Last-hour filer for SC governor’s race explains her campaign

COLUMBIA — The seventh Republican to join the race to be South Carolina’s next governor said she’s running to save taxpayers money on social safety net programs.

Jacqueline DuBose is the owner of a Hartsville cleaning company who also drives a bus for the Darlington County School District. The 61-year-old mother of four adult children said her campaign slogan is “keeping SC out of the red,” which refers to keeping the red, Republican-controlled state out of debt.

And she wants to do that, she said, by getting “people back to work.”

DuBose officially launched her bid when she turned in her paperwork March 30, with just an hour left in the two-week filing period. She expected to jump in a few months earlier but first had to wrap up legal work on her late mother’s estate, she told the SC Daily Gazette.

Most of her competitors have been campaigning since last year and have raised — and spent — millions of dollars in their bid to replace Gov. Henry McMaster in the first gubernatorial election in 16 years without an incumbent on the ballot.

DuBose hasn’t reported raising any money. And she doesn’t have a campaign website yet.

But she hopes media interviews will boost her name recognition, and she plans to set up booths at spring festivals around the state to talk to people about her platform.

This is her second campaign for elected office. In 2022, she ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Darlington County School Board. Regardless of the outcome of the governor’s race, she said, her goal is to share her message: “You have a purpose.”

For her, that means telling people who rely on government assistance that they need to be working.

For people receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, commonly called food stamps, her mantra is, “You don’t work, you don’t eat.” 

She said she’s lived by her beliefs. Last June, after being bitten by a brown recluse spider, she had to work less and change her diet to deal with symptoms including nausea and peeling skin. But she kept working as many hours as she could instead of applying for grocery aid, she said. 

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On average, more than 590,000 South Carolinians receive SNAP benefits each month. Almost half of them are under 18 years old, and nearly a quarter are over 50, according to the state Department of Social Services.

Non-disabled adults under 65 who don’t have children can’t receive SNAP benefits for more than three months over a three-year period unless they are working or complying with a work program for 20 hours a week. DuBose said she wants to change the state’s eligibility requirements so that more low-income adults need to be working to qualify for benefits, even if they have young children. 

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump in July already furthered that goal, limiting the parents who got an exception to SNAP’s work requirement.

Adults with dependents under 18 could previously receive benefits for longer than three months without fulfilling the work requirement. Now, an adult’s dependents need to be younger than 14, or the adult must be working or enrolled in a work program after three months of getting benefits.

DuBose said she’s used to people assuming that because she’s a Black woman, she votes for Democrats. But she believes the Democratic Party “is not really, in my sight, healthy for colored people,” in part because of its support of social service programs. 

Fundraising and cash available

She has yet to file any campaign disclosures with the state Ethics Commission.

With one exception, the other gubernatorial candidates have posted their fundraising reports for the quarter ending March 31.

They show Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette raising the most so far this election cycle, at nearly $3.5 million. That includes collecting nearly $3.1 million in donations and almost $80,000 in non-cash contributions, plus loaning herself $300,000. But she’s also spent the most of anyone in the field, at $2.5 million since she entered the race last July. As of March, she had $931,000 available.

The rest of the GOP field:

• U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman has raised $3.1 million, which includes a $1.5 million loan to himself. He had almost $1.6 million available March 31.
• Attorney General Alan Wilson has collected about $2.9 million total and had $1.8 million cash on hand March 31.
• U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace has collected $2.2 million and had just under $800,000 available at quarter’s end.
• Isle of Palms businessman Rom Reddy, who’s pledged not to take any donations, put $2 million of his own money into the race when he launched last month. He had about $580,000 of that left when the quarter ended.
• As of Monday, state Sen. Josh Kimbrell of Spartanburg County hadn’t filed his first quarterly report of 2026. His last filing shows he had collected $41,000 in donations as of Dec. 31, when he had less than $13,000 in his campaign account.

As for the three Democrats in that party’s June 9 primary, all have filed first-quarterly reports for 2026. They show:

• Charleston attorney Mullins McLeod, who in August became the first Democrat to announce a bid, has raised $2.5 million total, with 95% of that his own money. He had more than $1.2 million available March 31.
• Upstate businessman Billy Webster had more than $274,000 available after spending little of what he’d collected since joining the race less than a month ago.
• State Rep. Jermaine Johnson has raised $376,000 in donations since October along with $7,000 in non-cash contributions. He had less than $100,000 available.

Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette