Firebrand former SC senator in GOP runoff to take his Upstate seat back

The S.C. Senate chamber is seen in session in Columbia, S.C. on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)

COLUMBIA — A former South Carolina senator is in a GOP primary runoff against a two-term House member in a bid to reclaim the uber conservative Upstate seat voters tossed him out of eight years ago.

Lee Bright, a firebrand Republican who lost his re-election bid in 2016 amid opposition from then-Gov. Nikki Haley and the state Chamber of Commerce, faces state Rep. Roger Nutt in the runoff for Senate District 12, which spans chunks of Greenville and Spartanburg counties between their two major cities.

This time, the Senate GOP Caucus is backing Nutt, an engineer from Moore first elected to the House in 2020.

Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey is careful not to directly mention Bright while explaining why the caucus is funding ads for Nutt ahead of the June 25 runoff.

“We think Roger Nutt would be a very effective senator if you look at his House record — the positions he’s championed, the issues he’s engaged — Roger is a fighter,” said Massey, R-Edgefield. “Not only does he talk about issues in the right way, he delivers. He wins.

“Look at the votes he’s taken,” Massey continued, recognizing it’s a “hardcore conservative” district. “There’s nobody going to criticize Roger as being soft. The difference is, Roger knows how to be successful in advocating for things, as opposed to just getting up and talking.”

Bright, who runs an insurance company, was perhaps best known in the South Carolina Senate as the champion of what was dubbed the “bathroom bill,” which he introduced two months ahead of the 2016 primary.

His bill mimicked a North Carolina law requiring people to use public bathrooms corresponding to their sex at birth and barring local governments from passing rules for bathrooms in private businesses. At the time, the North Carolina law caused a national uproar and resulted in the Palmetto State’s northern neighbor losing major business deals. (North Carolina lawmakers ultimately undid that law in 2017.)

Looking to avoid a repeat in South Carolina, the state Chamber of Commerce’s political committee ran radio ads against Bright, calling the transgender bathroom bill a time-wasting political stunt. Haley opposed Bright and his bill as unnecessary. Environmentalists also targeted Bright, calling him the worst senator on clean air, water and energy.

Ultimately, Bright narrowly lost his bid for a third term in a primary runoff with Sen. Scott Talley, R-Spartanburg, which was a rematch of 2012, when Bright defeated Talley by less than 200 votes.

After Talley, an attorney, decided not to seek a third term, he asked Nutt to run to be his successor, Nutt said. Three others jumped in too: Bright; Hope Blackley, former district director for Congressman William Timmons and the former Spartanburg County clerk of court; and Skip Davenport, owner of a local car dealership.

Bright got the most votes in the four-way primary June 11, with 36.6% of 11,453 ballots cast. Nutt trailed with 23.2%, followed by Blackley at 20% and Davenport at 18.3%.

Nutt said he agrees with Bright’s stance on a lot of the issues but not his “all or nothing” tactics.

“If you go in with guns a-blazing and you don’t get anything done, it’s not really a benefit for our constituents,” Nutt said.

During his prior tenure, Bright advocated — unsuccessfully — for legislation allowing adults to carry handguns without a permit. Nutt too supported that effort, which became law this year.

Nutt has been endorsed by Blackley, his former primary opponent, along with a number of incumbent legislators including House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter.

Bright, a two-term senator first elected in 2008, did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the SC Daily Gazette over the last week.

“I fought for you for eight years,” Bright said in a video on his campaign Facebook page posted May 12. “I took every arrow that could be taken. I was able to accomplish some things in Columbia. … I fought all the spending. I filibustered a budget.”

Other things Bright fought for unsuccessfully included keeping the Confederate flag on Statehouse grounds.

After the June 17, 2015, massacre at Mother Emauel AME Church in Charleston, when a white supremacist gunned down nine Black worshipers at the conclusion of a Wednesday prayer service, the Legislature voted to permanently remove the rebel flag and the 30-foot pole it was flying from on the Statehouse’s front lawn. Bright was among three senators voting “no.”

Explaining his vote in a 2016 interview with the Greenville News, Bright said it “took courage to keep it up.”

Senate Freedom Caucus?

If Bright wins, he could transport the GOP vs. GOP civil war in the House over to the Statehouse’s upper chamber.

Bright’s prior tenure predates the existence of the hardline Freedom Caucus. But he took very Freedom Caucus-like stances. The subset of Republicans has stayed strictly in the House since it formed in 2022. But that might change, depending on the results of the runoff.

Bright has publicly praised the House Freedom Caucus, to include crediting the uber-conservative group for Republicans refusing to elect former Democrat House Rep. James Smith to a Circuit Court seat in April, despite Smith being the only candidate left in the judicial race. Instead, by a 94-58 vote, the joint assembly of legislators chose to restart the candidate screening process.

“You need more Freedom Caucus members in the House, and they need some help in the Senate,” Bright said about Smith in a video posted on his social media campaign page.

Freedom Caucus members say they are pushing the Statehouse to true conservative values. Their GOP critics counter they’re obstructionists who talk in bumper-sticker slogans to twist the truth. In the primary, House GOP leaders pushed unsuccessfully to oust Freedom Caucus incumbents, while the Freedom Caucus picked up a few seats.

Rep. R.J. May, a founder of the Freedom Caucus, told the Gazette the group was looking to expand over to the Senate. He declined to name which candidates his group was speaking with, but it seems clear that Bright tops the list.

“Lee has a proven conservative record,” May said without elaborating.

On Thursday, Reps. Josiah Magnuson and Rob Harris, Freedom Caucus members from Spartanburg County, both endorsed Bright. Magnuson, of Campobello, is the secretary and potentially the next chairman of the Freedom Caucus following the exit of its founding chairman, Rep. Adam Morgan, who lost his bid last week for Congress.

Nutt estimates voting with the Freedom Caucus the vast majority of the time but said he’s not interested in joining the hard-right coalition if it crosses the lobby.

“I’m not going to join a Freedom Caucus because it puts you in a cubby,” Nutt said. “I’m going to vote my conscience and what the people in my district want me to.”

For the next few days, Nutt said he plans to continue the ground game he believes helped him win a spot in the runoff.

“For the last three, four months I’ve done nothing but campaign, and I’ve walked door to door and I’ve talked to people,” he said. “People understood I’ve got the experience and the knowledge and the drive to get out and get something actually done in the Senate.”

SC Daily Gazette Editor Seanna Adcox contributed to this report.

The post Firebrand former SC senator in GOP runoff to take his Upstate seat back appeared first on SC Daily Gazette.