One race that’s been on my to-do list for a while is the South Carolina governor’s race; their primary is June 8. (If no candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote in the primary, a runoff will be held between the top two vote-getters.)
Rasmussen has some new numbers that are surprising:
With South Carolina’s Republican Primary for Governor less than three weeks away, State Representative Nikki Haley, coming off a fresh endorsement by Sarah Palin, now leads the GOP pack.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary voters shows Haley earning 30% support. She’s followed by State Attorney General Henry McMaster who picks up 19% and Congressman Gresham Barrett with 17%. Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer captures 12% of the vote.
Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate in the race, but nearly one-in-five potential primary voters (18%) remain undecided.
To conservatives, the choices range from pretty good to good to really good. Nikki Haley is one of those great rising stars in the GOP; she took on her own party over the importance of having recorded votes (instead of voice votes, where it’s simply done by saying “aye” or “nay,” leaving no record of which lawmakers approved and which opposed a particular bill or amendment). Henry McMaster was one of the first state attorney generals to challenge the constitutionality of Obamacare. Gresham Barrett has a lifetime ACU rating of 98.
And Andre Bauer? I know some Republicans in the state aren’t thrilled with him — comparing the needy to stray animals generally strikes most folks as harsh — but during the Sanford mess, he took the high road and said that if Sanford was removed from office, he would not seek a full term. (Some Republicans’ reluctance to see Bauer become governor was a contributing factor to the decision not to impeach Sanford.)
Three Democrats are running for governor in South Carolina: state senator Robert Ford, education superintendent Jim Rex, and state senator Vincent A. Sheheen.