S.C. Progressives Turn Their Eyes to Fall Election
Local and State News
To that end, the group is holding its spring strategy session on Saturday at the Teamsters Union Hall in West Columbia, where, according to Director Brett Bursey, the network will polish its message and decide whom to target. The networks three core issues are expanding Medicaid to the poor under Obamacare, funding education and protecting voting rights.
Bursey said Monday the planning process will involve calculating incumbents vulnerability and their voting records to prioritize them as targets.
One list were looking at is the 31 House members that are sponsors of the reintroduced son-of-nullification bill that aims to undermine Obamacare in South Carolina and would specifically outlaw an expansion of Medicaid, Bursey said.
The bill came about after conservative state legislators conceded that South Carolina does not have the constitutional authority to nullify the Affordable Care Act, a federal law. Bursey argues that such extremism is the will of only a tiny fraction of eligible South Carolina voters who, by dominating GOP primaries, have an outsized voice in setting South Carolinas policies.
Youre looking at single digits, like 4 or 5 percent of the people in South Carolina, that are anointing these tea party wackos in the primaries to set our state policy, he said. Thats insane. Literally, its insane, letting people that are against government run your government.
Well have [targeted incumbents] listed, and were going to try to prioritize them as far as whos most vulnerable, like a triage. If a person is bleeding, well go stir up the sharks. We want to go into the House districts and go to the churches that these people go to and ask the what kind of theology theyre spreading that Rep. So-And-So, who goes to their church, would be denying the least of us health care.
Its a name-and-shame strategy that Bursey says worked in 2012, when the group was trying to get a Senate floor vote on Medicaid expansion. He said the Progressive Network found like-minded congregants in the churches of Sens. Ray Cleary (R-Georgetown) and Paul Thurmond (R-Charleston), neither of whom could be considered tea party stalwarts, who were able to persuade the two Republicans to vote in favor of Medicaid expansion.
The Progressive Networks spring strategy meeting is scheduled to run from 10 a.m. till 5 p.m. on Saturday at the Teamsters new union hall, 2604 Fish Hatchery Rd., West Columbia. The public is welcome but ther
Printer-friendly version
See the original post:
S.C. Progressives Turn Their Eyes to Fall Election