Show Rewind 8-10-26

Hey, there are people winning real cash while they're sitting in traffic right now. Lucky Hands. LuckyHands.com. No trip to a casino, just gains, daily rewards, popular fish tables, and a chance to redeem real cash prizes. Get a 300% welcome offer bonus when you use code Clover. No purchase necessary. 18 plus void where prohibited. Full terms apply. See what everyone's talking about. Play today at lucky hands.com. Your luck is in your hands. Your news, traffic, weather, and information stations. This is South Carolina's morning news on 103.5 FM, 560 a.m. WVOC and 943 WSC. That is perfect music, Christopher Thompson, you have picked right there. That is fantastic for this morning because I feel like I feel like I'm under attack now. What in the flip has happened over this weekend? My gosh. So welcome to South Carolina's morning news where we have one more day of campaigning. And then thank God this will be over for the most part. Of course everybody's expecting a runoff. But, you know, I'm taking incoming fire now. You are. From like six different campaigns. They're all attacking me. Why? I don't know. Because I don't support them. So here's what's been going on. So I have been saying nice things about all of the candidates and then all of the other candidates people attack me for not calling them out. for whatever they want me to call them out for. So over the weekend, I posted a little video, just a little fun little video. I said, look, I'm not going to talk about the other six because when you look at the polling, by the way, speaking of the polling, we're going to talk to a guy who's got the most recent poll out. I think we're doing that at 802. So we'll talk in-depth polling at 802. But, you know, according to not just that poll, but all the polls, there's really four people who have a legitimate shot of making the runoff. So I'm not going to talk about the other six. So I said, of the four, Look, you want something bad? I'll give you something negative on each one of them. And I went through them, Darlene Graham, Ralph Norman, Russell Fry, and Mark Sanford. Those are the four who have a legitimate shot. It appears, according to all the polling, of making the final two. And I gave something negative on each one of them. And then, of course, the other six were ticked off that I didn't consider them, legit. And then inside the four, they're like, why are you taking shots at us? And I'm... Okay, we'll chill on that then. So then I'm just trying to be entertaining for God's sake and give the people what they wanted. They say, I'm too positive. I'm a positive person. Again, and I've said it numerous times that whom ever wins, we, we, South Carolina, will have competent representation in the Senate. Doesn't matter which one of these people wins. Again, I'm just talking about the four. I don't want to go too deep into the six because it gets a little iffy and spotty down there, and we don't even know about certain candidates. But of the four, I feel really confident that any one of them will represent us competently. However...

They all have flaws, as do I, as does every human being on earth. They're not a saint. They're not some holy, we're not talking about holy people. These are just all flawed human beings who want to be the senator, and they all have issues, and there's problems with each and every one of them. I focused on that for a moment. I think the whole video is less than a minute 15. The pushback on that was strong, and then last night, I... I don't follow social media as closely as a lot of you. Christopher, I'm telling you this was legit. This was all of the thought that went into it. I'm scrolling. I get into the bedroom. It's like 6.30. I'm going to start winding down. But, again, I shouldn't do it. I scrolled for a moment. Uh-oh. I scrolled for a moment. And one of the first posts I see is from local reporter Nick Reynolds. Let me go. Let me see if I can find that. Nick is a great reporter, I feel like. For the Post and Courier. And he posts up something like. something about she did her first press conference. Okay, here we go. So Darling Graham does her first ever statewide press conference. It was a teleconference. The Q&A. Now, this is the part that I retweeted. The Q&A is over. The total call was 16 minutes. Five of those minutes consisted her giving an update on her work in D.C. And then six questions were allowed to be asked. One from print. The other five from television. A number of the topics had already been addressed by her in alternate forums. Now, that caught my attention, and all I did was I retweeted that, and I said something about, I'm not saying that the senator is hiding. But if she wanted to hide, it would look something like this. That's all I said. I couldn't agree more. Put my phone down. Uh-oh. Watch the television show with my wife. By the time I picked up the phone. I have eight text messages from campaign officials, not just hers, but others. I've got emails. I've got Twitter response. Everybody's like at me in. Now you're at me in because I said something that the whole world would think. That if you're trying to hide, this is how you would hide. You would have these filibuster press conferences and then say something along the lines of, I'm very busy. First off, I'm grieving. And then secondly, I've got a lot of work to do in D.C. and blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm not saying that that's not legit. I'm saying that Lindsey Graham would have made time. I'm saying that Donald Trump makes time for the reporters. I'm saying that, you know, we saw a great example last week. of Ted Cruz walking through the hallways of Congress, and Darlene Graham was five steps in front of them. She was asked about her support of ending the filibuster. I don't even think she said it. I think one of the staff said, we can't talk right now. We got to keep moving. The next person, Ted Cruz, what is your thought about the filibuster? The guy goes on for like 20 minutes. He's like 15 or 20 minutes talking to the reporters. And I'm not saying he's great or wrong or whatever he did, but I'm just saying he has positions that are well thought out over a lifetime and has supported them and maybe modified them. You know, I'm not saying that people don't change their opinions. But this is, that's all he does is think policy and has thought policy for at least 20, 30 years.

Darling Graham has not thought policy. And so I'm not surprised that you're trying to hide her, but don't act as if you're not trying to hide her. Exactly. And yeah, she's a blank slate. We knew Lindsey Graham. We know Donald Trump. We know Ted Cruz. We know basically nothing. Still, leading into the election tomorrow about Darling Graham. And the only thing we do know is what her very carefully controlled campaign has put out there and what she said on the debate stage last Monday night. I have a world of respect, by the way, for the entire Graham team. They're all amazing people. They really are the best, well, not the best, but they're very good at what they do. What they're trying to pull off, I don't want to say it's a miracle because she's running with the name, Lindsey Graham. But to pull this off, if her name was Kelly Nash or Christopher Thompson. It'd be weird because, well, if it was Christopher Thompson because she's a female. But Kelly Nash, you could get away with that. If you took the name Kelly Nash and just changed the circumstance, you know, just said this is Darlene Graham, not related to Lindsey Graham, just wants to be a U.S. Senator. The chances of her winning with the background that she has right now is almost zilch. They have her right now as the frontrunner. So what they have done is fantastic work as far as just, if you step back and look at politics, what they're doing is top notch. It's amazing what they're able to do because she is not a good candidate. She does not have a good background. She does not answer questions well. At minimum, we can all agree. She struggled in the debates. A lot of looking at the notes, a lot of, you know. Well, my brother died and I'm trying to do the best. And the president asked me to run. Okay, that doesn't mean anything to anybody other than you're a sympathetic figure and deserve sympathy. And the whole Graham family deserves that. But, you know, Lindsey Graham's cousins aren't running. Lindsey Graham's best friends aren't running. This is all about Lindsey Graham. And that is a shock to the governor. I'm told by many people, the governor had no idea that you would try to run for this. This is a out-of-left-field position. This is a sudden modification. And again, what you've done as the team is fantastic. The fact that you're upset that I just pointed out what Nick Reynolds pointed out, I don't know if his inbox got filled up like mine did. But he also had one, I guess, late last night because I didn't, I wasn't, obviously I was not up after like 830 or whatever. But he had one that I saw. where, what is it? He said Politico reporting today, what was, that was supposed to be meat. I thought this was a pancake or a poorly rendered egg, Politico's front page. Security is strength. The pact that supported Lindsey Graham is on TV with an ad that shows an AI depiction of Russell Fry's likeness, transposed into a slice of meat and a frying pan dumped out by Trump with the words, rejected, splashed across the street. Now, that's funny. I see he's taking some fire on that. He's just pointing out what the obvious is. That's a poorly produced ad by security of strength. Poorly produced. And you had AI at your benefit, security of strength. You should have done a better job. Should have made Russell Fry look like a piece of meat. Instead, he looks like a, he does look like a pancake. A pancake. Come on.

