♪ opening music ♪ ♪ <Gavin> Welcome to a special edition of This Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

The storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was the culmination of weeks of falsehoods being told about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

The siege has shaped our modern politics in ways we're still trying to understand and when the votes from primary day on June 14th, and a likely run off on June 28th are finally tabulated.

Another chapter will be written.

The January 6th Capitol siege and subsequent impeachment vote change the trajectory of Congressman Tom Rice's political career.

Rice has represented the 7th Congressional District since its 2012 creation, thanks to explosive population growth in Horry and Georgetown counties, which has continued, up until his impeachment vote, Rice had a record of supporting President Donald Trump, but he and nine other Republicans took a stance that very well could cost them their jobs, something Rice and six others who are running for re-election understood when casting their votes on January 13th.

That combustible vote is defining the race and comes as Republicans are set to regain control of the House this fall, but several free, fair and secure elections must take place before then, including in the 7th Congressional District.

<Reporter #1> Republican Tom Rice also voted yes when just days before he had voted to object the certification of Joe Biden's election win.

<Reporter #2> 7th District Congressman Tom Rice voted yes for impeachment.

As we mentioned earlier, Rice is one of only 10 Republicans across the country to vote to impeach.

<Reporter #3> That vote has earned him Trump's condemnation and a long list of challengers trying to unseat him.

>> I was against them bringing up impeachment.

What I want to do is try to bind the wounds of the country and I would have preferred if they had allowed his last few days in office to run out without continuing this controversy, but if I have to vote yes or no, if they put the vote in front of me, the events of last Wednesday and his behavior in the weeks since, in my mind is completely inexcusable and a complete abdication of leadership.

<man> ...to make it look nice... Let's go branding... (applause) >> I was there January 6th.

Most everything that you see in the mainstream media is an absolute and total lie.

>> You know, it was a setup.

It was a setup.

>> It was all set up.

It was all infiltrators going in there starting stuff to begin with.

>> Look at the film, the video.

The Capitol Police were opening the doors for them and inviting them inside.

So, tell me that wasn't a setup.

<crowd> Freedom.

Freedom.

Freedom.

Freedom.

♪ music ♪ ♪ >> Can I speak with Pelosi?

Well, we're coming for you #*#*#*#*.

You don't believe ... ♪ ♪ We can't go on together with suspicious minds.

♪ ♪ and we can't build our dreams... ♪ >> Right here in the 7th Congressional District, Tom Rice, a disaster.

(crowd jeers) He's respected by no one.

He's laughed at in Washington.

He was never thought highly of in Washington and he was just censured by your great South Carolina GOP.

Tom Rice joined the Democrats' deranged impeachment witch hunt hoax.

It's all turned out to be a hoax.

It's all turned out now to be a hoax.

He parroted their lies.

He gave aid and comfort to their weapons.

He should have the national security state against the domestic political opponents.

He voted for the unselect committee of highly partisan politicians that are running this horrible witch hunt in Washington.

<Gavin> A Winthrop University poll by political science professor Scott Huffman found 77% of South Carolina Republicans don't believe the 2020 presidential election was fair.

Scott>> That's actually... the great concern, I think, for a lot of political scientists because it erodes the legitimacy of the system.

When you have people saying, the fix is in, that there are people some cabal of folks who are doing secret things to try and undermine a democracy, well, what you end up doing is undermining the democracy in order to stop this fantasy that somebody else is doing the same thing.

So, what we see are people who, you know, wrongfully believe that the election was fraudulent, running for positions like Secretary of State, or, you know, the head of the state Election Commissions in various states, that is, the groups that are in charge of the legitimacy of elections.

There are folks running for those that don't believe the last election and all the honest poll workers did their job in the last election, and to the degree that you erode the perception of legitimacy in elections, then you are eroding the perception of democratic legitimacy in our country.

<Dr.

Fred Carter> It's hard to find a congressional district, with the comparisons and contrasts that the 7th Congressional District has, you stop and think about it.

We're bifurcated by income.

We're bifurcated by health disparities.

We're bifurcated by poverty.

We're bifurcated by manufacturing sector versus service sector.

We're bifurcated by Native population versus influx of immigrating population.

What's happened over the past 10 years is we've had a congressman who has worked through those divisions, and through that contrast to kind of bring us together on a variety of issues, as we've met, talked about and discussed each of those issues.

<Paul Ryan> I don't do a lot of these events anymore.

As Tom mentioned, there are be-ers and do-ers in Congress or I'd call them show horses and work horses.

I am here because this man is a workhorse.

I am here because Tom Rice is a loyal man.

He is loyal to his constituents.

