CHARLESTON — In South Carolina’s wide-open 1st Congressional District race, political experience is suddenly in short supply.
There are lot of big dreamers, though.
Of the 18 candidates running as Republicans or Democrats ahead of the June 9 primary, only five — all from the GOP — have held elected office before.
That’s an unusually light bench in a contest to replace an outgoing member of Congress, and for a district that stretches from greater Charleston to Beaufort.
But they all have high hopes.
One candidate is a pardoned Jan. 6 defendant. Another is a doctor; one is a nurse. Several are former military. One serves drinks for a living.
One, Ben Frasier, is a perennial candidate who has filed just about every two years for decades, never getting there.
And each candidate paid a $3,480 filing fee to enter the race.
The crowded field of dream-chasers reflects the dynamic that “outsider” appeal remains a popular pitch in modern politics.
DuBose Kapeluck, a political science professor at The Citadel, said the open contest with incumbent Nancy Mace now running for governor creates a rare window for would-be candidates or those looking in the mirror and saying to themselves: If not now, when?
“Incumbents rarely lose if they run for reelection. They are almost guaranteed to win — about 90 percent do when they decide to run again,” he said. “If you don’t run now, it might be 10, 12, even 14 years before you get another chance.”
Crowded fields themselves are not new. In a 2013 special election, 16 Republicans and three Democrats launched bids after Tim Scott was appointed to the U.S. Senate.
And the Lowcountry has occasionally sent political newcomers to Washington.
In 2018, voters took a chance on Democrat Joe Cunningham, a laid-back, Kentucky-born attorney. Before that, in 1994, a politically unknown Republican named Mark Sanford branded himself as an anti-spending candidate and won.