Goodness gracious. I can't wait for this thing to be over. All right. Well, we still got a little time, starting with voting tomorrow. But then, as we've said, probably a runoff too, which means another week of campaigning. All right. We've got, I've got some, I think, shocking data about this election. I put that on social media yesterday. I didn't get anywhere near the heat that I took over this other stuff. So we'll talk about this inside. What is going on? Is Charleston not going to vote? What happened, Charleston? Charleston has fallen off a cliff. I'm looking at you, Charleston. Where are you? You didn't go to the polls. You didn't show up at all. We'll talk about that and maybe some counties that. They're showing up in record numbers. What is the real reason for that? We'll talk about that and more next on South Carolina's morning news. From the midlands to the low country. This is South Carolina's morning news. All right. A guy to follow on social media or on X, I should say. If you love like you're into politics. Political geek stuff, the numbers, a guy named at Steve W. Michael. Steve runs a company called Victory Enterprises, political consultant, and he just made some comments yesterday on social media. Interesting data comparing the South Carolina governor runoff to the U.S. Senate special runoff with high turnout counties and some low turnout counties. For example. We're talking about early voting. Yes. The lowest county by far right now is Charleston County, 19%. Nobody showed up. And you factor in, first day of school is tomorrow. They're expecting low voter turnout in Charleston County, which is obviously horrible news I would think for Mark Sanford because that's... That's where he, that's his wheelhouse. But it's surprising that Charleston County is taking such a disinterest in this race. I would think. Now, you might be wondering, what about you see in his data? York County is at 107%. Wow. What does that mean? To me, I'll tell you what it means, Christopher, means Democrats are coming out to play. You think so? Democrats are coming out to play. Democrats, I have heard from numerous Democrats, and I'm not going to say the name, but I think you all can interpret it. They have somebody that they think Annie Andrews can beat. And they want that somebody to win. And so they're going to vote in this primary, if possible, and they're going to vote in the next one, the special final runoff election, that there are people who believe that now there's also word on, well, We'll talk to somebody coming up at 8 o'clock who's going to show some interesting data regarding the ad spending as well by the campaigns. And it becomes, when you look at the ad spending and how each campaign and or their PACs are spending their money, it becomes rather obvious who wants to face whom. And that may be a good thing or a bad thing. We've had people try to pick their candidates before. A lot of people wanted Joe Biden instead of. uh, Hillary Clinton or whatever. They got, they got their wish and then what happened?

We got Joe Biden. So, I mean, you know, you got to be careful what you ask for. But to me, Charleston is the most disappointing. It's just 19% voting so far. And you, yeah, with school starting tomorrow in Greenville, in Charleston, in Lexington, Richland, 5, those three districts, I mean, you're going to have to be careful. You're going to have to check and see where exactly you're voting because a lot of polling places will be different. than they were, you know, this summer during the primaries for governor and for all the other races we voted for. And, and that may deter some voters. Oh, I'm not driving over there. I thought I was going to this school. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's. It's a mess. It is a mess. But I mean, again, this is an unprecedented thing for us, you know, to have a sitting senator who was well on his way to re-election to unfortunately pass right in the middle of this. This is shocking. And so we're doing the best that we can. But I certainly would have expected Charleston County to show up more. Well, we'll see what happens. I mean, and we don't have the numbers for Friday yet. We just have the numbers for Wednesday and Thursday early voting. So who knows? Maybe Charleston came out Friday. Maybe so. But, I mean, it's funny that they're even considering, like, let's see, trouble underperforming markets include like us in Richland at 50%. Also, Newberry, Marion, Lee, Georgetown, Fairfield, Darlington, Colleton, Marlboro, and Cherokee are at 80%. And then, you know, I guess in Marlboro County, they're actually, they're also at over 100% as well right now. So this, and again, this is compared to what happened in the runoff election for governor. So we got a long ways to go to get, you know, voter participation rates up. tomorrow. So we'll keep an eye on that. We're encouraging you, listeners of 94-3WSC, although I assume most of you people are actively participating. It's the rest of your friends and neighbors that aren't. Go out and get some people riled up and get them into the process. 622 on South Carolina's morning news. This is South Carolina's morning news on 103FM and 560 a.m., WVOC, Columbia, and 943 WSC, Charleston. All right. So we're talking about the power of a name. We've been mentioning that this morning. And I don't know that you're going to get a better example than what happened in the Michigan 8th Congressional District last week. If you hadn't heard, there was a guy who went by the name Alamo. That's how it sounds to people. Alamo. Now, Alamo, if you say it that way, is going up against Amir Hassan.