He is loyal to his conscience.

He is loyal to our founding principles.

He's loyal to the Constitution, which every two years when you get elected to Congress, you swear an oath to uphold.

That's why I'm here, because Tom Rice is a man worth fighting for, because He's busting his butt to fight for all of you.

The Ways and Means Committee is not just the most important committee in Congress, it's the most powerful committee in Congress.

It's in charge of 100% of all federal revenues, and three fifths of all federal spending, from retirement, to healthcare, to welfare to the tax code.

It is an extremely important committee, and you have a senior member of the committee who I believe we're going to get the majority who will be subcommittee chair in that committee, probably overseeing our tax system.

>>...again, the idea that you have a representative who is in a position of significant power to help you, normally that would be something very good, but in modern times, policy is far less important.

The ability to engage on particular often obscure policy matters should be important.

But the reality is, it's all about the heartstrings.

It's all about paying felty to certain ideologies.

And if you're seen as not having done that enough, then the fact that you might be in a grand position to help your entire district might not matter as much in a primary where showing that loyalty to certain ideologies can often be more important.

<Rep.

Fry> .I watched what he said, and I watched him continue to double and triple down on it, and I thought to myself, he has lost his way.

He has forgotten who he represents.

He presents - and people.

you we all heard it.

You guys were all saying it.

We were all saying the same thing.

So, I watched this, and I said, You know what?

You've lost your way.

You're not representing your constituents.

You're not voting for your constituents.

You're voting for yourself and it's time to come home.

It is time to come home Tom Rice.

So, people said at the very beginning, they said don't do this.

You've got a great legislative career ahead of you.

You're the chief whip and who knows what will happen in a few years, maybe you can be Speaker one day, and I said, you know what if I go down, and I never serve another day in public life, I'm going to give this guy the fight of his life.

(applause) So, we jumped in, and it has been electric.

I mean, I'll tell you from August until January, February, you know, we felt the energy.

We felt the passion.

We felt like we were talking about issues, not personalities.

It's about issues that people care about.

>> ...then go backwards to when Tom Rice, did what he did.

The biggest thing is Tom Rice's lack of attendance and absence in this area.

He's never been to our Republican meetings, not gotten to talk to him, and then there was the impeachment for Trump.

That just was the wrong thing to do.

He voted his conscience, but he didn't vote our conscience.

He didn't vote my conscience.

>> Huge.

It was so huge.

What that did is it didn't make me sign or vote for Russell Fry over Tom Rice.

It made me choose Russell Fry among the field of challengers.

Okay, because there are five people in this race, right, and you have to think about picking someone who can win.

It's not just, it is the right person, but you got to be able to win in general election.

However, since there doesn't seem to be a very big, upright Democrat candidate.

It's probably, the race is probably going to be the primary.

<Rep.

Fry> Listen, we are all here on this stage on May 5th, 2022, because of the actions of one man on January 13th of 2021.

In that moment, when called upon to make the most impactful vote that any Congressman can make, whether to impeach a president or not, Tom Rice, sided with Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Ilhan Omar and all the Never Trump- ers in Congress, to impeach our president.

That is unforgivable.

<Sen.

Tom Rice> They wanted us.

They charged us in the federal papers, each branch was jealously protecting their powers, because they knew that men were corrupt, and if they had too much power concentrated in one place, that corruption would overwhelm them.

My friends, I was there on January 6th.

I wasn't absent.

I was there.

I saw the bomb squads, defusing bombs.

I smelled the tear gas.

I was on the House floor when the glass was breaking when they were trying to break down the doors.

When we evacuated, I passed Capitol police officers who were beaten and broken and being pulled from the lines.

When we got to the spot where we were evacuated, Fox News was on TV.

I was getting calls from back here from friends and the news.

As I was talking to the news media back here, I kept saying where's the president?

Where's the president?

Where's the president, but he never came on.

I knew he was going to come on and say, the violence has got to stop, but he didn't for four hours.

In fact, 20 minutes after they were in the Capitol, he tweeted out, Mike Pence doesn't have courage.

My friends, you can argue about whether his speech that morning was incitement or not, but to me that one tweet was incitement.

If they had gotten hold of Mike Pence, we could have lost our democracy that day.

So if, in my opinion, my opinion, is that, is that our constitution is too precious to risk, and the one difference between me and all those leaders back in Washington who said, Oh, Donald Trump went too far, he should be impeached, he should be removed and then voted the other way.

I took the principle stand and I defended our Constitution.

<Scott> Well, it's, you know, it's becoming kind of a badge of honor, interestingly, among some Republicans that, you know, it was, in my personal opinion, domestic terrorism.

