President Joe Biden again credited U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn for his win in 2020 while giving the keynote address at the South Carolina Democratic Party's "First-in-the-Nation Celebration" dinner Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, at the State Fairgrounds in Columbia, S.C. (File photo by Mary Ann Chastain/Special to The SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Former President Joe Biden will be stopping in Columbia later this month for a fundraiser to mark the sixth anniversary of the South Carolina victory that propelled him to the White House.
Tickets to the South Carolina Democratic Party’s event on Feb. 27 cost $125 each, though the website gives an option of paying more. The reception is two days shy of the actual anniversary.
It’s “about honoring President Biden while also doing the very practical work of preparing for what’s next,” according to the party’s email announcement Tuesday, signed by state Democratic Party Chairwoman Christale Spain.
Profits will support candidate recruitment, infrastructure, and voter engagement work, according to the release.
The state party’s executive director, Jay Parmley, told the SC Daily Gazette that Biden will be speaking, and he doubts it will be brief. U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn is also scheduled to attend.
The party’s invite specifies that to pay the ticket price, you have to be a U.S. citizen or green card holder, not a federal contractor, and at least 18 years old. Federal law prohibits campaign donations from a foreign national made in connection with any federal, state, or local election, Parmley explained.
Biden ends his term by again thanking SC for putting him in the White House
Biden spent the last day of his term in office in South Carolina. On Jan. 19, 2025, he spoke at the International African American Museum in downtown Charleston and the Royal Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston.
In his address to one of South Carolina’s largest Black churches, he thanked the state’s Democratic voters for paving the way for him to win the 2020 election.
“I could not be standing here, I would not be standing here and that’s not hyperbole, at this pulpit were it not for Jim Clyburn,” he said.
South Carolina never backed Biden in the general election.
But Clyburn’s endorsement of him ahead of the state’s first-in-the-South Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 29, 2020, revived his campaign following fourth- and fifth-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire.
South Carolina’s presidential primary was moved to first-in-the-nation status in 2024 largely as a thank you. The nominating calendar is expected to change again for 2028.
The former president has described Clyburn, South Carolina’s only Democrat on Capitol Hill, as his best friend.
In May 2024, Biden awarded Clyburn the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