If you have a name, maybe use that name. No, although that would get heavily scrutinized if you did change your name going into a political season. Did anybody do that? I don't know. Just raising questions. Anyway, 632 on South Carolina's Morning News. Live from the state capital, this is South Carolina's morning news. Here we go, 637, and John Fetterman continues to challenge the far left of his own party. This is a snippet of an interview given over the weekend. He's talking again about Abdul El-Sayed. But less than 50% of Michigan Democrats picked him. So a majority of Democrats in Michigan picked someone else. So, and he ran a very aggressive, arrogant kind of campaign. And I just, I want to dare him right now. I dare you to continue to campaign with people like Hasan Piker because he now will quickly find out. It's easy to campaign in the echo chamber as a Democrat. That's a bold challenge. I wonder what Hasan Piker's response will be, Christopher. Have you watched Hasan Piker at all? I know who he is. I've not watched much of his Internet personality, far left. You saw Debbie Dingell's comments on Hassan? Yes. She finds him hot. Yeah. That is odd, by the way. But... Yeah, Hasan Piker definitely gets eyeballs and gets people motivated and gets the far. He says all the things that the far left loves, including, certainly I would put near the top, his love of Chairman Mao. He's actually now starting to dress more and more like Chairman Mao, and he's talking about what great, how did he say, I'm trying to remember how he phrased it, but it was something about, I can't imagine a country. more in line with how I think a country should be than China. And even his own mother is like, I really wish my son didn't have a love for China like this. Yeah. He also said we deserved 9-11. He said our foreign policy, we deserved 9-11. We deserved what we got from those al-Qaeda terrorists. Do you think that Abdul El-Sayed would agree with that position? I would be running far away from that if I were him, but apparently he's buddies, enough buddies with Hassan to have campaigned with him already. And again, this shows where the Democrat Party is, that there's one, it's like. I'm going to start calling John Fetterman John the Baptist. He's a lone voice out in the wild crying. We're off course.

We have lost our way, Democrats, and they have lost their way. And it's a scary time for the Democrats, and it's a scary time for America. So more power to John Fetterman, aka John the Baptist, as he tries to fix his own party before they destroy America. It's 640 on South Carolina's Morning News. This is South Carolina's morning news. Bernie Sanders asked yesterday on Meet the Press about his lack of endorsement for the DSA candidate in Wisconsin, Francesca Hong, who perfectly aligns with this platform. Why wasn't he endorsing her? He basically reiterated what he said on Pod Save America earlier last week. Do you endorse, sir? I don't think so. I've met Francesca a couple of years ago. I was in Wisconsin. It seems very, very nice. But again, this is a race I just am not that familiar with. We have not gotten involved in many governors' races. I think we did one in Maine with Troy Jackson. Okay, so he's done one governor's race, but he doesn't particularly care about governor's races, according to Bernie Sanders. I will float the idea. Love to hear from some Democrats on this. The reason that Bernie Sanders is not endorsing Francesca Hong, even though she aligns perfectly with him. is because by her own admission she is not a minority she is asian and asians as she said are white adjacent that's her term not mine she says that whites and asians don't experience prejudice which actually pokes a huge hole in this whole minority problem that they have, that in America, only whites can thrive. And then the Asians broke through. So then now we don't have, so we can only endorse people of color and Bernie Sanders, other than Bernie Sanders. I'm trying to think of the white Democrat socialists. I can't think of any right off the top of my head. I can't either. They're all people of color. And although she is a person of color, she's not the right color. And so that's the only reason I have that this person who's a Democrat socialist cannot get Bernie Sanders endorsement for governor. You're listening to South Carolina's morning news. All righty, 653. Get after it. It's Monday. Hopefully you've got a fresh week of opportunities, lots of opportunities for you to do great things. Coming up on this broadcast, we'll be doing great things. Christopher Thompson and I at the helm. As we talk to some important people like you on the talkback feature, we also will be looking at some of the folks who are making news in our state, including one of the top pollsters he'll be checking in to give us the latest data, which some of which is surprising, not just who's polling well, but where is the money being spent and by whom and for what reasons? It's not always that obvious. We'll talk about those things and more.

Also, I want to get into this story that the Post and Courier has. Republican voters in South Carolina want their next senator to be in the mold of Lindsey Graham, or do they? And it's so interesting. My argument has always been that they do, that Lindsey Graham is and will always remain a, be a popular figure, although a divisive figure. About 56% of Republicans vote for him every single time. Every single time. And that leads to obviously Republican wins. So I think that they for the most, again, millions of South Carolinians would have liked Lindsey Graham to be more one way or the other. But what does this story tell us? It has a shocking conclusion, Christopher. Oh, I can't wait. Yeah, I know, right? get into that and more on South Carolina's morning news. Your news, traffic, weather, and information stations. This is South Carolina's morning news on 103.5 FM, 560 a.m. WVOC and 943 WSC. WS.C. All right, the Post and Courier, a reporter named Jason Ryan, has put out a story. I guess this was in Sunday's paper. Republican voters in South Carolina want their next senator to be in the mold of Lindsey Graham. Or do they? And then he breaks down, he talks to a bunch of different Republicans and what they want and who, what are they pacing it on. Some of them are looking at electability, who's the most likely to win. In a general election, some are looking at who's going to be the strongest for the military. Some are looking at who's going to be the most fiscally conservative. They all have a bunch of different things, obviously, as you would expect. To me, the ending of the story is the very interesting part where, let me scroll to the very bottom of it. It's another Charleston County Republican. I guess I can say her name. It's at the paper. Another Charleston County Republican, Carolyn Fraser of Mount Pleasant, is also hopeful for more civil discourse on the horizon, though she is not looking to any candidate in the primary field to deliver such a comedy. So. Instead, she'll be supporting Dr. Annie Andrews, the Charleston doctor and Democrat candidate. She's a Republican, but is not interested in what the Republican Party is peddling. She goes on to say that, you know, South Carolina, the state of smiling faces and beautiful places must engage in more respectful dialogue. So that is an interesting update there, Christopher. We have a Republican who's voting for Dr. Annie Andrews. In the first place, I would question that Republican's, Republican credentials. You would? I would think so. And maybe, you know, Dr. Annie Andrews is from the low country. Maybe that's why this particular voter feels more enamored with Andrews. But I don't think there's, there hasn't been a whole, a lot of hostility in this race. At least not so far, a couple of people have gone head to head, Russell Fry and Darling Graham, Ralph Norman and Mark Lynch. But otherwise, it's been fairly civil.

