Lamar Town Council 2020 Special Election Results

15 July 202015 July 2020 The Portly Politico5 Comments

Yesterday Lamar held a rescheduled special election for a vacant Town Council seat. I was hoping to have the results last night, but when I drove by Lamar Town Hall around 8:30 PM, the results were not posted to the front door.

I spoke with Darlington County Election Commissioner Hoyt Campbell this morning, however, and he gave me the results over the phone. He also said the poll workers might have posted the voting machine receipts to one of the side doors of Town Hall. Sure enough, I drove down there this morning and they were on a side door. That occurred to me last night, but the prospect of lurking around a public building at dusk struck me as a tad sketchy.

The results were surprising—shocking, really. This little off-cycle, middle-of-summer, Age of The Virus election came with an interesting twist.

Special Election Day 2020

14 July 202013 July 2020 The Portly Politico6 Comments

Last November, my little town held town council elections. Neither of the people I voted for won, and the two incumbents won reelection (there were two separate seats up, so we got to vote for two separate candidates).

In March, one of the Town Councillors resigned for reasons still unknown to me, which triggered a special election. I filed to run for Town Council on Friday, 13 March 2020—the Friday before all the schools in South Carolina shut down and went to distance learning.

With The Virus hitting, the special election was moved from its original date on Tuesday, 12 May to today, Tuesday, 14 July 2020. My plan was to keep it simple, just talking to people and maybe going door-to-door, but quarantining—as well as a good bit of time on the road this summer—prevented that. It also didn’t help that I was cooped up inside for two weeks with a gnarly virus (fortunately, I tested negative for The Virus, but I’m skeptical as to the accuracy of that test).

But that’s mostly me making excuses for myself. I could have done more. I did talk to my neighbor and a few other folks. One older man approached me while I was loading my car up one morning and complained about a house with caged pit bulls in the backyard; he wanted me to introduce an ordinance banning pit bulls “when you get elected.” I’ve actually given that a great deal of thought, and might explain my thinking on that proposal in a future post. It will certainly become more relevant if I get elected.

As for the campaign, I resolved to spend $0 campaigning. I didn’t do any fundraising, or even funded anything myself (other than spending $31 for the filing fee). There’s no need to spend scads of money in a local election in a town of approximately 950 people. Public office should be attainable to anyone, especially at the local level, and I want to see if that’s doable.

I did, however, create a small (free!) Facebook page eight days ago. I wrote a short post explaining my vision for the town:

My basic pitch: Lamar is centrally-located in a rapidly growing part of South Carolina. Working families, especially young ones just starting out, are finding it more difficult to buy homes in the larger neighboring municipalities. Lamar is well-positioned to welcome those young families with friendliness, affordable real estate, low taxes, and proximity to the three large towns in the area (not to mention two Interstates).

Lazy Sunday LXIX: Phone it in Fridays, Part III

12 July 202012 July 2020 The Portly Politico6 Comments

We’ve celebrated another #MAGAWeek with the #MAGAWeek2020 posts (here, here, here, and here). Now we’re on the long march toward the 2020 election, which will hopefully be a triumphant landslide for GEOTUS Donaldus Magnus.

For now, it’s time to continue our month-long review of past Phone it in Friday posts. This week makes for an odd trio: the first post, “Phone it in Friday VII: Universal Studios,” looks back to a family trip to the Florida theme park at the end of February, on the eve of The Age of The Virus. Only dimly did I realize at the time that we were living in the twilight days of The Before Times.

The next two posts both deal with The Virus, which dominated blog discussion in those early, fretful days of The Age of The Virus. If we’re basing the quality of the posts on the lightheartedness and fun of the posts, then these match up nicely with their counterparts in the new Star Wars trilogy: one good, fun movie (because it’s basically The New Hope) followed by two dreadful SJW escapades.

You can decide (especially you purple-haired schoolmarm star fleet captains out there):

