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by WILL FOLKS
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A so-called ‘Faith and Freedom’ dark money group is attacking an incumbent South Carolina supreme court justice just days before state lawmakers are scheduled to vote on his renomination to the bench.
As the 2026 legislative elections draw nigh, associate justice John Few has found himself on the receiving end of a barrage of statewide text missives emanating from a shadowy, Columbia, S.C.-based entity. The messages – attributed to the so-called “Faith and Freedom Coalition” – assailed Few for allegedly engaging in “deadly judicial activism” related to a 2023 abortion ruling.
Few is derided in the ads as a “known judicial activist” – one who is “responsible for thousands of abortions.”
The ad further accused Few of turning the Palmetto State into “the southeast’s abortion destination,” alleging “thousand of lives (were) lost” as a result of him casting the “deciding vote that struck down our Heartbeat Act with no constitutional basis.”
Take a look…
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As previously reported, many South Carolina lawmakers remain livid with Few for forcing them to go back to the drawing board to rewrite a controversial abortion statute in 2023.
They reluctantly complied… and Few and his fellow justices signed off on the revised law last spring.
Did Few engage in judicial activism at any point during this process? No… his rulings merely guided lawmakers as they crafted a bill capable of passing constitutional muster. Frankly, legislators should be thanking him for doing his job – not trying to throw him off the bench.
Nonetheless, state lawmakers are eager to send Few – and all justices and judges who have the audacity to faithfully execute their oaths – a message that dissent of any kind will not be tolerated. Instead of recognizing the importance of the constitutional separation of powers, they are tightening their vise grip over the ostensibly independent judicial branch of government – tapping former S.C. House of Representatives’ speaker Jay Lucas to replace Few on the high court.
Lucas has virtually no judicial experience, is three years away from the court’s mandatory retirement age and recently experienced health issues that almost forced him from the race.
Is installing one of their stooges on the bench really how lawmakers intend to answer escalating calls for the reform of the Palmetto State’s corrupt system?
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To recap: South Carolina is one of only two states in America in which legislators pick judges – and the only state in the nation where lawmakers control the nominating process preceding these legislative elections. This process has led to rampant corruption – prompting a growing movement intent on fixing the system.
Several key Senate leaders have expressed concerns about Lucas’ nomination – but his former chamber the House (which effectively controls judicial elections) has with limited exception been marching in lockstep, operating under orders from current S.C. House speaker Murrell Smith.
According to our sources, Few has only 12-15 votes lined up to support him in the House – well short of the number he would need to be competitive against Lucas in the upcoming election.
For those of you unfamiliar with how this process works, judges are selected by lawmakers during a joint session of the S.C. General Assembly. In such a joint session, it takes 86 votes to win – meaning the 124-member House enjoys outsized influence over the 46-member Senate in choosing judges. This is why so many former House members (and their wives and law partners) wind up serving on the bench in South Carolina.
This incestuous approach has not served the Palmetto State well. In fact, our audience will recall the so-called “Republican” legislature previously installing liberal Democrat lawmakers Jean Toal and Donald Beatty as chief justices – with catastrophic results for economic competitiveness and public safety. Lucas is a “Republican,” but the S.C. House was hardly a conservative chamber under his leadership. In fact, it was repeatedly designated as the “most liberal GOP legislature” in America while he held the gavel.
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RELATED | SOUTH CAROLINA JUDICIAL COUP
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There is a potential wrinkle to this process which could throw Lucas’ ascendency to the high court in jeopardy, however.
According to the S.C. Code of Laws § 2-19-80(C), were Few to withdraw from consideration ahead of the upcoming vote “the election for the office may not be held at (the) scheduled time.” Such a move would force the scandal-scarred S.C. Judicial Merit Selection Commission (SCJMSC) “to make other nominations for the office as though a new vacancy without an incumbent exists in that office, including reopening the application process with all required notices.”
In other words, were Few to drop out of the race – it would restart the process.
Would he do that?
