Primary

South Carolina’s ‘unprecedented’ Democratic primary

Christale Spain, the first Black woman to serve as South Carolina’s Democratic Party chair, says Black voters will repeat history in the Palmetto state primary — and deliver for Joe Biden.

By BRAKKTON BOOKER

South Carolina Democrats are hoping that when voters turn out for the state’s Feb. 3 primary, the Palmetto State will once again ignite Joe Biden’s trajectory to the White House.

They figure they have history on their side: After all, four years ago the state delivered a decisive victory for the then former vice president as he swept all of the state’s 46 counties and eventually the party’s nomination, before ousting Donald Trump in the general election.

South Carolina, with its outsize Black Democratic voting base, was so instrumental to Biden’s presidential victory, the Democratic National Committee, against the wishes of party officials in Iowa and New Hampshire, moved it to kick off the party’s primary calendar.

Biden is trying to recapture some of that 2020 magic.

He campaigned over the weekend, appearing alongside longtime Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, the dean of the South Carolina delegation, at a church service in the capital city of Columbia and chopping it up with patrons at the Regal Lounge barbershop. As my POLITICO colleagues Eugene Daniels and Myah Ward also note, Biden headlined the state party’s “First-in-the-Nation” celebration dinner, where he spoke directly to Black voters: “I wouldn’t be here without the Democratic voters of South Carolina.”

Christale Spain, the first Black woman to serve as Democratic Party chair, said she is feeling no pressure to deliver a robust turnout for Biden this weekend. She characterizes this weekend’s primary as “unprecedented” because it is “contested but not competitive.” Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson are challenging Biden for the nomination, but are only expected to draw a fraction of the votes Biden will.

Spain, who was elected state party chair in April, says she has no doubt voters will show up in force for Biden. The current narrative about him losing ground with Black voters, particularly Black men, is not so much about a lack of enthusiasm for the sitting president, she argues. It’s simply, she says, a lack of information about how much Biden has delivered for South Carolina and for Black voters overall.

We discuss this, what message she hopes South Carolina will send to the rest of the country — and whether Biden is doing enough to sell his vision for the next four years.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In April of last year, when you won the election to become the state party chair, you said: “I’m excited. I’m overwhelmed. I’m overjoyed. I’m just excited that the delegates chose me.”

How do those feelings compare to the anticipation you feel about this upcoming test you have in your state in the Democrats’ first sanctioned primary. Are those feelings similar?

Not you looking up my remarks [chuckles]. But yeah, I think they are probably exactly the same – definitely the overwhelmed part of it.

But given all President Biden went through last week in New Hampshire and the suspense of not knowing if the write-in campaign would be successful, I figured there is pressure for you to deliver a robust turnout among Democrats in the state.

I don’t know about the pressure.

This is just a very unprecedented circumstance for us as a party here in South Carolina — not just being first, but having a contested primary for our incumbent president.

So it’s sort of uncharted waters for us, but that’s why we’re taking it extremely seriously. We’ve launched our [get out the vote] which is also historic because the party typically doesn’t [get involved in a contested] primary. So we’re really trying to make sure that we’re being proactive and meeting our voters where they are all across the state.

Obviously, the goal for Democrats is to reelect the incumbent president. But when you have challenges from Marianne Williamson and from Rep. Dean Phillips, how does that make your job harder?

Do you feel like the state party has to put its thumb on the scale in favor of President Biden or do you present voters with all options and say, make your decision among all the Democratic candidates available?

You know, we’ve just been centering the voter. I think that the president’s record speaks for itself. But we made sure that we welcomed everyone who filed here as a candidate. Dean Phillips has been on the campaign trail with us and I’ve gladly introduced him, along with some other very strong Biden surrogates. But for me it’s about making sure I’m committed to making sure that our voters have all the information they need to go and vote.

So what does a successful turnout look like? Roughly 540,000 ballots were cast in the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary. But it was an open primary election and heavily contested. Are you expecting that kind of turnout this weekend?

We really don’t have that benchmark. The last time we had an incumbent president was 2012 when Barack Obama was seeking reelection — but no one else filed to run against him. So these are uncharted waters to have it be contested, but not competitive. So we don’t really have a number.

There will be a lot of storylines coming into South Carolina, including a focus on whether or not Biden has that same juice among Black voters he had four years ago. And if there’s any evidence of a lull in Black support, folks will read into it as evidence that Black folks, Black men in particular, are not rocking with this president. How do you think this weekend’s primary will answer questions about enthusiasm for Biden?

This is just in my own personal experience being on the stump, I really feel like what you all [in the media] are reporting as an enthusiasm gap is an information gap.

And just being in the president’s presence this weekend and seeing how well he was received … and him talking about how well Democrats have delivered, I think that Black voters will turn out for him.

I see the [negative perceptions] about him online, but I don’t feel it here in the state, especially when we’re going around talking to Black voters about this administration’s accomplishments.

I don’t see a scenario where Black voters won’t vote for Joe Biden.

Also, look who he’s running against [in the general election] — it’s literally the anti-freedom agenda. Black voters, especially in South Carolina, we’re the direct descendants of enslaved people, of freedom fighters — and we’re just not going for that. And I think that everything that the MAGA Republican stands for is contrary to the plight of the Black voter in South Carolina.

I don’t know anyone who wants to go back to Trump’s crazy.

Well the playbook we’re seeing the Biden campaign deploying in South Carolina feels very similar to what we saw in 2020. Biden was campaigning over the weekend there, making stops at a barbershop, visiting Black churches. Even the language you use, alluding to Black folks not wanting to go back to the Trump-era.

Is he doing enough to paint a vision about what he wants to bring in the next four years. It seems like Biden is spending a lot of time looking backward, sort of saying, we don’t want to go back to that guy, so vote for me.

I guess I’m trying to understand your question, because as I see it, he’s campaigning. He’s trying to meet voters where they are. On Sunday morning in South Carolina, they’re in church. With Black men, if that’s a problem for his campaign, he’s going to the barbershops. So it’s voter engagement and trying to have direct voter contact.

If you think he’s trying to run it back, Trump and his allies are the ones running it back. Running it way back. They’ve already banned abortion [in many states] — that’s running it back.

Finally, once the polls close Saturday evening, I don’t think there’s any doubt Biden will be announced the winner. What do you hope the message is coming out of South Carolina?

History. We just made history. South Carolina voters, Black voters, just made history.

Instead of Black voters being at the back of the bus, as DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison loves to say, we’re driving the bus. That’s really the point for us, to show that we showed up and we’re going to continue to do that. And not only that we are first, we deserve to be first.