As y’all know, I supported Alan Wilson fairly enthusiastically in the  gubernatorial primary this year. And it wasn’t just because all the other Republicans seeking the office were grossly unacceptable (which they were).

I’ve known Alan for years, and I like him. I think he’s done a pretty good job as attorney general, setting aside the frequent dumb things he’s said and done because Republicans have to say and do such things in the Trump era if they want to continue to hold office.

Of course, the general election is different, since Jermaine Johnson seems like a pretty good guy, even though I worry about his lack of experience (he’s only held public office since 2021, while Wilson has held statewide office — a much bigger deal than a House seat — since 2011).

Because of that dearth of experience, I don’t know 1 percent as much about Johnson as I know about Wilson.

I’ve gone back and forth about this vote. I have no serious objections to Johnson (perhaps because I don’t know much about him, but he seems a decent guy), and quite a few I can point to with regard to Wilson. But I do know two things about Wilson:

• Overall, Wilson has the experience and skills, from all those years, to be an effective governor — despite the fact that I know that, as a Republican in the Trump era, he will do things he shouldn’t now and then.
• Johnson — someone I knew nothing about before this year (and I haven’t learned much this year) — simply has not had the opportunity to show he can get things done on any level, much less the gubernatorial level. He could go into office (if he could get elected) with all the best intentions in the world. But could he translate those intentions into action? I seriously doubt it, particularly with this Legislature.

Note that parenthetical point, “if he could get elected.” Based on everything I know about South Carolina, he can’t.

That offers me the opportunity to do something I have seldom done in my career as a voter: Vote for him as a gesture of protest.

I did that in my first election as a voter. I voted for George McGovern, even though he had convinced me he would be a lousy president. He had run a terrible, hopeless campaign, and if you can’t campaign well, you can’t run the country. And I haven’t forgiven him yet for the way he dumped Tom Eagleton, after pledging to back him “a thousand percent.”

So the obvious thing to do was vote for Nixon. He was able to do the job. But by November 1972, I was convinced that he was involved, somehow, in Watergate — even though all the evidence was far from in.

Fortunately, I knew Nixon would win. So I voted for McGovern, knowing he would lose. It was purely a protest: Yeah, Dick, you’re gonna win, but you won’t have my vote.

I did pretty much the same thing in 1996, with the parties switched, of course. I liked a lot of things about Bob Dole, but his campaign was a disaster (apparently his skills as a senator did not translate well into campaigning for the executive branch), so I was faced with the same problem as with McGovern — how could he be an effective president? But I was getting fed up with Bill Clinton, for a number of reasons — one of the big ones being how he had failed to achieve anything on his signature issue, health care reform.

But overall, Clinton was fairly effective, whereas Dole was incompetent as a candidate. Dole was such a lame candidate that even though I had written a number of columns and editorials supporting him, when it came time to make the final endorsement, I told then-Editorial Page Editor Tom McLean that I couldn’t write that edit. I could not in good conscience tell our readers that he would be a better president. So Tom wrote it himself.

But I voted for him. Why? Because I was sure he would lose. The vote was purely a protest about Clinton. Just one less vote he would get on his way to victory.

So… I could do the same thing here, right? Vote for Johnson, even though I’m convinced Wilson would be more effective in office, as a protest against all the things Wilson has done to keep the Trumpists off his back. And I could do this because I feel sure Johnson will lose.

However, I changed my mind about “protest votes” in 2016. I saw a lot of conventional Republicans, convinced that Trump couldn’t possibly get elected president of the United States of America, vote for him anyway because they despised Hillary Clinton. As a protest. I’m convinced he couldn’t have have won the general election otherwise. (Before you shout out, “but practically ALL Republicans slavishly support Trump now!”… Yes, that’s true. Maybe I’ll write a separate post sometime — this one is long enough — explaining why that has happened. But it was not the case in 2016.)

As it turned out, that was NOT a safe “protest vote,” and what they did has done, quite likely, irreparable harm to our great nation.

Our country has become so split down the middle since 1996 that ANY candidate who wins one of the two major-party nominations goes into the general election with a 50-50 chance of winning, even if he’s the worst possible candidate in the world. We know that that now because that’s exactly what happened in both 2016 and 2024.

So… I decided never again to do what I did in 1972 and 1996. No more protest votes, because either candidate can win now.

So for a time, I was decided that I would vote for the better-qualified candidate this year. And that’s Alan Wilson. As likable as Jermaine Johnson is, I don’t think he’s ready. And while conventional wisdom indicates he won’t win, you can never be sure. There’s been a lot of talk this year about a “blue wave.” Well, I dunno about that. I think Trump’s troubles mean that Republicans are likely to suffer more than usual in this “midterm,” but will it be enough to elect a little-known Democrat over a veteran Republican as governor of South Carolina? I seriously doubt it. But I can’t be sure, can I?

So I’ve been planning to vote for Wilson. No protest. That was settled in my mind until I started noticing this ad over and over in recent weeks:

The main message is, “I will eliminate the state income tax. Not cut it, ELIMINATE it.”

Well, it’s pretty inexcusable for a guy who seems a shoo-in to win to be touting such a stupid, pandering gesture as that so late in the campaign.

Various Republicans have been trying for about 30 years to ditch the income tax, and fortunately have failed. In case you don’t know already, here are two things you should consider about this apparent promise:

1. As with all campaign promises of the “I will magically make this happen; count on it” variety, he cannot guarantee such a thing. The governor of South Carolina has no more constitutional power to make such a thing happen than you or I do. That’s up to the Legislature — which has up to now rejected the idea, thank goodness. He can lobby the Legislature to do it — and lobby more effectively than you or I can — but he can’t DO it on his own.
2. Even if he COULD do it, it’s a very bad idea. As weak a leg as our low state income tax is, we still do have a conventional three-legged tax stool in South Carolina. Eliminating it would destabilize our tax base to a dangerous degree — state government would be almost entirely dependent upon the volatile sales tax. No one who believes in responsible government would consider doing such a thing. Of course, most voters — who don’t understand the ins and outs of how government works — think it sounds great. But it is the responsibility of an experienced officeholder to know better. That is an essential principle underlying representative democracy.

Touting something like that so late in a campaign that he already seems sure to win is completely unacceptable.

So I don’t know how I’m going to vote now.