Democrat SC Sen. Mia McLeod launches 2022 campaign for governor

South Carolina Sen. Mia McLeod, one of five women to serve in the state Legislature’s upper chamber who over the past year used her platform to pounce on the governor’s COVID-19 health protocols, will run for governor in 2022.

McLeod now stands with a handful of Black women nationwide seeking higher office after Stacey Abrams’ gubernatorial campaign in Georgia in 2018 and Kamala Harris’ historic rise from Democratic presidential candidate to vice president in 2020.

McLeod is at least the third Democrat to launch a campaign for governor, after former U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham and activist Gary Votour.

So far, incumbent Republican Gov. Henry McMaster has no primary challengers who have announced, though rumors still remain that McMaster’s 2018 challenger, Republican John Warren of Greenville, and Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, could still run.

State ethics disclosures show Mindy Steele of Berkeley County has opened a campaign fundraising account, with $500 on hand from a personal contribution as of her May 28 filing date. Steele was not immediately available for comment.

McLeod’s intention to run for governor was hardly a secret.

She often retweeted supporters who called on her to run and added her own tweets — with the hashtag “#2022” — to the mix.

McLeod, who runs a communications consulting firm, was first elected to the state House in 2010, then to the Senate in 2016, serving District 22, which includes parts of Kershaw and Richland counties.

McLeod gave the Democrats’ response to McMaster’s 2021 State of the State address, a slot typically reserved for a high-profile Democrat, who most often will use the moment to build a platform for higher office.

In her remarks, she zeroed in on what she called McMaster’s “colossal failure” to mitigate the state’s COVID-19 outbreak by focusing on partisan policies, including restricting abortion access, she said.

McLeod made headlines in January when, during a tense Senate debate over abortion access and whether victims of rape should be compelled to keep their child, she told the chamber she was a victim of sexual assault.

McLeod, who is public about her sickle cell disease diagnosis, was among senators who either stayed home or sat in the gallery above the Senate chamber to avoid contracting the virus during this year’s legislative session. She was typically seen wearing a mask and, as some others did, wearing gloves.

Her GOP challenger in the 2020 Senate election often dinged her for failing to come to the Legislature’s work session amid COVID-19.

She beat him by more than 24 percentage points.

“Our state motto is, ‘While I breathe, I hope.’ But we can’t breathe while COVID-19 and systemic racism continue to kill more Black and brown South Carolinians than ever,” McLeod said in the recorded response after McMaster’s speech. “... You can change that, Governor, by putting all of the people of South Carolina first, because our state can’t be open for business until COVID-19 is out of business.”

This is a developing story. It will be updated.