“Phone it in Friday VII: Universal Studios” – This post is the ultimate example of a “Phone it in Friday” post, as I slammed it out on my tiny netbook computer while babies were screaming (probably) in the hotel room. It regales readers with some highlights from my family’s trip to Universal Studios, a rare during-the-school-year vacation. It was worth burning through my three annual personal days, that’s for sure. My brothers and our significant others and/or children will be heading back there later in the month, in fact.
“Phone it in Friday VIII: Coronavirus Conundrum” – I wrote this a week after the Universal Studios post, when everything was still up in the air regarding The Virus, at least here in South Carolina. We’d had very few cases by that point in SC, but the Pacific Northwest was getting hammered. Ten days later, we transitioned to distance learning. At the time, we didn’t know much about The Virus, other than it was China’s fault; as I wrote at the time, “My hope is that after all is done, China will be a pariah, no longer vaunted as a power on the rise, but maligned as a malicious, mendacious regime.” We’ll see.
“Phone it in Friday IX: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part II: Attack of The Virus” – The title of this post actually drew from the second episode of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Attack of the Clones. That afternoon, we had a huge, emergency faculty meeting to figure out distance learning. Two days later, on Sunday, 15 March 2020, Governor McMaster announced that schools were shutting down through the end of March, and they ended up staying shut for the rest of the year (with distance learning, of course). I also filed that day to run in Lamar’s Town Council election, which was supposed to be 12 May 2020, but will now be this Tuesday, 14 July 2020. Wish me luck!

That’s it! I would like to note that today’s post marks eighty weeks of consecutive posts, and the sixty-ninth edition of Lazy Sunday. Wooooot!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Phone it in Friday IX: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part II: Attack of the Virus

13 March 202013 March 2020 The Portly Politico9 Comments

If last week was crazy busy, this one is moving at ludicrous speed (and yet also dragging by—last Friday seems like a distant eternity ago). Since last week, panic over the coronavirus is spreading alongside the dreaded virus. There have been a series of major cancellations, all of which have been well-advertised: Disneyland, professional sports, etc. The South Carolina Philharmonic, of which I used to be a season ticket holder, is closing its concert to the public, but will instead livestream the proceedings. Our senior US Senator Lindsey Graham has self-quarantined.

My assessment up until this week has been that we should be prudent in preparing for the impact of the coronavirus, but that it’s a tad overblown—it’s just a nasty flu. I still caution prudent prepping—and against panic—but after the events of the past week, I’m adjusting my assessment. There is definitely something different about this pandemic.

TBT: Hump Day Hoax

12 March 202011 March 2020 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Last year, my little town made national headlines when our mayor claimed that a mysterious, sticky yellow substance on her vehicle was evidence of a “hate crime.” The investigation—which involved a Darlington County Sheriff’s deputy looking at the car—revealed it was pollen.

At the time, I thought that the mayor was pandering for headlines (even though what I wrote at the time was more generous). But the likelier answer is she’s just stupid—sweet, to be sure, but stupid.

Also, it’s sad that many black Americans exist in a world so haunted by race-hustlers that they see hooded Klansmen committing acts of racially-motivated pollination around every corner. That’s surely the vast minority of black Americans, but that such blinkered conspiratorial thinking is so prevalent is disconcerting (and that’s coming from someone with a conspiratorial cast of mind).

I decided to revive this piece for TBT because filing opens tomorrow for an open Town Council seat in Lamar. One of our local councilmen resigned, so the town is holding an open election on 12 May 2020. The filing fee is just $31.

I’m still a newcomer to town, but for $31, my thinking is, “Why not run?” I see a great deal of potential for my adoptive home town. I also believe everyday citizens—not just well-heeled businessmen and attorneys—should run for public office.

We’ll see. Regardless, here’s 2019’s “Hump Day Hoax“:

It’s that point in the semester where everything is coming to a head all at once, so today’s post is about 12-14 hours late to the party. Indeed, it was only about fifteen minutes before writing this post that I stumbled upon an article with a local flavor.

It seems the mayor of my adopted hometown, Lamar, South Carolina, believes that a racial hate crime was committed against her. Her vehicle was covered in a sticky yellow substance that resembled spray paint, she claimed.

After a brief investigation—it probably involved running a finger across the hood of the car—the Darlington County sheriff’s deputy determined the mystery substance was—GASP!—pollen.

You can read the full story here: http://www.gopusa.com/hate-crime-against-darnell-mcpherson-s-c-mayor-turns-out-to-be-pollen/

I’ve met Lamar’s mayor—my mayor—before, and Mayor McPherson is a pleasant and welcoming lady. I met her when I went to town hall to setup garbage and sewage service at my home.

Lamar is a very small town—the population, according to the 2010 census, was slightly less than 1000—and it still functions on a timetable that is even slower than the rest of the South. In true, old-school Southern tradition, local government offices shut down on Wednesday (as do some local businesses, if I’m not mistaken), and many folks get their mail at the Post Office, rather than a mailbox (my mail wasn’t delivered for about two weeks, until a neighbor told me I had to move the box across the street, otherwise our rural route carrier wasn’t going to stop).

