for Clemson or [South] Carolina. You’re not neutral. If you can get in the game, you get in the game.”)
‘I think Trump would win South Carolina today. But nobody has laid a glove on him — not a piece of mail, not a robo-call.’
Congressman Joe Wilson says Graham told him Friday night, before Paul Ryan’s poverty summit in Columbia, that he was preparing to “pick sides.” Graham allies, including former 2016 staffers, think it will be either Bush or Rubio. And over the past two weeks, in meetings around the state, Graham has given some donors the impression that he’s leaning toward Rubio. The senator surprised a group of Bush allies last week at a meeting in Greenville when, after being introduced by David Wilkins — the former Ambassador to Canada, and a Jeb supporter — he criticized the Bush operation and spoke glowingly of Florida’s junior senator.
Republicans caution that Graham likes candidates other than Rubio. But Tim Scott is a different story. Those close to the popular first-term senator say he will either endorse Rubio or stay out of the race altogether. This has sparked a fierce lobbying competition, sources say, in which Cruz’s allies are asking Scott to stay on the sidelines while Rubio’s supporters — including Congressman Trey Gowdy, Scott’s close friend — are urging the senator to get behind him.
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Haley, who seized the national spotlight by delivering Tuesday’s State of the Union response — and courted criticism from the right by implicitly rebuking Trump — hasn’t tipped her hand. Like Graham, it’s widely thought that her two favorites are Bush and Rubio. But as a potential vice-presidential pick, she might forgo an endorsement to avoid burning any bridges. And her allies say that she has mixed feelings about both Bush (who helped her craft an education plan, but is trailing badly in the polls) and Rubio (who cuts a similar political profile, but whose South Carolina-based consultants were associated with a nasty, innuendo-laced primary campaign against her in 2010 for which she’s known to still hold a grudge).
#share#Beyond an expected wave of negative campaigning and the boost to be gained from big-name endorsements, there’s a third factor Republicans say could reshape the race: local debates. Newt Gingrich’s 2012 victory here was widely attributed to two dominant debate performances he delivered in the final week before the primary. This time around, South Carolina is the only state to host two debates — one this Thursday, and another Saturday, February 13, a week before the primary. Because the race has so far played out almost exclusively in Iowa and New Hampshire, Republicans say the winner of the debates here will see a significant uptick in attention from voters and the media.
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“Three-quarters of the state was more interested in watching the national championship Monday night than following the political tit-for-tat” at a forum for Democratic candidates in Iowa, says longtime South Carolina strategist Luke Byars, whose firm, First Tuesday Strategies, is helping Rubio’s super PAC. “The volume of the race has been exponentially increased in Iowa and New Hampshire, but it hasn’t risen to that level in South Carolina.”
‘The volume of the race has been exponentially increased in Iowa and New Hampshire, but it hasn’t risen to that level in South Carolina.’
The spotlight has indeed been hogged by Iowa and New Hampshire, two states into which candidates have dumped tens of millions of dollars and thousands of hours campaigning. But it’s South Carolina that traditionally picks Republican nominees: Only once since 1980 has the winner of the Palmetto State’s primary not gone on to claim the GOP nomination. That was in 2012, when Gingrich, who’d finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, won a shocking 40 percent of the vote and crushed both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. (He wound up winning just one other state, his native Georgia.)
That unexpected 2012 result, and its sharp deviation from the choices of Iowa and New Hampshire, speaks to just how different South Carolina is from its two predecessors. Not only is the state more culturally and economically diverse, it is much, much larger. Last election cycle, more than 600,000 people voted in South Carolina’s GOP primary — compared to roughly 370,000 voters in the Hawkeye and Granite States combined.
#related#South Carolina’s Republican base is divided along rough geographic and demographic lines into sub-electorates. The state’s middle-income and ultra-conservative voters cluster around the manufacturing-heavy “upstate” areas of Greenville and Spartanburg, as well as the surrounding rural suburbs. Affluent Republicans, many of them political moderates, are found around the capital in Columbia, as well as in the snowbird-populated “low country” that includes Charleston and the retirement meccas of Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach.
These divisions, coupled with the state’s relative size and the lack of campaign activity it’s seen thus far, explain why many Republicans currently view South Carolina as a four-way race without a front-runner.
“The polling tells you one thing,” says Scott Howell, Graham’s media consultant and a veteran of campaigns in the state. “But I think any of those four candidates have a reasonable shot here.”
— Tim Alberta is chief political correspondent for National Review.