Jaime Harrison says he’s not to blame for SC Senate loss. Trump lifted Graham, he says
Democrat Jaime Harrison said Monday he would not have run his U.S. Senate bid against Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham any differently, standing by his campaign’s efforts after Republicans won big in South Carolina on election night.
Harrison also outright rejected criticism from outside and within his own party that he nationalized the race, telling The State in his first interview reflecting on the race that he spoke more about local issues than other candidates.
On Nov. 3, Republicans strengthened their grip on the state with three out of five GOP voters casting straight-party ballots. In the State House, Republicans flipped two seats and lost none. In the Senate it flipped three seats. The party also flipped the 1st District back to Republicans after Nancy Mace’s victory over Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham.
“You and I both know that I talked about local issues more than anybody else probably in the state,” Harrison said. “I talked about the lack of Medicaid expansion. I talked about investing in rural communities. There was no talk of nationalizing from me.”
Graham beat Harrison by 10 percentage points, leaving Harrison unable to break past 44% of the vote, a proportion President Barack Obama got in South Carolina in 2008 and 2012. Still, Harrison received more votes in the state than President-elect Joe Biden.
That loss came as a shock to some Democrats, after Harrison raised and spent more than $130 million, money used to flood the airwaves and drive higher voter turnout. And before November, internal polls showed the race neck and neck, as Graham got a campaign visit from Vice President Mike Pence in Greenville a week before the election in the reliably Republican state.
“If I told you, ... Jaime’s going to get 1.1 million votes and you knew Donald Trump got 1.15 million the last time, you would say, ‘That’s going to be a pretty tight race,’” Harrison told The State. “But what happened is because of the coattails of Donald Trump. He was able to turn out more voters than I think any of us had ever thought about.”
As any Democrat, it’s “hard to swim against” that, Harrison said.
“I think we ran the best campaign that we could have run given the circumstances.”
Democrats and Republicans agree that both sides were going to be energized to turn out and vote this year. But some Democrats have hammered Harrison’s campaign over what they argue was a campaign failing to do the ground work necessary to reach voters.
In an interview with The State this month, S.C. House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, placed blame on Harrison’s campaign for relying too much on television rather than reaching voters in person.
After the state’s COVID-19 outbreak, Harrison and his campaign shifted to an almost entirely virtual effort, only holding limited in-person events leading up to the election so to avoid people being exposed to the virus.
Harrison said Monday that with every campaign move they made they consulted doctors to ensure no one was put in harm’s way.
“I think there’s a lot of last-minute quarterbacking, particularly given how much resources that we pumped into the state party to help our down-ballot ticket,” Harrison said, referring to the $15 million his campaign sent to South Carolina’s Democratic Party. “I know folks like to find scapegoats, but they really should focus on what they have done and whether or not they did anything in order to help their candidates this cycle. I know that we probably did more than anybody has ever done in South Carolina to help Democratic candidates.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2020 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Jaime Harrison says he’s not to blame for SC Senate loss. Trump lifted Graham, he says."
