Vincent Sheheen came to town and held a presser this afternoon for Beth Bernstein, who’s challenging Joan Brady in SC House district 78.
Now on the one hand there’s nothing remarkable about one Democrat endorsing another. On the other hand, one of the many ways that Sheheen is unlike Nikki Haley is that he doesn’t travel around weighing in on other people’s campaigns, so that makes this sort of special. Then, on yet a third hand (this is a manually well-endowed blog post), Vincent went to law school with Beth, and grew up with her husband in Camden. So if he weren’t willing to support her, her campaign would really be in trouble.
Sen. Sheheen cited a number of reasons for supporting Ms. Bernstein, among them being what Democrats have described as the incumbent’s reluctance to pursue ethics charges against the governor.
Ms. Bernstein’s brother Lowell, was on hand, but he had no objections to this event, unlike one in the same location last week, involving state GOP Chair Chad Connelly. (If you haven’t read about that incident, you should.)
The main thing this event did for me was gig me to go ahead and write posts on my interviews with Rep. Brady and Ms. Bernstein. I’ll try to get that done tomorrow. Y’all remind me.
This is an interesting race because it’s one of those few districts in which candidates of either party have a real chance of winning. Tyler Jones, who is handling the Bernstein campaign, said today that the Sheheen endorsement is helpful because he won that district in 2010 by a 60-40 margin.
But as Rep. Brady has pointed out to me, the district was redrawn after that, and is now a little more Republican. I pointed that out to Tyler, and he acknowledged that while the district went to Obama in 2008, 51-49, the precincts now in the district went for McCain by the same thin margin. Still, he says, the Sheheen advantage was so substantial as to negate that shift.
Bottom line, as I said before, it’s a competitive district. And you’ll be reading more about this race in coming days…
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A Democrat stumping for a Democrat, what is the world coming to.
Who’s Beth’s husband who grew up in Camden?