I will point out, and again, I'm sure I will take in fire for this. Incoming. Here we go. I am just going to report, as a reporter, and you people, I report you decide. Darling Graham tweeted on August 2nd, I strongly support the Second Amendment. I believe gun control is how steady you hold your weapon. That tweet is the only tweet referenced, that's the only candidate referenced by Dr. Annie Andrews, when she retweeted it and said, chat GPT, please write me a tweet to make me seem Republican enough to win my primary. If it is what it is, some people in the Annie Andrews camp have made it rather obvious that they believe that Darling Graham is their best candidate. That's who they want. That's who they're pulling for. And if you don't think that they're coming out to the polls where we have open primary season and you can vote in a primary if you have not already voted in the other team's primary. You're fooling yourself. They are coming. We were just talking last hour about how in certain counties were already over 100% return, meaning more people have voted in this than voted for the governor already. What do you think is happening there? This is the Democrats. You think it's Operation Chaos all over again? I couldn't be any more sure of it. And, you know. I think we said we were going to talk about this, didn't we? So, all right, so we'll take a pause here. We'll put a, what do they say? We'll just put a little pin needle here. And then when we come back, Christopher and I had taken some emails, I think it was last week, from people who agree or and or disagree on the idea of closing the primaries. We do have a lawsuit. South Carolina, you caught yourself a lawsuit, or at least the Republican Party did from the ACLU because you wanted to close your primaries. This would be a great example of why you would want to close your primaries. This is one of the examples. There's other reasons to keep them open, and we'll take a look at all that. But South Carolina is in the heat of a very, I don't want to say vicious. It's a normal primary. Christopher, I think you've done a great job of pointing that out. This has not been ugly. Not really. For the most part, I mean, but it's ugly enough that one person. who identifies in the paper as the Charleston County Republican says that she will be supporting Dr. Annie Andrews because we need more smiling faces. Be kind. That will go a long way, she says. So we're not being kind enough in the Republican Party. What do you think about that? Talkback features wide open on the I-Hurt radio app. Do you need more kindness in the Republican Party? Do you need more fight in the Republican? What are you looking for in the Republican? The next Senate candidate specifically is we get ready to elect one or I'll at least send two into a runoff most likely tomorrow. South Carolina's morning news. From the Midlands to the low country. This is South Carolina's morning news.

All right. I do prefer it if you use the talkback feature to get at Christopher Thompson and myself, but I understand that everybody has the ability to use the app while they're listening. Some people choose to send emails later, and that's what we have here. A couple of them I'll just read regarding the idea of what the Republican Party wants to do in South Carolina, which is closed the primaries, meaning you'd have to be registered to vote in either the Democrat or the Republican primary. I guess you would probably have to declare yourself a libertarian if you wanted to vote in the libertarian primary, and the list goes on and on, the Green Party and so on and so forth. But at least for the Republicans, they're saying in our... primary you'd have to be uh declared a republican if the primaries are closed i would then be required to declare my party affiliation why should i be required to inform the government what my political beliefs are, considering what would be publicly available information in today's political climate, that could be hazardous to one's health and welfare. I will point out that, as we've just discovered here, because of the, of the Republican rule that you must vote in two of the last three primaries, the government already knows. The government already knows how you voted. We have another one similar in nature. This is from Laura. Good morning enjoying today's show. The problem with the closed primary is it leads to declaring a party on your registration and disenfranchising voters who may not vote straight party or who have no candidate in their party for a certain seat. I am one of those voters. I do not align with the Republicans or the Democrats. I am a conservative, but feel that that party has left me. Thanks for keeping us informed. Well, thank you, Laura. I would point out that you're just in this primary, you would be voting for the person that you want to represent in whatever seats that you're talking about. So, for example, If you're saying that there's nobody running for mayor or whatever it is, that is a Republican that you'd like, then you'd sit that part out, I guess, and then you would just come along and vote for whomever the non-Republican was. But this has always been, Kelly, the argument against making people choose a party affiliation is because, like Laura said, there are a lot of independents out there. And we talk about how important independents are. Gosh, you know, we sing their praises during a presidential election year. You've got to get the independence. Got to get the independent vote. Those independents, they don't want to say they're a Democrat or a Republican. And they want to vote.

And they want to have the right to say, okay, I'm voting for this person for mayor. That may be a Democrat. But I'm voting for this person for school board. And that person may be a Republican. It's, I mean, they want their choices. And they don't want to label themselves as one or the other. Life is about tradeoffs. Nobody gets everything that they want, not even in a candidate. You don't get everything that you want. No matter who you voted for. Donald Trump is not living up to everybody's expectations. There are people who regret. We talked about a guy last week. He deported my girlfriend. Jasmine. Yasmin. But he calls her Jasmine. Jasmine was good as gold. Should have married her, bro. Anyway, but let's get back to the more serious issue. Life's about tradeoffs. So you're not going to get everything you want. But to a more, I think that the bigger threat to democracy. is the infiltration of parties that want to hijack the Republican or the Democrat machines. The Democrats and the Republicans should have the right to decide who they allow to run as a Republican or a Democrat. In other words, let's just for funsies, you know, I'll use a name that we all know. So if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez moved to South Carolina and declared herself a Republican, she could run as a Republican right now. And a lot of people would believe that she was a Republican. And she might actually win a Republican primary. And then she would be the candidate. Now, most of us recognize there's no way anybody would vote for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Really? Really? I mean, I saw a guy not that long ago running for Attorney General who said that Joe Biden was the best man he's ever met. That guy. was a lifelong Democrat who realized in a state like South Carolina, you can't win probably as a Democrat for a state office. You can win in your counties, but you're not going to win as statewide office. He suddenly became a Republican. Thankfully, well, I don't want to say thankfully, neither here nor there. He didn't win. He didn't win the primary for the Attorney General's office. Didn't make it to the runoff. So. But there is that possibility. You saw Bernie Sanders hijacked the Democrat Party. This hijacking of the Democrat Party has been going on for years. Bernie Sanders didn't just start it in 2016. I mean, he started this thing years and years ago. It's been decades in the making. If you're going to protect your party, and it's just your party, again, for those people who like Laura here, who... feel like they want to have options, you're going to have options because when you get to the general election, you're probably going to have a Republican, you're going to have probably have a Democrat, you're probably going to have an independent, you're probably going to have some sort of libertarian, you're probably going to have a Green Party candidate. All of these people are more than welcome at a seat at the table. And then you decide amongst them. This is just deciding who the Republican Party and or the Democrats, if they'd like to close their primaries, not in this state they wouldn't, but they did in other states. New York, that's what I was joking about the New York primaries the other day. Where's the ACLU lawsuit against New York when they closed their primaries? That never happened. They only want to sue Republicans because they know the Democrats have at least a pathway to success in South Carolina as long as the primaries stay open.

