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It’s been a brutal few decades for small towns in South Carolina – and across the nation. Gravitational trends including globalization, automation, corporatization, illegal immigration etc. have wreaked havoc on these once vibrant local communities. Built from the ground up in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with blood, sweat and old-fashioned American ingenuity – their collective collapse has been greeted by twenty-first century “leaders” with unoriginal, ineffectual responses.
Bureaucratic bailouts and crony capitalist handouts – cheered on by a subservient media – have routed subsidies to a select few, leaving those who remain in these shrinking, dystopian population centers with few options.
One rural South Carolina town bucking this trend is historic Camden – the seat of Kershaw County. Located thirty miles northeast of the state capital of Columbia – just off the banks of the Wateree River – this town of roughly 9,000 is enjoying a renaissance.
Led by its new mayor – former state senator and two-time Democrat gubernatorial nominee Vincent Sheheen – Camden is experiencing robust, organic small business growth at a time when many rural Palmetto State municipalities are failing. While storefront windows in far too many small, South Carolina towns are being boarded up – and their doors padlocked shut – Camden’s city center is buzzing with restaurants, speciality retail stores, coffee shops and other thriving entrepreneurial endeavors.
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Seizing upon (and hoping to stoke) this momentum is Sheheen, who was elected mayor last November and immediately got to work implementing his vision for the future of the Palmetto State’s fourth-oldest town.
Descending from a family of Lebanese immigrants, Sheheen’s roots in Camden go deep.
“My family came here in the late 1800s,” Sheheen said. “They had come into the port of New York and walked here. They were selling things on the side of the dirt roads from New York to South Carolina.”
Upon arriving in Camden, Sheheen’s ancestors “fell in love with it” and decided to stay.
“They created a little grocery story called Sheheen grocery, which was still around when I was a kid, and they became an important part of the community,” Sheheen said.
Sheheen was a janitor at the local grocery store as a teenager, and he pointed out its former location to me during a brief walking tour of the town.
According to Sheheen, the traditional approach to economic development no longer works for rural South Carolina.
“When I was in the state Senate I observed the state’s economic development focus,” Sheheen said. “(You) recruit big out-of-state, out-of-America businesses, hope they open a manufacturing facility, give them a bunch of money, given them a bunch of land, give them low taxes, get low wages – and call that success.”
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“The truth is, that doesn’t build wealth,” Sheheen added. “I’m not saying there’s not a role for that. There is. But if that’s your focus, you’re not going to be successful in building wealth, especially in small-town South Carolina.”
Sheheen’s approach is a return to what made these towns successful in the first place.
“Our approach is to have a high quality of life, where people want to come and visit, spend their money and then come back, where people want to live and be successful, where young people are attracted, because we don’t see that in small town South Carolina,” he said.
Certainly, Camden has many advantages other small towns do not – starting with its rich history. Home to one of the most significant battles in the American Revolution, the town draws tens of thousands of visitors each year to its historic battlefield. Sheheen has been actively cultivating this competitive advantage, studying how larger cities like Boston market, promote, and display their Revolutionary War heritage.
Like a general deploying his troops, Sheheen is adeptly positioning the pieces that make Camden unique – arraying an effective fighting force focused on securing the future of his home.
Our interview with mayor Sheheen covered a host of topics – including lessons learned during his two gubernatorial campaigns and some surprising statements regarding his views on U.S. president Donald Trump.
To view the full interview, click here.
Also, to learn more about Camden, S.C., click here. And to learn more about its role in the American Revolution, click here.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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2 comments
Oh how the mighty has fallen! Hopefully, he will continue to fall into obscurity.
That was a nice and pleasant interview.
I am glad that Mayor Sheheen supports his Police force. They seem to have a good one. One thing that their police did recently which irked me and some people I have talked with, is encrypting their radio traffic so that interested citizens can no longer know what is happening in their town in real time. Earlier this year, Camden police joined the Kershaw County Sheriff’s Dept in becoming the secret police, by adding encryption to their radio system. I really wish both departments would re-think that move.
If there is a dangerous person last seen in my neighborhood, I like the extra real time warning that only comes from being able to listen to police on a scanner. Being awakened in the middle of the night by a boom and my house shaking, it was a comfort to turn on the scanner and learn that it was just another earthquake in Elgin. If I want to go somewhere and hear a bad wreck has occurred on the route I planned to take, I would go a different way. The encryption took these things from us.
Some departments tell citizens to check their Facebook pages, or use some other social media or similar gimmick. If something really big or bad is happening, dispatchers and desk Sergeants won’t be updating a social media page in a timely manner. Maybe not for hours, or days.
Please rectify this.
Thank you.