The view of the state House chamber from the gallery on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024. (File photo by Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Specia to the SC Daily Gazette)
Three Republican candidates sailed to victory in special elections two days before Christmas, winning two seats in the South Carolina state House and one in the Senate.
All three were ruby red districts. The elections to fill three seats vacated by resignations change nothing in the GOP’s supermajority leads in both chambers.
In the only contested race, Midlands pastor John Lastinger won 62% of the vote; he will now represent the House district formerly represented by RJ May, a founding member of the chamber’s hardline Freedom Caucus.
May resigned in August, a month before pleading guilty to five counts of distributing videos of children being sexually abused.
May’s sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 14. He faces up to 20 years in prison on each of five counts.
Lastinger will fill the remainder of May’s unexpired term representing the area of Lexington County between Cayce, Red Bank and Gaston.
Democrat J. Chuck Hightower took 38% of the 2,683 total votes cast, according to unofficial results from the South Carolina Election Commission.
Lastinger could not be reached for comment.
May won re-election last November by 92% without any opponent on the ballot.
The two other special elections Tuesday also had no Democrat on the ballot, but their write-in candidates had a much better showing.
Firebrand Republican Lee Bright will return to a Senate district that spans parts of Greenville and Spartanburg counties. He held the seat for two previous terms before losing a primary runoff in 2016.
He won with 67% percent of 5,249 votes; 33% of voters wrote in another name, according to unofficial results. They don’t show a breakdown of who received write-in votes for someone other than Bright, though the state Democratic Party encouraged voters to write-in Steve Evered’s name.
Dianne Mitchell, a former teacher with the backing of the Freedom Caucus, won a Greenville County seat with 70% percent of 2,124 votes, so 30% wrote in someone else’s name. Dexter Reaves had launched a write-in campaign on social media.
As expected, the voter turnout for all three was low. In the Lexington County race, 11% of registered voters participated.
Lastinger and Mitchell will face re-election next year.
State senators are elected to four-year terms, so the seat Bright won will be on the ballot again in 2028.
One more special election, for a state House district representing Dorchester County, will pit two Air Force veterans against each other: Republican Greg Ford and Democrat Sonja Ogletree-Satani. Early voting started Monday with election day scheduled for Jan. 6, 2026.
A week after that race, the 2026 session is set to open with all 170 Statehouse seats filled.
