The South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia, S.C. is seen after sunset. (Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — The Republican Party flipped as many as four seats in the state Senate on Tuesday, while holding seats in the state House they picked up two years ago.
The Republicans went into the election just one seat away from a supermajority in the Senate. The GOP has controlled the Senate since 2000, but in a chamber where rules allow a single senator to block legislation, Republicans were looking for greater ability to control the agenda.
Two of Republicans’ four wins are headed to automatic recounts, with the GOP challengers winning by less than 1 percentage point.
“Today, Palmetto State residents voted to send four new Republican senators to Columbia,” Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, said shortly after midnight. “I look forward to working alongside these new senators to champion conservative victories that make South Carolina an even better place to live, work, and raise a family.”
Massey was among 19 incumbent senators and three incoming freshmen who had no opposition on the ballot.
With former President Donald Trump winning the state by nearly 20 percentage points as of Tuesday evening — as votes were still being counted — Drew McKissick, state party chairman, predicted it would be another red wave for the GOP in South Carolina.
Two years ago, Republicans ousted five Black Democrats and flipped three open seats in the state House. Several of those were stunners, and Democrats were looking to get back seats they’d held for decades, plus hold their numbers in the Senate.
State Democratic Party Chairwoman Christale Spain repeated that goal Tuesday night at the state Democratic Party election night watch party.
“On the Senate side, we just can’t lose anything,” Spain said before the vote-counting started showing the opposite. “We really can’t afford to lose another Senate seat.”
Instead, Democrats got a shellacking in the upper chamber, in the number of incumbents ousted, though all four margins were at least fairly close.
Sen. Gerald Malloy of Hartsville, a 22-year veteran of the Senate, lost by less than 300 votes to Republican JD Chaplin, according to unofficial results from state election officials. The margin of less than 1 percentage point means an automatic recount.
The other incumbent heading to a recount is Sen. Mike Fanning, D-Great Falls, who lost his bid for a third term by just a few dozen votes to Republican Everett Stubbs of Rock Hill.
Sen. Kevin Johnson, of Manning, lost to Jeff Zell, of Sumter, by less than 700 votes, which is more than what would trigger a recount.
Freshman Democrat Vernon Stephens lost his Senate seat by the biggest margin of the four, at just 2.5 percentage points, or roughly 1,200 votes. He lost a challenge by Tom Fernandez, an attorney running as a hard-right Republican. On Facebook, Fernandez said his platform is “to offend as many woke liberals as possible,” and he received the endorsement of House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jordan Pace of Goose Creek.
A win by Fernandez marks a huge shift for the seat held for 50 years by a Black Democrat. Beyond the vastly different stances of Stephens and Fernandez, both Stephens and his predecessor, 46-year Sen. John Matthews, are from Bowman in rural Orangeburg County. Fernandez lives in fast-growing Summerville.
Democrats held on to at least one of the two historically blue seats left open by senators who didn’t seek re-election.
State Rep. Russell Ott, a Calhoun County Democrat who’s been in the state House since 2013, has won the seat held for 48 years by Sen. Nikki Setzler, the longest-serving senator in state history.
Not yet clear is who will win the seat held since 2012 by Sen. Thomas McElveen of Sumter and, for 32 years before that, by Democrat Phil Leventis of Sumter.
The election guarantees that, for the first time ever, the senator from District 35 will hail from neighboring Kershaw County instead. Both Democrat Jeffrey Graham, former mayor of Camden, and Republican Mike Jones live in Camden. Graham was leading on Tuesday evening.
All 170 Statehouse seats were on the ballot, although more than half of them were won automatically Tuesday with no competition in the general election. In South Carolina, where the Legislature draws its own voting lines, contests are often decided in the primaries.
The 2022 election gave Republicans in the House, in GOP control since 1994, their largest majority ever — an 88-to-36 supermajority advantage.
Three freshmen in the House — Reps. Daniel Gibson of Greenwood, Fawn Pedalino of Turbeville and Bill Hager of Hampton — held seats they flipped from incumbent Democrats two years ago, even in districts that still favored Democrats.
Whether Democrats will hold on to the only House seat they flipped in 2022 remains unclear. The rematch between freshman Rep. Heather Bauer and Republican Kirkman Finlay, who’s trying to regain the Richland County seat he held for 10 years, remained too close to call.
Freshman state Rep. Matt Leber won a seat in the Senate after ousting state GOP Sen. Sandy Senn in the June primary. Leber faced Democrat Rita Adkins in a district made safer for Republicans by the post-census redrawing of lines.
A former legislator looking to return to the state House, Democrat Jerry Govan of Orangeburg, won his seat. He replaced Ott, whose decision to run for Senate left the seat open.
Govan didn’t seek re-election to the House in 2022 after redistricting resulted in his home being drawn out of the district he’d represented for 30 years. His home was suddenly in the district represented by Ott and, before him, his father Harry Ott for 15 years.
Rather than run against Russell Ott in a primary in 2022, Govan made an unsuccessful bid for state superintendent.
Former Rep. Marvin Pendarvis won re-election despite resigning from the House in September.
Although he no longer held the seat, Pendarvis never withdrew his candidacy. With no Republican or third-party opposition, he won his seat without opposition. What happens now is unclear.
Pendarvis resigned five months after a former client, Adrian Lewis, sued him, claiming Pendarvis settled his lawsuit without his knowledge, forged his signature for the $10,000 settlement, and then tried to buy him off to prevent the allegations from becoming public. State law enforcement is investigating, but no charges have been filed.