Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joe Cunningham says recent polls show that when he gets his message out, he is “statistically tied” with Gov. Henry McMaster in his race for the statehouse.
“Just last month we had polling come out showing that when we got our message out, we poll within the margin of error and are statistically tied with Henry McMaster,” Cunningham said to loud cheers of supporters at Banditos Cantina in Myrtle Beach, Oct. 27.
“Folks, that’s very encouraging. Everywhere I go across this state I run into Republicans, Republican women, who come up to me and say ‘I’ve never voted for a Democrat before, but I’m voting for you this time around. There’s too much at stake.”
He stressed his message of protecting the freedoms of South Carolinians, which he stressed, “Everybody can get behind.”
“We’re seeing the minds and the hearts change in every corner of this state,” said Cunningham as he blasted McMaster for opposing same-sex marriage, abortion rights, and legalization of marijuana and sports betting.
“This is the United States of America, and I don’t care who you love and who you marry, and neither should the government,” Cunningham said. “It’s not their damn business.”
He reiterated his charge that McMaster wants to ban all abortions without exceptions, a stance, he said, that violates a woman’s freedom to control her own body.
McMaster, he said, wants to take South Carolina back to the 1950s with his regressive positions on key issues, including the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana and sports betting.
“All these freedoms are ones that are on the ballot this November, and sooner or later all of us are going to have to answer for what we did during this pivotal time in our nation’s history. And I want to tell my son, when he’s grown, bigger, that I fought like hell to preserve every single freedom that is passed down to me so they can be passed down to him as well.”
Cunningham said he would eliminate the state’s income tax and replace that revenue with tax dollars from legalizing marijuana and sports betting. That would allow for raising starting teacher’s pay to $50,000 from the current average of below $40,000, he said.
“If you didn’t get an appreciation for teachers after going through the pandemic with little ones in your homes, I don’t know what to say to you,” Cunningham said. “Politicians are failing our teachers. And when you fail our teachers, you fail our kids. “Our state needs an education governor, and that’s exactly the kind of governor that I’m going to be.”
“There is a huge, huge problem in our school system where our teachers are underpaid and are disrespected,” declared Cunningham. School children, he added, when they are dropped off at school, “they run through the door looking for that one teacher…and then one day, poof, that teacher, that Miss Ellet or whoever it is, is gone, vanished from their lives.”
Cunningham urged Democrats to spare no effort to help elect our candidates in the Nov. 8 election, early voting for which ends Nov. 5. “The question I leave with you tonight, is ‘How hard will you all fight? How hard will you fight to protect the freedoms that were bestowed upon us by the generations before us? How hard will we fight to pass those freedoms back down to the people who are most important to us?”
Joining Cunningham at the event were Democratic state legislative candidates, Ashlyn Preaux (Dist. 61), Ryan Thompson (Dist. 106). and Ernest Carson (Dist. 68),
