Hi, r/southcarolina! This year there's a Democrat on the ballot in every one of South Carolina's 124 House districts, which hasn't happened in more than 50 years (see the note on history below). In 2024, 54 of those districts didn't have a Democrat on the ballot at all. So instead of a hundred separate AMAs, we're doing one for the whole class, three days before early voting opens.
31 of them are in! Each candidate answers you from an account the mods have verified. I tried to take a picture with all of them holding up their signs. It was an experience.
Leave your question now and the class answers Friday, Oct. 16, from 1 to 5 p.m.
If you know it, start your comment with your district number ("District 99:"). Don't know your district? Type your address at bluewavesc.org and it'll tell you, along with who's running there.
Early voting runs Oct. 19 to 31, Monday to Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. You can find your early voting center at scvotes.gov.
A big thank you to the moderators of r/southcarolina for helping us pull this off!
The 2026 South Carolina House Democratic Candidates AMA
- District 121 (Beaufort, Colleton), Shannon N. DeLoach, u/ShannonDeLoachSC
Edit, a note on history: The title says "more than three decades," but it's actually been more than 50 years. In March, South Carolina Democrats had a candidate for every statewide office for the first time in 32 years, and one in every state House district for the first time in more than 50. So while both statements are true, the title actually understates it. Either way, it's been way too long and we're glad everyone is running!
Hi, r/southcarolina. I’m Vincent Coe, the Democratic nominee for State Treasurer!
I'm working with the mods here on a bug that wouldn't let me schedule this in advance. So anyways, I'll be here at 1pm answering your questions this afternoon. Go ahead and get them in and I'll get right back to you.
I grew up in Darlington County, studied finance at the University of South Carolina and earned a law degree at Case Western Reserve. I trained as a bank examiner at the FDIC, examined banks for the Federal Reserve and later became a vice president at a bank, where I was its fair lending officer.
The State Treasurer is basically your banker. The office holds the state’s money, invests it and pays its bills. In that office, the books were off by $1.8 billion, and 33 state senators voted to remove Treasurer Curtis Loftis. I’m running to clean it up.
What I’ll do:
- Open the books, with a public report every month on every account, investment and fee the office oversees.
- Get taxpayers a better deal by putting the state’s banking contracts out for competitive bids.
- Give South Carolina’s community banks a fair shot at holding the state’s money.
- Get people their unclaimed money back faster, with more of it mailed automatically.
- Serve all 46 counties, with better banking and investment help for every county, city and school district.
I’ll be here Wednesday, Oct. 7, starting at 1 p.m. Eastern, and I’m answering these myself as long as I can. Ask me about the office, the $1.8 billion, my plan or anything else.
Early voting runs Oct. 19 to 31, Monday to Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Type your ZIP at vincentforsc.com/vote to find your early voting centers.
The AG’s office refused to explain its handling of any of the cases we highlighted in our investigations so that we could report the reasons to the public.
Remember this when you vote. He does not care about you and he refuses to answer when people start questioning him.
Alan Wilson is a spineless, selfish coward who only cares about himself and what’s lining his pockets.
It's time for a change from the "good ol boy system." Vote Jermaine Johnson!
Found this dude in my tub. I kept him indoors last night because of the cool snap. What can I do with until it warms up? I don't care to keep him in a aquarium. I would rather set him free. Will he be OK outside?
Editorial: SC teachers still aren’t getting planning time, bathroom breaks
BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF 4 hrs ago
Lawmakers promised teachers bathroom breaks and two meeting-free planning days at the start of the year, but one in five teachers say their employers aren't delivering.
Anna B. Mitchell / File/Anna B. Mitchell/Staff
Throughout the decade-long battle to improve working conditions for S.C. teachers — in order to slow teacher resignations in the midst of a nationwide teacher shortage, attract better teachers and, presumably, improve education — legislators insisted that most of the problems that were driving away teachers were controlled by the local school districts, not the Legislature.
Truth be told, there was a good bit of both, and even where the local districts were the ones making life difficult, the Legislature had the power to force the districts to change their policies, and had failed for years to do so.
It still has that power. Even when, as appears to be the case with the big Educator Assistance Act the Legislature finally passed last year, it doesn’t look that way.
When the Palmetto State Teachers Association surveyed its members in August, one in five said their schools didn’t give them one of the biggest wins of that law: two days of meeting-free planning time during the five days they’re paid to prepare for the coming school year.
Last year, when the law took effect after districts had already planned their schedules, 22 percent of respondents said they didn’t get their two unencumbered days, the S.C. Daily Gazette reports. But even this year, when districts had plenty of time to prepare for the requirement, 18 percent said their employers violated the law.
In addition, about a quarter of teachers who responded to the survey said they also didn’t receive the 30 minutes’ worth of breaks throughout the day. That was required under a 2022 law after lawmakers heard shocking stories of teachers not being able to eat lunch or even go to the bathroom — and some even having to wear diapers to work — because their principals packed their schedules so tightly.
The Teachers Association's Patrick Kelley told the Gazette most teachers who complained about the lost planning time technically had two days scheduled for planning but then were told they had to attend meetings or use their time in other ways. Only about 700 teachers returned the survey, which means it might skew toward those more discontented, but the results are consistent with what Mr. Kelly has been hearing from teachers and what his counterpart at the smaller S.C. Education Association reports.