It was the committing of violence with the purpose of changing policy, which is quite literally the definition of terrorism, but it has not been something that Democrats have been able to run and win on.

You see, the push back against the January 6th committee from Republicans, and what you don't see are a groundswell of Democrats and moderates standing up and saying, No, this is something important for us to find out about.

So, it is something important to hardcore folks more on the left, but it is not something that they have been able to sort of raise interest in the election about, but it is something that the Republicans have been able to capitalize on.

So, it's been really interesting watching the evolution of what happened on January 6th.

♪ This is Wake Up Carolina.

Here's Ken Ard, and Dave Baker, One week from now, you folks in the 7th Congressional District, will go to the poll.

I mean, we've got narratives.

We've got agendas.

We've got perspectives.

We got, you know, political realities, and political, you know, opinions, and I mean, all this goes into the mash that makes up a campaign and an election, and I just look at the map, and I've said this, and I'll say it again, I've kept up fairly frequently with math, some friends of the consulting slash lobbying, slash polling business, and I just looked at the approval ratings of Trump, and they're, they're flat lined, but you know what they aren't Rev.

They aren't flat lined at 50.

They aren't flat lined at 60 or 70.

These approval ratings are in the mid 80s.

The lowest I've seen Trump's approval in Horry County is 83%.

The highest I've seen is 89%.

So, how do you, how do you convince a voter in a Republican primary to cast a ballot in your name, when you voted to impeach a guy who has a roughly 90% or at least in the mid-80s percent approval rating in Horry County?

That's the math of this campaign.

This is not a matchup between Russell Fry and Tom Rice.

This is not a matchup between Ken Richardson and Barbara Arthur, who will be with us in about what, 40 minutes from now.

This is a campaign about Tom Rice versus a vote he took, and that is the vote to impeach President Donald Trump.

resident #1>> The impeachment vote was a huge, huge thing.

Certainly, it absolutely was, because the people have said as the 7th District, myself included, while there might be some things that were disturbing, there was absolutely nothing that warranted an impeachment vote.

There are some things that maybe needed to be looked at, and they're being looked at, however, to impeach the president, over the actions of a multitude of wrongdoings of others is absolutely not appropriate, and, hey, the Congress voted to impeach him, which Tom Rice was one of those folks.

The Senate as you know, acquitted him or found him not guilty of the act, and that speaks for itself.

Tom Rice is wrong.

He's been wrong, and he will not and does not represent our district, and we need to frankly, we need to impeach Tom Rice at the polls on election day.

<Rep.

Fry> You know, the guy two months prior to the impeachment vote was campaigning around the district, you know, trying to pretend like he was best friends with President Trump and then turn around on that day on the impeachment vote and said no, and he turned his back on his constituents.

People feel even beyond that, that they feel abandoned by Congressman Rice.

He hasn't been here for the district, that he doesn't have a pulse of the community that he's been in Washington for too long, and so that message is resonating, and that's why our campaign continues to grow every single day, and that's why now Congressman Rice is taking aim at us.

So we join a long list of Republicans who he's now attacking from President Trump, all the way down to local activists, and so, we're happy to take those barbs, even as false as they are, because that really shows his contempt for the American people and the American worker.

>> You know obviously, the Grand Strand has, you know, I forget the number of tourism.

I think it's over 20 million tourists per year now that are visiting there.

So, they've got an economy that's, bolstered, in part by tourism, whereas the Pee Dee is more of the traditional manufacturing.

But now, you know, the Horry County, Myrtle Beach area is trying to, you know, diversify, and grow their manufacturing base as well, and certainly there are areas in the Pee Dee that are trying to grow their tourism base as well.

So, it, you know, anytime you have diversification in your economy, it helps you to strengthen it and soften the blow if there is a downturn.

I tell people, from a recruitment standpoint, we are probably one of the most diverse regions in the state, in that we do have, you know, a tourism focus here.

We have a manufacturing focus.

We have a logistics focus.

So, you know, variety I guess, is the spice of life and in this instance, it certainly makes for spices of our economy.

Danny Isaac>> Myrtle Beach is a tourist economy always has been.

It's been that way all my life.

Now, we have become a retirement community along with a tourist industry, and our difficulties are labor.

The labor force is just burdened.

The folks that are moving into the area are typically, retired folks.

Younger people move here.

You got the industry, tourist type work.

So, we have a hard time attracting a labor force in Horry County, particularly.

The growth is - I use it loosely, in saying it's just unbelievable, the amount of building that's going on in this county, not only in the last 30 years, the last 30 months.

I worry about a shift in Washington.

It could shift in the wrong direction, and Tom has proven himself.