“Justice Few is a realist,” one of his closest allies told us on condition of anonymity. “He fully understands that neither he — nor any sitting judge — could survive a contested race against the former Speaker of the House, who is being supported by the current Speaker of the House. He recognizes the political realities at play.”
“With that clarity, he is carefully weighing what is best for the judiciary as a whole, putting the long-term health and independence of the court above any personal consideration,” the source added.
Judicial elections in the S.C. General Assembly are scheduled for Wednesday (March 4, 2026). Keep it tuned to FITSNews for any new developments…
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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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5 comments
Interesting statutory “wrinkle”, to say the least!! Essentially a ‘mulligan’ for the Judicial Selection Committee …. however, unless the Committee’s composition has changed, I’m not sure it would make a difference in the long run. Time will tell …
Our politicians are jokes. None of them care about true justice – just power. They don’t even care what the optics are. We need to start over from scratch
In addition to this issue, we should also remember that the General Assembly: (a) exempts itself from FOIA, (b) does not list their staff salaries on the state’s employer database (all others are required to be listed if they pay over something like 60k), (c) their staff members are not protected by the state’s whistleblower act [meaning that if they raise an alarm about corruption in the legislature, they can be fired and blackballed without any legal remedy -it’s happened just in the last several years], (e) exempts themselves from any state inspector general jurisdiction, and lastly (f) they appear to have ironclad immunity for any type of lawsuit for slander/defamation. Add to that having the judiciary running scared of them, and you have effectively an oligarchy of about 8-10 high-powered legislators running the state.
John Canon Few’s last-minute withdrawal, is an act of extreme cowardice, arrogance, and selfishness, aided and abetted by FITSNews.
Had Few stayed in the race, the world would have seen how few, if any, votes he had, and for good reason.
He should have stayed in the race and taken his defeat like a man.
Instead, he decided to bring the temple down on his competitors and himself, and play the victim.
Contrast that with Ralph King Anderson, III, who is a real victim of physical disability but never complains and instead out-works all his colleagues.
Ralph King Anderson, III should be elected by acclamation. He shall, God willing, make the rest of us disabled in body but not mind proud.
Also related to John Cannon Few is Jenn Wood’s story today on a measly bond for a violent offender.
Here is my comment on that story:
Compare that to the miniscule under-$300 bond with no treatment required received by Katheryn Dennis Calhoun Ravanel after her drunk driving arrest last year or two years ago.
Then compare both to the humongous $40,000.00 (forty-thousand) bond I was given upon my false arrest on known-false charges of harassing my neighbor “in the first degree” by looking through my own window when that neighbor, Teresa Felicia Ingram-Jackson, was causing a commotion under that window and loudly and profanely berating a third neighbor.
I was also required to undergo mental examination before release, even after paying cash 10% of that bond which, adjusted for inflation amounts to about $60,000.00 (sixty-thousand) today.
That bond was not refunded to me until the charges were, than God and WITHOUT A LAWYER, dismissed WITH PREJUDICE. I requested interest but was denied.
Who pushed for that humongous bond? Hatchet-for-Hire Heather Weiss, who KNEW before hand that said Ingram-Jackson was an unemployed college drop-out who “entertained” in her apartment at least one cocaine dealer, Cory/Corey Lamont Curry, convicted in 2001 by none other than Hatchet-for-Hire herself.
And who affirmed the denial of my request to convert my bond to unconditional PR bond AFTER a jury refused to convict me in the court of none other than Judge Clifton Newman?
None other that John Cannon Few, then Chief Judge of South Carolina’s Court of Appeals.
When “his honor” said that he is “proud of everything” he did as a jurist, that was a renewed metaphoric to my face.
BTW, that same Theres Ingram-Jackson, name deliberately misspelled by the City of Columbia, was later convicted of victimizing ME with disorderly conduct.
But the same City which hounded me for bonds for false charges never bothered TO THIS DAY to even collect the fine from that Ingram-Jackson woman, who CONTINUED to live in Columbia and to have at least one subsequent drug conviction there.
Is “the honorable” John Cannon Few “proud” of that unequal justice under the law during his tenure and by his own hands?