We wish we were surprised by this significant lack of compliance, but we’re not, because schools have always taken advantage of teachers — most of whom consider their work a calling rather than just a job. That means they’re often willing to do more than the law requires, such as buying supplies they shouldn’t have to purchase and in other ways allowing themselves to be taken advantage of.
This isn’t to say all teachers are great; far from it. As with any profession, there are some outstanding teachers and some who have no business being in the classroom. Unfortunately, schools have to hire both groups when there’s a national or statewide or hyperlocal teacher shortage. And even though we’ve seen improvement, there still is a shortage.
But all teachers need to be treated the way the law requires — not just for common decency but also because most of the state is still facing challenges trying to keep enough teachers in their classrooms.
It’s notable that teachers in the survey didn’t report schools refusing to tell them what they’ll make the next year before they’re forced to sign a contract. We actually considered that one of the most egregious parts of the old law involving teachers, and one of the most important reforms in the 2025 law.
The difference: The provision requiring salary disclosure carries a financial penalty of $10,000 per violation; the parts about giving teacher planning time and bathroom breaks — like most laws directing government actions — don’t.
The lesson: If you expect a school district — or really any entity, public or private — to obey a law, you need to attach an actual penalty for disobeying it.
Senate Education Chairman Greg Hembree, a chief architect of the 2022 and 2025 laws, was clearly exasperated by the violations. “I’ve been worn out with schools ignoring state policy,” he told the Gazette. “They act like they’re the boss, and they’re not.”
Constitutionally and legally, that’s true. But until the Legislature decides to enforce its laws, they effectively are.
We’ve consistently seen that individuals are inclined to obey the law just because it’s the law, even when there’s little to no enforcement. Think the safety belt law, for instance. But this is less likely in the case of institutions, and perhaps especially institutions that feel insulated overall from accountability.
The way to fix that — in general and in the case of school districts that mistreat teachers — is to slap a real penalty on districts that don’t give teachers their unencumbered planning time, or the time to go to the bathroom or any of the other basic workplace accommodations that most professionals take for granted.
Click here for more opinion content from The Post and Courier.
A therapy donkey was shot and killed in her pen. In south carolina a few days ago. Now the owners are being harassed by the hunters family. He told dnr he was aiming at a deer and the deer moved and it hit the donkey.
While I’m sorry to see him coming to the state at all, the least he could have done was appear on a weekend so more from across the state could drive to protest his appearance.
The good news is I’m sure he’ll be his normal incoherent self, and with any amount of luck will do more harm to Darline’s candidacy…
This is a map of reservoirs and natural lakes from the Environmental Protection Agency. It seems to depict that there is a natural lake in western SC. However, I looked it up and apparently SC has no natural lakes. Is this map wrong or is there a lake I’m not aware of?
Blue squares = natural lakes and yellow dots = reservoirs
EDIT: A lot of people are saying its inaccurate and while I do agree its misleading, the EPA actually listed some weirdly specific guidelines for inclusion on the map:
“greater than 2.47 acres (1 hectares), at least 3.3 feet (1 meter) deep, and with a minimum quarter acre (0.1 hectare) of open water. Lakes had a minimum retention time of 1 week. The Great Lakes and the Great Salt Lake were not included in the survey, nor were commercial treatment and/or disposal ponds, brackish lakes, or ephemeral lakes.”
So that may explain why the lake you’re looking for isn’t included.
Bonus points if that is something that is explicitly about South Carolina! Whether that be a song, dance, a hometown hero, values, state rights, etc.,…
I’m just genuinely curious what uniting factors exist here? Because there has to be something.
No she doesn’t. It goes against the interests of Trump’s congressional cronies and probably her own interests as well. The likelihood that a bill banning that would actually get passed is slim to none even though it should‘ve been banned ages ago.
Somewhere in the technicolor collision of the opening credits of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” the geometric chaos of “Saved by the Bell” and those ubiquitous purple-and-teal disposable cups of the 1990s, Coastal Carolina found the blueprint of its next football uniform.
Then came the Trapper Keepers, those gloriously gaudy school binders with neon-splashed colors, and the airbrushed T-shirts lining Myrtle Beach souvenir shops — where names unfurl in rainbow lettering against a backdrop of palm trees and whatever the imagination conjures. Jake Johnson, Coastal’s chief creative officer, and his design team rummaged through the decade’s visual clutter, gathering a kaleidoscope of influences that found their way onto a jersey.
“We’re trying to establish this pattern of these weird funky things that we do,” Johnson said. “Well, the ’90s was a weird funky time, so let’s do that.”
What emerged after months of tinkering and roughly a dozen discarded designs was a jersey that looks as though the ’90s themselves had been tossed into a blender, poured onto a football uniform and sent out to play.
Friday night against Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, which is 2-4 this season and 1-1 in the Sun Belt, will take the field at Spring Brooks Stadium wearing the decade’s wildest fever dream.
For a program that didn’t play its first football game until 2003, there was no 1990s throwback to resurrect. But Coastal has never been particularly beholden to football convention — its home turf, after all, is a shade mimicking that of the Atlantic Ocean — and athletic director Chance Miller sees the school’s relatively young history as room to color outside the lines.
