COLUMBIA, S.C. — Gov. Henry McMaster won reelection Tuesday to a second four-year term as South Carolina’s chief executive, a historic win that puts the Columbia Republican on track to become the longest-serving governor in state history.
McMaster, 75, ran against Democrat Joe Cunningham, a former Lowcountry congressman who flipped the 1st Congressional District in 2018 and served one term.
The election-night win is the latest victory in a 40-year-plus political career for McMaster, a former prosecutor, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s U.S. attorney in South Carolina and first held public office when he was elected the state’s attorney general in 2002. McMaster was elected lieutenant governor in 2014, a position that previously presided over the state Senate, before he was elevated to governor in 2017 when then-Gov. Nikki Haley became U.N. ambassador for the Trump administration.
With 19% of precincts reporting at 8:45 p.m., McMaster was leading with 57% to Cunningham’s 42%.
Hitting similar themes to his 2018 run for governor, McMaster focused his campaign on the economy and jobs, consistently repeating that the state never “closed” during the COVID-19 pandemic and touting the number of companies looking to open and expand in the state.
His challenger, 40-year-old Cunningham, sought to paint McMaster as a public figure from the past — Cunningham often remarked that McMaster was in politics before he was born — and tried to draw contrasts with his more progressive “freedom” agenda that included legalizing marijuana and sports betting, abortion access and income tax cuts.
But Cunningham’s campaign was unable to conquer an uphill battle in a reliably Republican state that favors incumbents and hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 2006 and a Democratic governor since Jim Hodges in 1998.
“It’s a very Republican year,” said Warren Tompkins, a longtime Republican political consultant in South Carolina. “In order for a Republican in a state like South Carolina to lose, you really have to screw up.”
Economy, COVID response key to McMaster’s 2022 run
McMaster often touted the state’s economy on the campaign trail, pointing to the state’s low unemployment, investment by private companies, the state’s large budget surplus and the ability to cut income taxes.
Three weeks before the election, McMaster stood with BMW when it announced a $1.7 billion investment at its upstate facility to build electric vehicles in South Carolina.
“We do have very low unemployment, we have more people working in South Carolina today than we have in our history,” said Joseph Von Nessen, an economic researcher at the University of South Carolina’s Darla School of Business. ”We’ve seen most industries fully recover from the pandemic employment losses that were experienced. It’s been a broad-based recovery in the past two years.”
As Republicans nationally spoke often about high inflation and interest rates, an issue at the top of voters’ minds, McMaster played into the sentiment, blaming Democrats in Washington.
“Most of the time, all politics is mostly local, but there are times when the overarching national climate sort of takes over,” Tompkins said. “It was like this in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was taking on Jimmy Carter and we had high interest rates, high inflation, getting ready to go into the throat of a recession. We had the same issues in 1994.”
On the trail, McMaster often criticized President Joe Biden, pinning inflation problems on his administration and vowing to fight any undue pressure or mandates Washington put on South Carolina.
McMaster also focused his campaign often on the state’s violent crime, which has been rising, but his efforts to crack down on repeat offenders who don’t comply with bond conditions earned him endorsements from 32 sheriffs, including Democrats Leon Lott of Richland County and Lee Foster of Newberry County.
McMaster also often touted how he pushed for limited restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic to allow the economy to function. Through the pandemic, the state reported more than 1.7 million cases and more than 18,000 deaths.
His stance often conflicted with recommendations from health officials, who asked that businesses restrict activity to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“The governor has been a steady hand during a somewhat turbulent time in America. Republican voters are rightly frustrated at Washington,” said Matt Moore, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party. “(McMaster) has been an effective executive for the state.”
McMaster also was able to tout his relationships in the Legislature — what his predecessors were often criticized for — key to get his priorities pushed to the finish line.
Though the governor and legislators disagreed at times — for example, the Legislature overrode his veto of the gas tax and pushed him to fire his Cabinet official over the state’s embattled Department of Juvenile Justice — lawmakers told The State newspaper they often were able to work out their differences.
“The governor and I have a good relationship,” state Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, a critic of DJJ leadership, said Monday as McMaster capped his campaign bus tour. “Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not so good, but we work it out. When we don’t agree, we sit down, we talk it out and we work it out.”
Abortion, age not enough to sway voters to Cunningham
McMaster’s campaign did not come without criticism.
At their only debate, Cunningham criticized the governor for saying that marriage should be between one man and one woman and that he would follow state law which bans same-sex marriage.
The state law isn’t enforced currently because of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling with guarantees a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
McMaster later said the issue was just a distraction pushed by Washington Democrats.
In addition to the same-sex marriage debate, Cunningham aimed to overcome Democrats’ inability to win statewide by doing everything he could to differentiate himself from a governor 35 years older than him.
He called for a 72-year age limit on politicians, similar to the state’s age limit on judges, in a move to attract younger voters. It was a campaign push that received pushback from even the state’s Democratic kingmaker, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, 82.
“We’ve always honored and respected age and seniority,” Tompkins said. “Being an experienced person in politics is not necessarily a bad thing in South Carolina like it is in other places, assuming you have your finger on the pulse of people and you’re doing your job in a way you perceive to be good.”
And he called for eliminating the state income tax — a campaign push Cunningham saw as a way to compete with other southeastern states with lower income tax rates or no income tax at all.
“The tax changes proposed by Cunningham were just too radical of a change in terms of government financing, government funding for the state government for voters, especially at a time when Gov. McMaster signed legislation to reduce state income tax,” said David Darmofal, a political science professor at USC. “McMaster wasn’t particularly vulnerable to the tax issue to begin with.”
But it was Cunningham’s more progressive stances where he aimed to separate himself from the incumbent.
He pushed for legalizing marijuana and sports betting, and consistently hit McMaster over his support of abortion restrictions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
McMaster initially said he didn’t want any exceptions on an abortion ban, but later said the exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother and a fatal fetal anomaly — included in the state’s six-week abortion ban — were reasonable.
“Joe Cunningham overplayed the abortion issue,” said Walt Whetsell, president of GOP firm Starboard Communications. “As vulnerable as it made appear that Republicans were going to be three months ago, it didn’t pan out that way.”
Cunningham ultimately could not overcome the built-in state advantages for Republicans and an incumbent .
McMaster’s fundraising advantage allowed him to outspend Cunningham, putting him on television faster. It also allowed him to spend more on digital media, according to state ethics commission reports.
As of Oct. 19, McMaster had raised $7.6 million and Cunningham raised $3.4 million, giving McMaster a more than 9-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage in the final weeks before Election Day.
“It’s the fundamentals of the state and the power of incumbency,” said Gibbs Knotts, a political science professor at the College of Charleston. “The opportunities arise for the minority party when there’s an open seat and there wasn’t an open seat.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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