Needless to say, it runs on a small staff, so Mayor McPherson was in there with the town’s two administrative assistants, processing water bills and the like. I appreciated her dedication and friendliness, and she encouraged me to get involved in the community.

As such, it’s disappointing to see this kind of hysteria from her. From the tone of the article, she sounds like she sincerely believes some misdeed was done against her—although I’m probably being overly generous. The Jussie Smollett hoax was clearly too ludicrous to be true; maybe the Case of the Hooded Pollinator is the same situation.

TBT: Election Results 2019

13 February 202013 February 2020 The Portly Politico1 Comment

We’re in the midst of primary season—the most wonderful time of the year, until you realize that one of these jokers could become president—so I thought I’d look back to the results from the 2019 elections. That’s an off-year election, but there are some important lessons from then.

The post below, “Election Results 2019,” largely focused on the Lamar Town Council elections. My strategy was to vote for the two challengers, because the town government really dropped the ball on doing routine DHEC water tests (although our mayor—bless her heart—has been trying to resolve the issue). I also intuited that one of the challengers would likely be a Republican/conservative, for reasons too politically incorrect to write here.

The big takeaway from the 2019 election is that if you let Democrats gain a monopoly on power, they will abuse it immediately. That’s been the story of Virginia, a once-deep-red State that has gone quite blue, due to the preponderance of progressive population poured into Northern Virginia.

The legislature wasted little time in promising to ban and confiscate guns en masse. That act of totalitarian pique may very well turn the State red in November, as the Trumpian masses have been jolted from their slumber.

We shall see. But the moral is clear: don’t give progressives power. And we have to assume that every Democrat is a progressive. A conservative Democrat is a unicorn in 2020. This message is for those squishy suburban moms and “decorum” obsessed NeverTrumpers who think they’ll enjoy political moderation under a Democratic regime.

Don’t make the same mistake twice. Vote Republican/Trumpian/populist/nationalist/conservative/immigration patriotic this November. Your country is counting on you!

Yesterday Lamar, South Carolina held elections for Town Council. Since our local paper doesn’t seem to be putting the results online, I thought I would post them here.

I drove by Town Hall last night to check the results, but they were still working on finalizing the results when I drove by, and I lacked the will to drag myself out of the house again. But I swung by this morning and photographed the official receipt from the machine, as well as the handwritten results (akin to a student council election), which were posted to the front door:

My strategy of voting for the challengers in a “Jacksonian spirit of rotation in office” failed, as the two incumbents sailed to reelection. As such, Town Council is unchanged.

Nationally, Republicans dominated races in Mississippi and Kentucky, except for the Kentucky governor’s race, which the Democrats won in a squeaker. They won in part due to the incumbent governor’s unpopularity, but also because of the Libertarian spoiler, who siphoned enough votes away from the Republican to cost conservatives the election by about 5000 votes. Thanks a lot, Libertarians—you cost conservatism a gubernatorial election (which the Dems will hold up as proof that Trump is losing support) for… what? Getting John Hick’s name in the papers? We’re at war with progressives, and all you care about is smoking weed naked.

Unfortunately, Virginia has fallen completely to the Democrats. That’s not too surprising, given the swamp creatures in northern Virginia, but it’s sad to see the ancient bastion of Southern liberty fall to big government apparatchiks.

That’s it for today—a quick public service post. Hopefully the good folks of Lamar can get the results without having to drive downtown now.

Election Results 2019

6 November 20196 November 2019 The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yesterday Lamar, South Carolina held elections for Town Council. Since our local paper doesn’t seem to be putting the results online, I thought I would post them here.

My strategy of voting for the challengers in a “Jacksonian spirit of rotation in office” failed, as the two incumbents sailed to reelection. As such, Town Council is unchanged.

Election Day 2019

5 November 20195 November 2019 The Portly Politico5 Comments

It’s Election Day 2019! I’m sure there are all sorts of interesting elections happening all over the country, but for me, the big election is right in my backyard, in little Lamar, South Carolina (which just got a website!).

Lamar is holding elections for two at-large Town Council seats. There are two incumbents and two challengers, and the election is non-partisan (for what it’s worth, I cast my two votes for the challengers, in the Jacksonian spirit of rotation in office).

I like to vote early (though not often—that’s a federal crime, and since I’m not a Democrat or an illegal alien, I’d get in trouble for doing so), because I never know if I’ll be home by the time polls close. Polling in South Carolina always runs from 7 AM to 7 PM, which is a pretty substantial window. So, I was there right at 7 AM, and was the fifth person from my precinct to cast a ballot.

What was really surprising were the new voting machines, about which I have mixed feelings.

