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by JOE WHITE
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Mr. President, with all due respect: stop trying to dictate who South Carolina elects to represent South Carolina.
Some things are not about you!
I have voted for Donald J. Trump three times. Let me start there.
I appreciate much of what President Trump has done for this country. I appreciate his fight to secure our border. I appreciate his willingness to confront illegal immigration. I appreciate his efforts to remove dangerous people who entered this country illegally. I appreciate the fact that he has been willing to stand up to an establishment that has spent decades telling ordinary Americans to sit down and shut up.
But, Mr. President, with all due respect: South Carolina can make this decision for ourselves.
Reports indicate President Trump is considering coming to South Carolina to campaign for Darline Graham. Is your “chosen one” too weak to stand on her own? That should be a caution flag for South Carolina voters. If Trump does come down, I believe South Carolinians have every right to respectfully tell him: ‘We appreciate you, Mr. President, but this one belongs to us!’
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I have been a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives for only four years. Four years isn’t very long, but it has been plenty long enough for me to learn how power works in Columbia – and I don’t like what I’ve seen.
South Carolina has a political establishment. It has powerful people, powerful organizations, powerful lobbyists and powerful financial interests that exercise tremendous influence over what happens in our state government. Ordinary citizens may cast the ballots, but too often, powerful interests determine the choices we’re given long before Election Day arrives.
That’s not the government I was taught about in school. I was taught about government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” Too often, what I’ve witnessed in Columbia feels more like government “of the powerful, by the powerful and for the powerful.”
That’s one reason I ran for office in the first place. I was 76 years old. I certainly didn’t need another career. I had already raised my family, built a business, retired and lived a pretty full life.
I had served my country during the Vietnam era and watched America go through good times and bad. Then I watched riots in American cities. I watched buildings burn. I watched monuments torn down. I watched people become afraid to stand up and say what they believed.
Finally, I got tired of sitting on the sidelines. I thought maybe an old fellow could go to Columbia and make a difference. In a few small ways, I believe I have.
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RELATED | RUSSELL FRY ENDORSES DARLINE GRAHAM
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But Columbia has taught me something else: The system does not surrender power willingly. That’s why President Trump’s involvement in this Senate race bothers me so much.
Darline Graham has spent roughly three decades working in state government. She is a poster child for the bureaucracy. She has never been elected by the people to public office.
Ralph Norman has a record. People don’t have to guess what Ralph Norman will do. They can examine what he did in the South Carolina Legislature. They can examine what he has done in Congress. They can look at his votes. They can agree with him or disagree with him.
That’s how representative government is supposed to work.
President Trump is certainly entitled to endorse anybody he chooses. He’s an American citizen. I’m not suggesting he surrender that right, but South Carolina isn’t a subsidiary of Washington, D.C. We aren’t a branch office of the White House.
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We are a sovereign state, and the United States Senate seat from South Carolina doesn’t belong to Donald Trump. It doesn’t belong to Darline Graham. It belongs to the people of South Carolina. That’s the point.
I supported Donald Trump because I thought he understood something fundamental about this country: the people are tired of powerful institutions telling them what they’re supposed to think.
We’re tired of Washington telling us. We’re tired of corporations telling us. We’re tired of lobbyists telling us. We’re tired of political consultants telling us. And, yes, we’re tired of political machines telling us.
Those are the people and institutions that have gotten us into this mess and “We the People” are sick and tired of it!
So it is particularly frustrating to watch a president who built a political movement around challenging the establishment come into South Carolina and align himself with the very political establishment many of us have spent years fighting.
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Mr. President, I respect much of what you have accomplished. I appreciate much of what you are trying to accomplish now, but respecting a man doesn’t require surrendering your judgment to him. And supporting a president doesn’t mean giving him your proxy every time you walk into a voting booth.
South Carolinians are free-thinking, independent, and sometimes stubborn people. We always have been! We have a long history of insisting that we can make up our own minds.
Sometimes we’ve been right. Sometimes we’ve been wrong, but they were our decisions. This one should be too.
President Trump has made his choice. I have made mine. Other South Carolinians will make theirs. That’s America, but I don’t need Donald Trump — or anybody else in Washington — to tell me who should represent my state in the United States Senate.
I can look at the records. I can look at the experience. I can look at the character. I can look at the votes. I can make up my own mind.
So, Mr. President, with all due respect: You’ve made your endorsement. We’ve heard you. Now trust the people of South Carolina. Let us make our own decision.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Joe White is a retired businessman and proud member of the S.C. Freedom Caucus who represents South Carolina House District 40 in the General Assembly.
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