In South Carolina, the deadline for filing papers for federal office is Tuesday.

In the state’s U.S. Senate race, three Democrats are competing to take on Sen. Jim DeMint; so far, Michael Ruckes leads the trio with $2,295 raised. Let me head off a million e-mails: Chad McGowan has dropped out of the race.

With Rep. Henry Brown retiring, there’s an open-seat race in the state’s 1st district that has attracted a mere 11 GOP candidates. If money were votes, Carol Campbell III would be well ahead. His father was governor from 1987 to 1995.

In the 2nd district, Joe Wilson has a well-funded challenger who will absorb a great deal of money that the Democrats could spend more wisely elsewhere.

In the 3rd district, Rep. James Gresham Barrett* is running for governor, leaving another free-for-all with five Republicans running in a heavily GOP (R+17) district. State representative Rex Rice leads in fundraising.

In the 4th district, there are no Democrats running against Bob Inglis, but he has several Republican primary challengers.

I’m surprised that Democrat John Spratt hasn’t attracted more opposition in the 5th district (R+7). Mick Mulvaney appears to be the most likely candidate to take on Spratt.

I’m a little bit surprised that so far there’s no GOP sacrifical lamb taking on Majority Whip Jim Clyburn in the 6th district; on the other hand, this is a D+12 district and Clyburn has never gotten less than 64 percent of the vote.

Clearly, this state requires me to spend Easter weekend and some time after that with some on-the-spot reporting.

* I initially referred to him as “James Barrett” but he goes by his middle name Gresham.