That's my thoughts. Are you leaning more towards what you want to keep them open, Christopher? I was, but I think we're seeing it, and we had this argument during the redistricting argument. We're seeing the demographics of South Carolina change. As more, more people moved to South Carolina, what was always a safe Republican state where you didn't have to worry about Operation Chaos. I think the numbers are changing a little bit, and the Republicans might need to start guarding their primaries. Well, be interesting if we get some talkbacks on that and or emails. You go ahead. Our emails are apparently in the open. This is South Carolina's morning news. This is South Carolina's morning news on 103FM and 560 AM, WVOC, Columbia, and 943 WST, Charleston. Oh my gosh, there's so much to get to today, Christopher. It's just like an avalanche of news and information pouring over us. And we still have calls to come in. It's today. I think we have Ellen Weaver calling us today. Is that correct? We do. Yeah, she's going in just after 830. We have our superintendent of education. Perhaps I will have to talk to her about this story. I just saw this. Apparently, we're making South Carolina has made the lives of TikTok. You haven't seen that. That's a, it's not just on TikTok. That's on Facebook and Instagram and X and truth social. But it's called Libs of TikTok and they point out. I don't know. Liberals, liberal leaning things. But I won't read it from Libs of TikTok. I'll read it from ABC News 4. Dorchester County, 19 families with children enrolled at Dorchester School District 4 Elementary School have gathered on Friday to share their concerns after learning that a new fourth grade teacher is openly transitioning. A meeting came after one parent invited other families to speak with News 4 about this issue. Well, not every family as a child assigned to that teacher's classroom. Those who spoke with News 4 said that they share concerns about conversations they believe their elementary age children are not ready to have. Christopher, thoughts on elementary school teachers transitioning. It shouldn't be done in a public setting like that. I mean, yeah, of course kids are going to be curious. You know, why is my male teacher suddenly wearing dresses to school? Did they say which way they're going? I'm just guessing. I'm wondering. I'm trying to read through the story that I see a lot of parents expressing their concerns. Now, oh, we've heard thankfully, we've got South Carolina equality has chimed in as well. This is the LGBTQ advocacy organization offers a different perspective. The executive director says parents can still choose how they discuss these topics at home, but argue that a teacher's gender identity. should not determine whether they can remain in the classroom. Parents still get to decide what they talk to their kids about, and they talk to their kids about all sorts of things. But this doesn't change anything about that teacher. Well, it changes something about that teacher. Yes, it does. I got to push back on that one, James. It changes something about that teacher. And even the teacher themselves would admit that there is a change because they want that change. To them, this is important.

So you can't just frivolously fluff that off and say it's no big deal that one day they're wearing a dress and the next day they're wearing a business suit or vice versa. It's a big deal to them that you change their pronoun and you call them Mr. Instead of Mrs. or whatever. He says a name and a pronoun or not a lesson plan. So it shouldn't affect how the teacher does their job. I think this is adding confusion at a time when these kids don't need confusion. It does seem as if the childhoods of 2020, the 2020s, I would say have been the most difficult childhoods I could imagine. If you came, if you were like six years old in 2020, the last six years has been chaos. Not that we were doing so great leading up to it, but the last six years has been chaos. And, you know, I think back to my... childhood, you know, and I was very concerned, I think as most Gen Xers were, we were very concerned about this whole nuclear Holocaust thing. And you would hear about it on the news all the time. It was it was craziness that, you know, at any moment the world could end brought on by a legitimate nuclear holocaust. Like that was a, that was not global warming fear. That was real global warming. in a real hurry. That would go from zero to a billion in about a blink of an eye. And you would be, by the way, my stepfather, rest his soul, he, I don't know if he was trying to comfort me as a child, but I remember being like eight years old and watching one of these newscasts. And we lived in East Hartford, Connecticut, which is the home of Pratt and Whitney. And Pratt and Whitney was no more than... two miles from where my house sat. And so we're sitting there watching the news and they're talking about how Russia or the Soviet Union has more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world six times over. And the U.S. has it to destroy it 10 times over or something like that. And obviously military installations would be the first to be struck and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I was like almost crying. I was so scared. And he said, oh, don't worry about it. You're great. You live right here in East Hartford. This will be one of the first places they hit, right? They'd have to go after Pratt and Whitney. And I said, what? He goes, he literally, I'll never forget it. I mean, this is 50 years later. you'll be turned to bleach in a blink of an eye. And he says, you better hope you're not at your grandparents' house up in Vermont, because that'll probably linger on for a few days or weeks with that nuclear winter moving in before you actually finally starve a slow, miserable death. You want to go in a blink of an eye. I was like, what? But the kids today, they have it much worse than we had it, much worse. And yes, I agree with you, Christopher. You don't need to have a teacher transitioning in front of them. It's not really a butterfly moment. No. Even the butterfly goes into a cocoon for a while and then comes back and go to your cocoon. 731 on South Carolina's morning news. Live from the state capital, this is South Carolina's morning news. All right, so I got an email from a guy named Dan. We were earlier talking about the idea of closing the primaries as opposed to what we have now, the open primaries.

Dan says, if I had known that it was going to lead to a daily litany of 567 emails from everybody from Donald Trump Jr. to unknown House candidate in Wyoming looking for money, I never would have voted in a Republican primary. Declaring my party affiliation may have been the worst thing I've ever done as far as my junk inbox is concerned. Understand that problem, Dan. I will point out that I don't know. I don't know. If that's where it all comes from. My wife, who those of you who know us, know that my wife, you might have noticed, is black. My wife, because she is black, I'm certain of this because she's only ever voted in Republican. uh events she she's a lifelong republican my wife and i had a massive fight in 2015 over my support of Marco Rubio who she said was weak she's now come she thinks marco has stepped up his game but she's like we're not going to have any weak republicans and marco's weak that's why you should vote for donald trump he is strong she wanted a strong president she got one in donald trump um But she gets inundated with Democrat candidates on, like, on text messaging. Will you support so and so? Are you interested in learning more about such and such? So on and so forth. And she's like, you know, you can only, you just keep blocking and blocking and blocking and, you know, whatever. Stop. Stop. But they just have new numbers and new whatever's. And they, so I don't know where they get their information. I don't know. But they certainly. They certainly come at us hard. Now, tomorrow, Christopher, you were talking earlier about it's the first day of school. Yes. Well, most of the districts in South Carolina have already gone back, but there are three, Charleston, Greenville, and Lexington, Richland, 5 that go back tomorrow. And that's going to be a problem for primaries. Yeah, that's got, I mean, a lot of people vote at schools, and so those schools won't be available. And so you need to check to see where you're polling places. Mine's changed. I think a lot of people's has. I voted a church, so I should be good. I'll check it again in the morning just to make sure. But I'm wondering, at least in the Midlands, will there be more people going to the polls tomorrow, or will there be more people going to the state surplus store? because the South Carolina State Surplus Property Office tomorrow. Why did they pick tomorrow? They couldn't wait until Wednesday. They've had this merchandise for months now. They've got the entire whatever leftover there is from the Gamecox under Armored deal. I'll point out, I don't, these quote-unquote deals are not as deeply discounted as I had assumed. It's not like the old days when you used to be able to go to the surplus and get, I mean, a great deal on something. Now they... sell because they're trying to make money back for a state agency, like the university, for example. So as we look at this, if you're thinking of driving in, maybe from Charleston, you know, a lot of people are Gamecock fans in the Low Country as well. You might be thinking of coming in and getting some official underarmored gear that the Gamecocks, I get, I'm assuming a lot of these were never worn. Correct. Although they do say that they have practice jerseys.

