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South Carolina Democratic voters chose a former basketball player-turned-state lawmaker as their nominee for the governorship on Tuesday.
The Palmetto State is reliably red when it comes to the State House — with the most recent Democrat being Gov. Jim Hodges, who was defeated by scandal-plagued Republican Mark Sanford in 2002.
However, three Democrats from across the party’s ideological spectrum vied for the chance to become the first Democrat elected governor this century.
State Rep. Jermaine Johnson, who represents parts of Richland and Kershaw Counties, was declared the winner by the Associated Press after launching his bid only months ago.
The millennial Democrat notably ousted longtime incumbent Jimmy Bales in 2020 with support from CNN commentator and former South Carolina lawmaker Bakari Sellers.
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Johnson played scholastic ball at the College of Charleston and went undrafted in the 2009 NBA draft.
He later was picked up by the then-Reno Bighorns of the NBA’s G-League in western Nevada. The team has since moved farther down I-80 and renamed themselves the Stockton Kings.
During a recent primary debate, Johnson criticized his fellow Democrats for reportedly not showing up around the state in certain areas.
“I have been going to places where they have never seen a candidate before, and people are fired up,” said Johnson.
When contender Mullins McLeod criticized Johnson for working with the Republicans’ supermajority too much, he quipped: “It’s hard to throw rocks when you have not been in the fight.”
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He said that in terms of an environmental bill, he helped move it from “horrible to a little bit better.”
McLeod, a trial lawyer from Walterboro who works out of Charleston and whose family has long been involved in state government, offered a succinct campaign platform in the race.
“The system in Columbia does not just need new leadership like my opponents would have you believe. The system is not working the way it was intended — we must go break it to fix it,” he said on his website.
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He supports term limits, ending “crony capitalism,” and shrinking government by returning unspent annual budget funds to taxpayers.
The third candidate, Billy Webster, is a businessman with ties to the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations.
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A White House Fellow in Bush’s administration, Webster was at the time president of the largest Bojangles franchisee in the country before moving on to work under deputy chief of staff Erskine Bowles, according to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library.
Webster, of Greenville, said on his website he used to run voter registration drives out of his Bojangles because “if a community supported your business, you owed something back.”
In the debate, Webster leaned on his business background and pragmatic governing approach, presenting himself as a problem-solver focused on growth, infrastructure, and consensus-building.