In a break from the state’s racist legacy, South Carolina Republicans overwhelmingly chose an Indian American woman to run for governor and easily nominated a state lawmaker who is in line to become the former secessionist stronghold’s first black Republican congressman in more than a century.
Nikki Haley, a Christian convert, overcame allegations of infidelity and an ethnic slur targeting her Sikh heritage to win the Republican primary runoff and could become South Carolina’s first woman governor.
Haley immediately became the front-runner in the race against the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, State Senator Vincent Sheheen, in the heavily Republican state. The disgraced Republican Governor Mark Sanford, whose affair with an Argentine woman stirred up a scandal, is leaving the post because of term limits.
PHOTO: AFP
Haley wasn’t the only candidate bidding to upend tradition in the conservative state, which has a long history of racial tension.
State Representative Tim Scott defeated Paul Thurmond, an attorney who is son of the one-time segregationist US Senator Strom Thurmond. Scott is now poised to become the nation’s first black Republican congressman since Oklahoma’s J.C. Watts retired in 2003.
In another runoff, six-term Republican Reprsentative Bob Inglis fell to prosecutor Trey Gowdy, making him the fifth House or Senate incumbent to lose in the primary season.
Tuesday’s runoffs and primaries played out across four states, the latest cluster of contests to determine matchups for the November elections when control of Congress will be at stake.
This year is shaping up to be an anti-establishment year, with angry voters casting ballots against candidates with ties to Washington and the political party establishments.
Republicans and their conservative tea party allies hope to capitalize on voter anger at the massive Gulf oil spill, government bailouts of Wall Street and high unemployment to weaken US President Barack Obama and his Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in the November elections.
So-called tea party voters are activists with conservative and libertarian views who believe government has grown too large, taking too much from them in taxes and undercutting individual liberties.
But the divisions in Republican Party ranks offer hope among Democrats that their party can stem the losses in the so-called midterm elections, held two years after presidential elections.
In North Carolina, Secretary of State Elaine Marshall won the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Senator Richard Burr in the fall. Utah Republicans nominated attorney Mike Lee as a successor to vanquished Senator Bob Bennett in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in four decades. In Mississippi, voters tapped Republican Bill Marcy to face Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson.
The victories by Haley and Scott offered clear signs of racial progress in the South.
Perhaps no other contest illustrated that better than Haley’s. A state legislator with the backing of conservative tea party activists and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, she overtook the old-boy network.
“South Carolina just showed the rest of the country what we’re made of,” Haley said following her victory. “It’s a new day in our state and I am very blessed to be a part of it.”
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