Lazy Sunday XXVI: Small Town Life

8 September 201915 September 2019 The Portly Politico54 Comments

I’ve been awash in local boosterism lately. As a Jeffersonian at heart (especially now that I’m a freehold yeoman farmer, what with my single fig tree, twenty yards of grapevines, and drooping pecan trees), small town, rural living appeals to me at a deep level. I am, like most Americans, infected with the bug of urgent nationalism, as it seems that every major problem is a national issue (due, in no small part, to two centuries of centralization and the breakdown of federalism), but I increasingly seek to think and act locally. That’s where the most immediate and substantial changes to our lives occur.

The slow summer news cycle has seen me engaging in a bit more navel-gazing this summer, and thinking more about the things that matter in life: our towns and communities; good books and music; friends and family. Cultural issues are, potentially, political; as the late Andrew Breitbart often said, politics is downstream from culture. Books, music, and movies matter, and the local level is the best place to see culture in action.

All of that armchair philosophizing aside, this week’s Lazy Sunday looks back at some posts about small town life, both in Lamar and Aiken. Enjoy!

“Hump Day Hoax” – This post is one of this blog’s most popular, in part because I shared the link to it in the comments section on a major right-wing news website. It’s a somewhat unfortunate example of small town politicking gone wrong. The mayor of my little adopted hometown, Lamar, is a very sweet lady, and she seems genuinely interested in improving our town, but she scuttled those endearing efforts when she ran straight to Newsweek claiming that her vehicle had been vandalized as part of a hate crime. It turns out the mysterious, sticky yellow substance on her car… was pollen.Initially, I thought she was opportunistically trying to gain some grace on the cheap, as the Jussie Smollett hoax was then-current in the news. After talking it over with some folks, I’m thinking now it’s more of an example of a deep paranoia among some black Americans who are, essentially, brainwashed from birth into believing they are the constant targets of hate crimes from vindictive whites. Coupled with—sadly—a certain degree of stupidity—how can you have lived in the South for decades and not know what pollen looks like?!—it makes for an embarrassing mix.
“Egg Scramble Scrambled” – Every April, Lamar hosts a big festival, the Egg Scramble, that attracts around 6000 people to town. Keep in mind, Lamar’s population sits just south of 1000, so that many people at once creates a huge influx of cash into the local economy. It’s a big deal. I was out of town for the Scramble this year, but I was looking up news about it when I discovered it had been ended early due to a fight.It was only later that I learned there was gang activity (my initial thought in the post was that some hooligans just got out of hand, and the police shut the down the event to avoid any future roughhousing), with shots fired. It doesn’t appear anyone was hurt, but, boy, did this story get buried fast. It was only from talking to neighbors that I got a more complete picture.
I am, perhaps, not acquitting my adopted home town well. It really is a lovely—and very cheap—place to live. I suppose I’ll have to write a more favorable account of Lamar life soon to make up for these two negative portrayals.
“250th Day Update” – This post is a bit of a stretch for this week’s theme, but it includes a hodge-podge of updates that, in one way or another, connect to small town life: high school football games, local festivals, relaxing holidays, and the like. Those little things are what make life colorful, and enjoyable—and they’re the things that truly matter. Read the update for more.
“Aiken Amblings” – A late-night SubscribeStar Saturday post, this subscriber-exclusive post details my visit to Aiken’s Makin’, Aiken’s long-running crafts festival. It’s probably the best example of local boosterism I’ve ever experienced personally, and I am surely a booster for it. It also didn’t devolve into gangland violence, so that’s a plus. For just $1, you can read the full account—and all of the other great pieces on my SubscribeStar page!

That’s it for this Lazy Sunday. I’m hoping to check out Yemassee‘s Shrimp Festival later this month (September 19-21), schedule-permitting. As the days shorten and the weather slowly cools, it’s time to get out to some local festivals in some small, rural towns.

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

250th Day Update

6 September 20196 September 2019 The Portly Politico4 Comments

Today’s post marks 250 days of consecutive posting. That’s a major milestone in my ongoing project to blog daily, which I last commemorated in a substantial way at Day 101. With this post, I’m a mere 115 days away from reaching a year of daily posts. So close, and yet—so far.

I tried to find a word that meant “250 days” in the way that bicentennial means “200 years,” or sesquicentennial means “150 years” (from those words, I reason that 250 years would be a “sesquibicentennial”). My search proved fruitless, though I did learn that 250 is the number of men that rebelled against Moses in Numbers 26:10 (thank you, Wikipedia).

The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: Lamar