I pulled up dKos this morning to be greeted by some interesting news--the impending Democratic tsunami may be about to crash ashore in Charleston.
Survey USA released a poll showing an unbelievably close race in SC-01. Four-term Republican incumbent Henry Brown is in the race of his life with Democrat Linda Ketner. He only leads by five points, 50-45.
I realize that Kos mentioned this on the front page, and there's already been one diary written on this (albeit with one comment). But I figured I should give a local perspective of sorts, from five hours north in Charlotte.
SC-01 is basically the whiter, wealthier portions of Charleston and most of its suburbs, plus Myrtle Beach. While Charleston itself is light blue, the suburbs and the Grand Strand are fire-engine red--only slightly better than the Columbia and Upstate burbs where Republicans usually run up the votes here. It's a very socially conservative area, especially in the Charleston burbs. It first went Republican during the Reagan landslide of 1980, and we've only seriously contested it once since then, in 1986. Even so, this was still a swing district until the 1990 census, when most of the Charleston area's black residents were drawn into the 6th (the Jim Clyburn district). To take their place, the 1st got pushed all the way up the coast to Myrtle Beach. Even before then, the official Democratic candidate has carried this district exactly ONCE since Truman--in 1976, when it went for Jimmy Carter.
The Repubs who have held this seat seem to have gotten wingnuttier as the years passed--from Tommy Hartnett (1981-87) to Arthur Ravenel (1987-95) to Mark Sanford (as in the current governor of South Carolina--1995-2001) to Brown, who is easily the worst of them. Read this statement about why he wouldn't sign a discharge petition on a bill opposed by the Repub leadership (warning, Word file)--it tells you all you need to know about htis guy.
Brown is in a situation that most congressmen can only dream of. A four-term congressman in what is on paper a nasty-red district (R+10--the 26th most Republican district in the Eastern Time Zone). He's in a state which is safe (albeit barely) for McCain presidentially, and where Senator Lindsey Graham is cruising to reelection against a cardboard-cutout opponent.
In other words--there is no way, no how, a Democrat should be at all competitive in this district, let alone an openly lesbian one like Ketner. And yet, this poll appears to show it. The internals should raise quite a few red flags for Brown. For one thing, he only has the support of 54 percent of regular churchgoers. In a district like this, a Republican--especially a guy with a lifetime rating of 93 from the American Conservative Union--should get 60 percent or more from regular churchgoers. And he's getting 82 percent support from Republicans--in a presidential year!
But the biggest problem for Brown? Geography. The district is only 21 percent black--but nearly all of them live in Charleston itself. Largely because of this, Charleston County has only gone for Repub presidential candidates by single-digit margins. As I mentioned earlier, while the district overall looks nasty red, Charleston itself is light blue. In the "duh" moment of the campaign so far, SUSA basically says that Brown's fate rests in the hands of the district's black voters. We all know Obama's presence on the ballot alone will guarantee close to 100% black turnout in Charleston. If Ketner can run it up in Charleston itself, it might be enough to send Brown packing--or at the very least have him reaching for the Maalox.