South Carolina Republican Party

History

19th century

In 1868, legislation prohibition racial discrimination in public accommodations was passed by the state house, but failed in the state senate. Benjamin F. Randolph, a state legislator and chair of the party, and another legislator were murdered that year.

The Republican Party of the United States was founded during the 1850s in response to the political tensions that revolved around slavery and came to define that era. The Republican Party's goal was to abolish slavery and preserve the hierarchy of the national government over that of the states. The ensuing years were marked by an increasing divide between northern and southern states that eventually boiled over when the state of South Carolina seceded from the Union in 1860. Other southern states followed and the American Civil War began in 1861 between the Union and the newly minted Confederacy. In 1865, the conflict ended with the Union as the victor. Following this, the southern and formerly Confederate states were gradually reintroduced back into the Union of the United States with a process that came to be called the Reconstruction Era of the United States. Northern Republicans and freed slaves came to control the politics of South Carolina during this era, as Confederates were temporarily disenfranchised. The planter elite struggled to adapt to a free labor system. The Republican Party of South Carolina was established during this time and controlled the politics of South Carolina throughout Reconstruction. Democrats mounted increasing violence and fraud at elections from 1868 through the period, in an effort to suppress the black and Republican vote. In 1874, the paramilitary Red Shirts arose as a paramilitary group working openly to disrupt Republican meetings, suppress black voting and return Democrats to power. The most violence occurred in counties where blacks were a strong minority, as Democrats tried to reduce their challenge.

White Democrats led by Wade Hampton won the governorship and control of the state legislature in 1876. They dominated the state government for decades, controlling most candidates for governor and for national office. Freedmen were still able to elect Republicans to local office in some counties, giving them a say in daily government.

Following a brief coalition between the Republican Party and Populists in the late 19th century, the South Carolina legislature followed others in the South in passing a constitution to disenfranchise most blacks and many poor whites. The Constitution of 1895 was a departure from the Reconstruction Constitution of 1868 that aimed to keep the majority black population from voting. However, the poll tax, property requirements and literacy requirements also keep poor whites from voting. By excluding blacks from politics, the Democrats secured their power and ended the Republican challenge. The legislatures passed such laws and constitutions from 1890 to 1908, turning most of the South into a one-party region dominated by Democrats. The Solid South disenfranchised large portions of its states' populations. The exclusion of freedmen and their descendants from the political system resulted in the South Carolina Republican Party with very little influence within the state for generations after. This control would last until the second half of the twentieth century.

20th century

During the 1950s and into the 1970s, in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement, the Party gained momentum, partly due to major shifts in the demographics and policies of the nation's two largest parties and the GOP's "southern strategy" spearheaded by President Richard Nixon and his advisors. On September 16, 1964, Senator Strom Thurmond, a major player in South Carolina politics, announced he had switched parties from the Democratic to the Republican Party, saying the Democratic "party of our fathers is dead." He argued it had "forsaken the people to become the party of minority groups, power-hungry union leaders, political bosses, and businessmen looking for government contracts and favors".

In the 1952 United States presidential election, the Party supported an independent slate of electors for the Eisenhower–Nixon ticket, in an effort to avoid vote dilution that would aid Adlai Stevenson II, the Democratic nominee. This led to the unusual outcome of no Republican electors from the state. Eisenhower narrowly lost the state in the general election, winning 49.28% of the vote. Afterwards, as South Carolina Republicans attempted to grow the Party's footprint in the state, multiple factions competed for support from the national party. In 1953, Party chairman D.F. Merrill sued a group of rival Republicans that received the financial support of the national GOP, prohibiting the group from calling itself the "Republican Party".

In 1967, Carolyn Frederick was elected to represent House District 22 in Greenville County, becoming the first woman to be elected to the chamber.

During the 1968 United States presidential election, the Party was accused of trying to undermine support for third-party candidate George Wallace by feeding the Wallace campaign bad advice regarding his efforts to win the state.

Following Nixon's win in 1968, the Party Chairman, Harry Dent, left to work in Nixon's Administration. Dent is credited as the architect of the Southern Strategy. In advance of the 1972 United States presidential election, Dent lobbied to move the Party towards a moderate position that would attract a broad base of voters, including the state's large black population in the wake of desegregation in the United States and growing support for civil rights and equality under the law. This was in opposition to the efforts of the state's more segregationist operatives, like Thurmond and Barry Goldwater, who supported a staunchly conservative and anti-integration position for the Party that was untethered from the moderation sought by Northeastern Republicans.

21st-century rise to dominance

The Party held its first presidential preference primary for the 1980 presidential election, allowing voters to directly choose who the state's delegates would support at the national convention. In an effort to court Democratic voters disgruntled with the leftward shift of the national Democratic party, the primary was made open to all voters. By the 1990s, the Party had firm control over the governorship, except in 1998 when incumbent Republican David Beasley lost re-election, partly due to his opposition to gambling in the state. The Federal Election Commission fined the Party $60,000 for violations connected to its funding of Beasley's re-election campaign. Republicans retook the governorship in 2004, and have held it ever since.

Shortly after the turn of the century, the Party solidified its control over the state's government and congressional delegation. Republicans first gained a majority in the state Senate in 2002, and have maintained it ever since. Even still, elections in 2002 were close, and the Party worked closely with the Bush Adminisration to increase GOP support in that year's races.