There is no game-worn jerseys. There's just practice-worn jerseys. The jerseys are $50, which is not bad, although it's not an official. That's it. And anything I tell you has the Gamecock logo on it, because there's also a less expensive option for certain merch that does not have the Gamecoct logo on it. Why would I even care about it then? But anyway, short-sleeve t-shirts, $20. Long-sleeve t-shirts are $25. Short-sleeve pullover. What is a pullover? Is that just like a sweater? I guess. That's $35. The long sleeve pullover is $45. Still a deal, but not, you know, heavily discounted. Yeah, sweatpants, I guess, are $25, shorts are $20? A hat or a beanie is $10. The face cover. Who wears the face covers? Are we still in COVID? It's $10. No, it's for the cold weather. I know. I'm just kidding. Anyway, so that's the, and I did hear somebody reported, I didn't see it in the story, that Jake Bentley's garment bag is available. It says all garment bags are $40. I guess Jake's, they never took the name off. The tag off, yeah. So if you're interested, do you think more people will be turning out for that or the primaries? I would hope there would be more people voting tomorrow. And if you need some incentive. I think Jim Jordan Kay mentioned in this article in the state newspaper, they have boxes of this stuff. They are not going to sell out tomorrow. No. And as a matter of fact, I think he mentioned in here, they didn't even have any of the women's basketball stuff yet, which I imagine would be very popular. Sure. I mean, it's. One of the top, what, three programs in the country consistently for 10 years now. So there's probably a lot of Lady G fans, although I'm told I'm not supposed to say the Lady G's. That's how we grew up calling them the Lady G's. So it's hard. So there's still the Redskins to me. They're the Lady G's to me. If you want their gear, that's not coming until later. is what this story says. This is mainly football stuff. Mainly football. And they point out that, like, Scout 16 is not probably Lenora Sellers or Jake Bentley's number 16. It's somebody who was on the scout team, just happened to be wearing number 16. So, anyway, if you want some of that gear, not as cheap as I thought. But I fear more people will be there tomorrow first come, first served, than we'll be turning out for the polls. We'll have all those numbers for you. I guess what? By Thursday or Friday, we'll be able to crunch the numbers on that. All right. Thanks for getting your day started with South Carolina's morning news. This is South Carolina's morning news. All right, so Christopher, you brought it up off the air, the idea that we had two now former NBA players announced over the weekend that they are declaring themselves eligible for the WNBA draft because they meet the criteria required, which is to declare I find myself to be a transgendered person.

Well, here's what's confusing for the WNBA. They've got themselves in a big trick bag because the WNBA's collective bargain agreement says only women can play the sport. The problem is now they've blurred the lines by not embracing what a woman is. And by having some of their coaches, like you pointed out, Minnesota's Cheryl Reeve, you know, coming out wearing t-shirt, saying, you know, celebrating the transgenders. now they're suddenly faced with the fact that, okay, here are two guys that consider themselves transgender's open up the draft. So it was the first one, I think, was Ennis Freedom. Is that his name? Yeah, although Royce White says he was thinking about it first. So Royce White also came out shortly thereafter. Yes. And he's actually running against Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota as well. He's got his hands full. He's got his hands full. I don't know how big Royce White is. I think Ennis Freedom is like 610, 250. And Royce is 6'8 8. And he was said to have one of the largest handwits of anybody at the scouting combine where he took part in. And his freedom launch on this was. That was very well coordinated. Brilliant. Yeah, the way he set that up and he's like, I'm not asking for any special treatment. I just want what you've already promised, inclusion. And the WNBA commissioner came out and said something along the lines of, well, we have to have continued important conversations that are nuanced. Is it a male or is it not? They are in a trickback, Christopher. It'll be interesting to watch this play out on South Carolina's morning news. You're listening to South Carolina's morning news. And the South Carolina bathroom law goes into effect for the colleges today. So if you are a college student and need to use the restroom, you should go to the restroom. that aligns with the six, you were assigned at birth. I never felt like I was assigned male. But anyway, if you don't feel comfortable doing that, all the colleges must provide multiple single-use facilities as well. I know this is confusing, apparently, for some, but you cannot go into a bathroom if you don't have the parts of the people that are in that bathroom. Shouldn't be confusing, but it's become confusing in the last few years. I'm reading the state newspaper. How are we going to enforce our new law? This does not give me much reassurance at all. Quote, We're not physically inspecting. We're not investigating. The commission's executive director, Jeffrey Board, says, we will contact the campuses and ask, are you in compliance with the act? If they send us a letter back saying, yes, we are in compliance all as well. Okay.

want that job. Head of compliance. I just have to email or send out a letter. My gosh. Talk about checks and balances. Exactly. All right. We'll be back. We're going to have, by the way, a very fascinating interview I'm expecting coming up just after the top of the hour about the polls leading into this primary. That's next on South Carolina's morning news. Your news, traffic, weather, and information stations. This is South Carolina's morning news on 103.5 FM, 560 a.m. WV.O.C. 94-3 WSC. Good morning, low country. Good morning, Midlands. Thanks for getting your day started with South Carolina's morning news. And we're all talking about the polls being open tomorrow. But more importantly, a lot of people talking about what actually is happening at the polls when we see them in the news and all other places. On the phone, one of the main men who run these polls. Rick Quinn, good morning. How are you, sir? Good morning. How are you? First off, thank you for sharing some time with us and your insights. I was fascinated to read the data that you shared with me over the weekend. The depth that you guys go with these polls is incredible. And, you know, there's a lot to digest here. Is there one big takeaway for you when you read all these numbers that you have? Well, I think if you... Look at the poll in conjunction with the early voting numbers that are coming in. It is pretty clear this is going to be a very low turnout special election primary for the Senate seat. And that would tend to benefit Ralph Norman. He tends to have better support among what people in my business call high propensity voters that vote in Republican primaries consistently. But Norman and Graham have an advantage, but Mark Sanford and Russell Fry are close enough that if the turnout gets wonky. Anything could happen. And that's really, you know, polling is, you know, a lot of people will say polling, you can't rely on it. It's a very, it's a scientific principle, right? It is reliable. What is not necessarily reliable is predicting turnout at times, particularly in an election like this, which is just off calendar, school starting, people really are just starting to engage in the fact that there's even an open seat election going on. So those things kind of imply that Ralph and Darwin have an advantage. We're talking with Rick Quinn, Resonance Media Services, 600 likely Republican primary voters. And you even broke it down in there like... who is like sure that they're voting as opposed to, I'm very likely to vote. And then you didn't talk to the other people. But you had 600 people. How hard is it for you guys to get 600 people on the phone? I noticed overwhelmingly it was cell phones like 450 or so of the 600. Right. How hard is it, though, to just get people who you know are Republican voters?