I'm very, very impressed with his decision making, and he's trustworthy.

Anytime you got somebody you can trust, you know what you got, and there we are.

<Gavin> While Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand represent the explosive growth in the 7th Congressional District and half of the district's voters, the ideology of Republicans in the area varies and has even led to fissures in the party.

Ken Ard>> I think the Pee Dee will be a more traditional vote.

It's not as transient.

It's far more legacy minded.

In other words, it closely correlates to traditional southern South Carolina politics: God, guns and glory.

I mean, that's kind of the nature of red state voters in South Carolina, the coast is going to be different, because where are those people from and how long they've been there?

You know what I mean that they're not liberal Democrats by and large, but they're not in church every Sunday morning.

They're not worried about abortion or gay rights.

That's just not a big deal to those people, nor is it to me to be honest with you, but I think - I think anybody who says I completely understand the coast or Horry County are just being disingenuous.

48 new people a day move there.

Their net population growth is 48 people a day, as many people are dying in Horry County is being born.

So, you know, they're coming from somewhere else.

What kind of political disposition do they bring with them?

I don't know, do you?

I mean, nobody does.

I mean, we can guesstimate, and - We know, they're Republican by and large, but they're not traditional Southern legacy South Carolina red voters.

>> Well, I'll tell you, I'm new to the area.

So, I just go from what I hear, and I know there's a lot of rhinos that we need to vote out, and I mean, it's not just South Carolina.

It's just about every state that needs to be cleaned up.

We needed to clean house and really get this country back on track.

>> I love South Carolina.

The awesome, most awesome people I've met in my life are right here.

I love being here.

I plan to be here for the rest of my life.

This is a good, solid red state.

I hope to do my part to make it stay that way.

You know, and I hope other South Carolinians think the same way.

The Republican Party better start standing up.

Quit turning that other cheek.

Go to battle with these Democrats.

You know, when they say these lies, and there's lies and after lie after lie, and they're convincing people that that's the truth, and they need to stop that.

You know, we the Republicans need to stand up and fight.

>> The country is insane, and if anybody does not recognize that, then, you know, we've got to have a new, to have a different direction.

We have to have change.

We have to get back to where we were, because I can't afford to even drive down the block.

I mean, it's ridiculous.

I mean, we went from $1.88 gas to $4 in Georgetown, like overnight, and it's not - Excuse me.

Can you hear me?

It is not President Vladimir Putin's fault.

I did that for the Joe Biden aspect.

>> I think that we're looking pretty good.

I mean, I'm very excited.

Today, it's been It's been so fantastic.

I just think the way that things are going - first gas, and then everything else is kind of falling up behind it.

I cannot wait for November.

It can't get here soon enough, soon enough.

There's not a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican party today.

That battle is settled.

It's America first forward.

Now who are the standard bearers, and I think this election will basically be a solidification of how powerful America First force is within the Republican Party in one of the reddest states in America.

A person who has voted with Donald Trump, what 94% of the time, Isn't that what Congressman Rice says, and I don't think Tom's anti America First.

I think he's frustrated and I think his comments Sunday reflect that frustration when he off the cuff says you know, I would support Liz Cheney as a as a Speaker of the House.

<Dave> - still haven't figured that out.

I figured out.

You want me to tell you where the math is?

<Dave> Yes, >> That's the guy who has 0% chance of winning or 0% chance of losing, and you say what you'd like to say.

I mean, as you're riding out the door, you know, you don't want to leave any stone unturned.

So, um, you know, he's a bit bothered, by the way this has played out, and that's to be expected.

You would expect him to be bothered by the way this has played out.

He took a vote that he believes was the right vote.

I predict he's going to pay a significant political consequence for taking that vote, because many, many, many, many, many people questioned what Trump did, but inciting an insurrection, and kind of joining Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff and the other Democrats and kind of hitting him one last time as he left the building, I think is just a bridge too far.

We'll see how it plays out and wait, but that's just my personal accounting of where this race is one week from election day.

Let's take a break.

We'll be back on the other side.

Take some calls.

Back in a minute.

<Gavin> We'll bring you live election night coverage Tuesday, June 14 at 8pm from Rice's campaign, and several other candidate watch parties around the state with the latest results and analysis from our reporters and political science professors Scott Huffmon of Winthrop University and Gibbs Knotts, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the College of Charleston.

You can also stay up to date with the latest news throughout the week by subscribing to the South Carolina Lede.

It's a podcast I release every Tuesday and Saturday, recapping the latest statewide political news.

You can find it on South Carolina public radio.org or wherever you find podcasts.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.

♪ closing music ♪ ♪