Tom Baxter, Southern Political Report
- While it took second place in the headlines to the election of an Indian-American woman as the state’s Republican nominee for governor, state Rep. Tim Scott’s victory Tuesday in the Republican primary for South Carolina’s 1st District Congressional seat marks an even more dramatic milestone in terms of the long sweep of Southern history.
It’s remarkable enough to say that an African-American Republican beat Paul Thurmond, Strom Thurmond’s son, in a runoff for the congressional seat from which U.S. Rep. Henry Brown is retiring. But that to some degree gives short shrift to what Scott accomplished.
To get into Tuesday’s runoff, Scott was the frontrunner earlier this month in a field that included the sons of the two most famous Republicans in the state’s history (Thurmond and Carroll Campbell, Jr.), a local Tea Party activist, two former congressional aides and a couple of local officials. This victory, in other words, was the opposite of a fluke. Nor have there been any reports it was much affected by cross-over voting by African-American Democrats.
