‘Second gentleman’ visits Beaufort church. Election, he says, is battle ‘for soul of nation’

Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, made a campaign stop at a 155-year-old Black church in Beaufort Thursday, telling a packed house of guests and congregants that the Biden-Harris ticket is once again “in a fight for the soul of our country.”

Surrogates of President Joe Biden and Harris are fanning out across South Carolina, the state whose support carried the ticket to the nomination in the Democratic primaries in 2020, in advance of the state’s Feb. 3 primary, which is the nation’s first on the Democratic side. Biden is running largely unopposed, but Democrats are using the primary to fire up the base of the party including Black voters he’ll need to win the state in the November general election.

On Monday, Biden was at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where in 2015 nine Black parishioners were shot to death by a white man who they had invited to join a Bible study. On Jan. 6, Harris marked the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol by speaking at the annual retreat at the 7th Episcopal District AME Church Women’s Missionary Society in Myrtle Beach

Emhoff kicked off his first day on the campaign trail Thursday in Beaufort, speaking briefly at Old Grace Chapel A.M.E. Church at 502 Charles Street after touring Good Aura, a women’s clothing store on West Street and meeting there with members of a group called Families Against Book Bans. That group has been fighting efforts by Moms for Liberty to remove books in school libraries. Good Aura is owned by Melinda Henrickson, a leader in the local Families Against Book Bans group.

“It’s a fight for the soul of our nation,” said Emhoff at the church, where he spoke while seated under a mural showing Jesus in the clouds with his disciples below him.

People listened from the pews, sometimes audibly agreeing with the “second gentleman,” and some wearing Biden-Harris buttons.

The election offers a stark choice on issues and what each party stands for, Emhoff said. He painted the other side as extreme, referencing white supremacy when he mentioned the Charleston shooting, hardships women are having because of the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion and even efforts in Beaufort County to ban books from school libraries. Emhoff expressed exasperation that those attempts are occurring in this day and age.

“They are on the right side of all of these issues,” Emhoff said of Biden and Harris.

The upcoming vote is a “binary election,” Ehoff said, with those who support the rule of law on one side, and a dictator on the other, a reference to Trump’s comment of being a dictator for a day if he wins the election.

The backdrop, Grace Chapel, has been a safe meeting place and open to community ever since 1858, said Barbara H. Laurie, a lay minister at Grace Chapel. It formally organized as an African Methodist Church following the Civil War in 1869.

“It’s small,” said Laurie. “It’s intimate. It’s sacred,”

The church has always been involved at the grassroots level with mobilizing and strategizing, Laurie said. “I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to hear his role in supporting the vice president,” Laurie said of Emhoff’s visit.

Mayra Rivera-Vazquez, second vice chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, said the historic church was chosen for the campaign stop because the party wants “to show how diverse we are as a nation.”

“This is one of many other events we are going to be doing in the region,” Rivera-Vazquez said.

South Carolina is the perfect place for the first Democratic primary because it is rural and but still has larger cities, has families who have lived here for generations and newcomers and, most importantly, because it has a racially diverse electorate “that truly represents America,” said Kathleen Hughes of the Beaufort County Democratic Party.

While calling Emhoff’s visit “a great meeting,” The Rev. John Black, the pastor at Campbell Chapel in Bluffton, said he wished that Emhoff would have addressed Biden’s age because of concerns expressed by younger voters about supporting the 81-year-old. Gun violence is another issue that’s on the minds of many in Beaufort County, he added, in the wake of a spate of shootings.

Emhoff, an attorney, is the country’s first “second gentleman” because of his marriage to Harris, the first woman vice president.

After leaving Beaufort, Emhoff was expected to spend time with Jewish community leaders in Mount Pleasant discussing their experience and recent hate crime ordinances in the Lowcountry.

“We are going to win this election in 2024,” Ehoff told reporters as he left the church. “Our freedom, our democracy is on the ballot. This a binary election. Do we want to have a country that believes in the rule of law, our constitution, our freedom, our values or don’t we? And that’s what’s at stake here.”

For the first time, the backbone of the Democratic Party — Black voters — will have the first say in the Democratic primary, Scott Harriford, the South Carolina director of Biden’s campaign, said of the state’s Feb. 3 primary.

“With so much on the line in 2024, we’re using every tool at our disposal to reach our base — in major cities and rural areas — to make sure they’re fired up and ready to cast their ballot for President Biden on February 3,” he said in a statement.

Biden beat Trump in the 2020 general election but lost South Carolina with Trump taking 55.11% percent of the vote to Biden’s 43.43%. In Beaufort County, Trump beat Biden 54.37% to %44.38.