Well, it's expensive. There's no question about it. You know, we have to maintain voter lists. So we, in our sampling, we only deal with people who have a past history of voting in primaries or they registered since the last primaries. So we allow for newly registered voters who maybe haven't had an opportunity to vote in Republican primaries to participate. It's very difficult. Over the last 15 years, it's just gotten really hard to get people to respond. And of course, it's harder for. People that have our methodology, you know, a lot of the newer pollsters are using different ways to collect data. You know, sometimes you can get a text. They call that text-to-web where, you know, they'll try to get samples and people to respond on their phone. And some people use panels where they pay respondents to come. I've just found that those aren't as reliable as live calls, and meaning that there's a live person that's calling a voter. and talking through the script with that voter. And that makes it even more difficult because it's hard to get somebody to complete the survey. And, you know, so if you want to have a reliable poll and, you know, it really is, it's expensive and it's timely. It takes a lot of time. Rick Quinn's on the phone with us, and he just surveyed 600 likely Republican primary voters. And this was, I think, completed on Thursday, if I'm not mistaken. It's being shared everywhere your findings because they are fascinating. And you talk about a plus or minus of four percentage points. So Darlene Graham has a 3.9 point lead. So that's within the margin of error. So at this point, we're not exactly sure if it's Ralph Norman or Darlene Graham in the lead. But they're both pretty clearly one, two. And there is a little bit of separation between them and Russell Fry and Mark Sanford at this point. Right. And that's where the margin of error is, is their lead is larger than the margin of error. But this is a dynamic election. And one of the things that's going on is how difficult it is to advertise now. And right now, Ralph Norman is stiff and spending. So in other words, he's not spending as much as Sanford, Fry, and Graham. So the question becomes, When we finish the poll on Thursday, does his disadvantage in advertising because it allowed the other candidates to overcome him his superior name identification because of the government's race? And my guess is no. I think Ralph is probably in runoff. But it is really kind of difficult now. Advertising becomes so difficult. Ten years ago, 92% of the voters would either have their TV signal through a satellite or through cable. Now there's a streaming. You've got live TV where people actually had antennas and satellite is so many different sources. And people can fast forward through commercials now a lot of times too. They can even pay not to have commercials on their service.

So that makes it more difficult in a compressed election like this for candidates like Fry in Sanford to overcome the name identification that's been given to Ralph Norman and Darlene through her brother's death. I was a little bit surprised to see how much money was in the Graham campaign through the PACs and otherwise. I mean, that's a lot of money that they were able to put together there. No question that Darling, you know, Lindsay's was so popular in particular with a lot of the national party fundraisers, that that's helped her. And there's no question that she's, she's number one in spending. She's spending more than anyone in Sanford and Friday are very close behind. Norman has made a tactical decision not to spend as much money in this first run. for the center race as he did in the governance race. And that may cost him. We'll see. But I think not. So it seems like he's banking on the fact that he's going to make the runoff and then he's going to spend heavy there. Right. And of course, you know, if I were advising his race, you know, the problem with what I mentioned earlier with this diffuse way that people watch and consume news and other and entertainment. frequency is necessary. You have to have repetition, and more so than ever before. You know, it used to be that you could spend four or five hundred thousand dollars a week on television through just the kind of old cable satellite systems. Now you need to really, it's more costly and you have to keep running the ads so people will see it. It's just, it's very difficult to catch a voter's eye these days. I think it's a tactical mistake for him not to spend money now and in the runoff. But we'll see what his advisors tell him to do. We're talking with Rick Quinn. We've got to wrap it up. But will you be doing a poll next week, you know, leading into the runoff election? We will. We usually, I like to give a day or so for the voters to kind of settle down after the two choices. There are going to be two choices for this runoff made by the voters. And we'll give a day or so, and then we'll do another poll, yes. Well, I hope you'll come back and talk about that poll. Sure, we'll love to. I think it's good for voters to hear not only kind of how the impact of the advertising is, but also get them familiar with the process. Well, it's some great stuff that you've put out, and we certainly appreciate you sharing it with us. I know you said it's expensive. We didn't pay anything for it. We just appreciate it. Well, thank goodness I have clients to help help with that. Absolutely. Rick Quinn, appreciate you joining South Carolina's morning news. We'll have him back soon, and we'll take a break. And by the way, I see a Ralph Norman commercial standing by. From the Midlands to the Low Country. This is South Carolina's Morning News. Got an email from Kevin who says, good morning, guys, like your show, listen every morning. But please stop being so anti-gram. I'm going to vote for Ralph Norman, but she is my second choice. I live in Mount Pleasant, definitely voting Tuesday. Remember what Reagan said about bashing fellow Republicans. She might be the nominee. Thanks. Have a great day, Kevin. I don't feel like I'm being anti-gram, but perhaps that is what's being perceived because I'm not.