Some scholars and journalists argue the rise in migration from northern states in the 1990s and the 2000s led to slight moderation among the state's Republicans, particularly on issues like environmental conservation along the state's coast and gun control.

In 2010, Republican Mick Mulvaney was elected as the representative of South Carolina's 5th congressional district, the first Republican to represent that district since Robert Smalls, the party's co-founder, last held the seat in 1883. The election of Mulvaney was the first break in 100+ years of Democratic control of the state's congressional delegation. Also in 2010, Republican Nikki Haley was elected the first female governor of South Carolina and the second Indian-American, after fellow Republican Bobby Jindal, to serve as a governor in the United States.

South Carolina's 2012 Republican Presidential Preference Primary was the party's then-largest ever, drawing more than 600,000 voters. Newt Gingrich won the race with 40.4% of the vote. The highly contested election set multiple state records for a presidential primary cycle; candidates held five presidential debates and spent $13.2 million in television ads. Governor Haley appointed Republic Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate. Scott is the first African-American senator from South Carolina and the first from the South since 1881.

History of the Republican presidential primary

The South Carolina Republican primary has been known as the "first in the South" primary that clears the early field of candidates following the traditional first primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. In 2024, party Chairman McKissick said South Carolina has a "tradition of being the graveyard of presidential campaigns." Due to the mix of suburban and rural voters in the state, candidates must demonstrate their ability to generate support among a Republican base similar to the national Republican base.

The party protects this designation, expressing disapproval when other states schedule primaries too close to South Carolina's, like when North Carolina held its 2012 primary a week after South Carolina. In 2007, then-chairman Katon Dawson said, "We will be the first in the south. It's a historic position we've had, and we will protect it." In January 2026, the Republican National Committee voted to maintain South Carolina's position as the first southern primary for the 2028 primary.

Since 1980, and with the exception of the 2012 primary, the presidential candidate that won the South Carolina Republican primary also won the national party's nomination. This has given the state, and by extension its Republican Party, an outsized role in national politics.

Party leadership

The party is led by an elected group of state party officers, the South Carolina Republican Party State Executive Committee and paid staff. The state party organization is headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina.

Current elected officials

The South Carolina Republican Party controls eight out of nine statewide offices and holds large majorities in both chambers of the South Carolina General Assembly. Republicans also hold one of the state's U.S. Senate seats and six of the state's seven U.S. House of Representatives seats.

In 2012, Republican Tom Rice became the representative of South Carolina's 7th congressional district, newly re-established because of population gains. He is the first person to represent that district since it was eliminated in 1933.

In a 2013 special election, former Republican Governor Mark Sanford was elected as the representative of South Carolina's 1st congressional district, returning to the seat he previously held from 1995 to 2001.

Notable past elected officials

Strom Thurmond (December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was a United States Senator from South Carolina from 1954 to 2003. Thurmond served as a city and county attorney before he was elected to the South Carolina state senate in 1932. Following completion of military duty during World War II, Thurmond served as the governor of South Carolina from 1947 to 1951. He was a member of the Democratic Party for a decade; it dominated all southern states until after passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. With other Dixiecrats, he resisted changes for social justice after the US Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. In 1964 he switched to the Republican Party. He has held the records for longest senate career, oldest voting member of the Senate in history, the only Senator to reach 100 years of age while in office, the record for longest filibuster in senate history at 24 hours and 18 minutes, and the longest-serving Dean of the United States Senate, after maintaining the position for 14 years.

Robert Smalls (April 5, 1839 – February 23, 1915), one of the founders of the South Carolina Republican Party, was an African-American slave in South Carolina who escaped to become a free man, war hero, and a politician. Born into slavery, Smalls was taken by his masters to Charleston, South Carolina in 1851; there he worked at several different labor jobs. At the onset of the Civil War in 1861, Smalls was hired to work aboard a steamship named Planter, which served as an armed transport for the Confederate Army carrying guns and ammunition. On May 13, 1862, he and other black crew aboard the Planter seized control of the ship and successfully turned it and its cargo over to the Union Army. Smalls gained heroic status and was appointed as the first African-American captain of a U. S. military vessel. After the war, Smalls entered politics and joined the Republican Party. He was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1868 to 1870 and the South Carolina State Senate from 1870 to 1874. Next, he was elected to three terms in the US House of Representatives from South Carolina's 5th congressional district. He was the last Republican to be elected from that district until 2010, as Democrats suppressed black voting and disenfranchised blacks at the turn of the century, fatally weakening the Republican Party.

List of Party chairmen

Robert B. Elliott (1874–80)

Edmund William McGregor Mackey (1880–84)

Thomas E. Miller (1884)

Rev. R. W. Memminger (1892)

Joseph W. Tolbert (1925–31)

D. A. Gardner (1932–36)

J. Bates Gerald (1938–50)

D. F. Merrill (1950–1956)

David Dows (1956–58)

Gregory D. Shorey, Jr. (1958–61)

Robert F. Chapman (1961–63)

J. Drake Edens Jr. (1963–65)

Harry S. Dent (1965–68)

Raymond A. Harris (1968–71)

C. Kenneth Powell (1971–74)

Jesse L. Cooksey (1974–76)

Daniel I. Ross Jr. (1976–80)

Dr. George G. Graham (1980–86)

Van Hipp Jr. (1987–89)

Barry Wynn (1990–93)

Henry D. McMaster (1993–2002)

Katon Dawson (2002–09)

Karen Floyd (2009–11)

Chad Connelly (2011–13)