like full-throated endorsement of her, but I'm also not full-throat endorsement of anybody. Well, we've questioned Kelly her strategy when it comes to addressing the media and, you know, making herself known. And we just had on Rick Quinn, who brings up a very valid point. Inside his resonance media strategies, he breaks down in that poll that was done on Thursday, what they have spent. So this is not even, this is not like a question. This is not what are the 600 likely Republican voters doing. This is where are they spending their money? If you want, if you're a Ralph Norman supporter, you might be concerned right now that. The Graham campaign has spent $1.257 million. Russell Fry, $1.123 million. Mark Sanford, $770,000, way down. Ralph Norman at $238,000. So he's been outspent by a million dollars by Darling Graham right now. He's counting on the fact that his participation in the governor's race, name recognition, et cetera, will carry the day through this race and keeping his powder dry for the runoff. But boy, as Rick pointed out, that could be a dangerous strategy. I'm also questioning where they're spending the money. So. Right now, we're at 35% was spent in Greenville. In Charleston, it's been 20% of the money so far has been spent there. So. We were talking about earlier. Charleston is the lowest turnout county right now in South Carolina for this. Only 19% of people who voted in the runoff for the governor's race has turned out so far. Now, it could change, maybe that 20%, but that is an outperformance of the share of the electorate by 4%. So you're overspending in Charleston, you're underspending in Columbia. I mean, not by much, but one and a half percent less than the electorate. It's just an interesting strategy to see how these campaigns are spending their money right now. And again, they're going so hard in the upstate right now. That's like you and I and the people in Charleston, we're not experiencing anything like what they're experiencing in Greenville, Spartanburg, all of that is just getting inundated, hammered with direct mail pieces, hammered with billboards and TV and radio ads. We talk about battleground states all the time during the presidential election. that's our battleground right there here in South Carolina, apparently according to the candidates. That's exactly right, Christopher. Good point. All right. We'll take a break. We'll be back with more. It's South Carolina's morning news. This is South Carolina's morning news on 103.5 FM and 560 a.m., WVOC, Columbia, and 943 WS.C. Charleston. Even though I'm in my 50s, I've never been politically polled or asked.

my opinion in a poll environment. And I always wondered how people got selected to be in a poll. Okay. Well, there you go. You know what? Thank you first off for the talkback on the IHeart Radio app. We will take your information and I will sell it at a small fee to Rick Quinn. I mean, Rick Quinn spent big money for you people, right? And I think Rick made a great point, Kelly, about he's actually taking the time or his network is to call people on the phone as opposed to putting out these digital polls or, you know, anything else where, you know, people are likely to not necessarily give honest answers or, you know, just the first name they see that they recognize. You get somebody on the phone and have a legitimate conversation and run through the script and say, you know, who would you vote for? Who is your second choice? Who do you view favorably, et cetera? You're more likely to get honest answers when you're having a one-on-one conversation with that person. Have you ever been polled? Oh, all the time. Really? Yeah. I was polled once in the 2014 primary, and I was actually sitting in the studio. I was doing the afternoon show back then, and an ABC news poll wanted to get my feedbacks, and so we did it live on the radio. They were talking about Lindsey Graham, obviously, and whoever else was running for the house races back then. But yeah, I've not been polled either, except that one time 12 years ago. Another interesting thing here, for you, Darlene Graham supporters, this is... Amazing to me. The best area in the state of South Carolina for Darlene Graham, and it's not even close, is the Charleston market. She receives 30.8% of the Charleston DMA. Now, Norman, Sanford, and Fry basically tie at about 13% of the Charleston market each. When you look at the, this could be a problem for the Graham campaign. We talked about how they're overspending in the upstate and underspending. And also overspending in Charleston, but it's not working in Charleston. So right now, if you look at Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester County, in the governor's runoff, they got 15,237 early votes in. As of Thursday, they had 4,088. That's only 26% have turned out so far. Again, this is her number one market. They need to get Charleston out. Charleston needs to come out for Graham if she's going to win. So they will be getting out the vote tomorrow, and certainly in that area, if not other ports of the state. Absolutely. That's one of the keys to her success. For whatever reason, she polls way better than Sanford in Charleston County. That is her number one market. And so, again, it's a little surprising. Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester, I was just surprised at the lack of votes, period. But the Graham campaign certainly needs you. There, I said something nice about it. I'm encouraging Graham supporters to get to the polls. Okay. All right, we'll take a break. It's 828. This is South Carolina's morning news. It is 833. And good morning to y'all. Thanks for getting your day started with us, Christopher Thompson and myself. And on the phone, the superintendent of education, Ellen Weaver. Good morning.

Hey, good morning, Kelly. How are you? I am well. I'm told that you are driving now towards Charleston. Is that correct? That is right. We are crisscrossing our way across the state this week. I'll be in Charleston. I'll be in Lexington and Winsborough in the Midlands and then heading up to Greenville. And we are celebrating the wonderful academic gains that our students are making on their reading of math this week. So this is the test results of what they did last year. And you guys have tabulated them all. And you're telling us right now, fantastic news for Charleston, or excuse me, for South Carolina students. Yes, for South Carolina students. So we'll be making the big announcement at 10 a.m. We're actually headed down to Charleston right now to celebrate at the fastest growing school in the entire state. That school is a public school of innovation in Charleston County, Meeting Street at Burns. And it's actually operated in a public-private partnership between meeting street schools and the school district there in Charleston. It's a high-poverty school. about 90% of the students on the peninsula there live in poverty. It's a neighborhood school. There's no selective enrollment. And these kids, Kelly, are absolutely knocking it out of the park. So what changed? If they were underperforming previously and now they're overperforming, it's the same kids. What changed? That's it. And that's my message is that every single one of our kids, whether they live in poverty, whether they live in an urban community or a rural community, whatever their situation, our kids are capable. It is up to us as adults to align our systems of support so that they can reach. high expectations. First of all, we have to have high expectations for them. We have to believe that they're capable because sometimes we don't even cross that far as adults, and that's a sad commentary for sure. But then secondly, we have to have high support. And what does high support look like? It looks like increasing teacher salaries. It looks like having strong, high quality instructional materials in the classroom and then putting the tools in the teacher's toolbox so that they know how to use those. instructional materials effectively. And that's what we've been doing for the last three and a half years here in South Carolina as I've been superintendent. And I'm so grateful for local partners like Superintendent Anita Huggins and Charleston, who is a long-time teacher herself and understands the strategy behind this work and has been an awesome partner. And we're seeing the results in Meeting Street. I saw a story, I think this is count on too, talking about the district's efforts down there to increase the starting teacher pay. Am I reading this right? 67,500 for educators entering the profession with a bachelor's degree?

It's wonderful. Charleston actually has the highest teacher salaries in the state now. And of course, that's important down there because the cost of living is so high. It's hard to recruit and retain great people in that environment. And so Charleston has stepped up and answered the call. And I'm so proud of what Superintendent Huggins is doing down there because... She actually is taking existing money within the system and realigning that money for impact, whether that is raising teacher salaries, whether that is ensuring that resources get to the classrooms and students who need it most. Her leadership has just really been exemplary, and she's brought the community along with her on this journey, and that really speaks to, I think, her trust as a leader and the respect that folks in the community have for her. Well, this is a great day, I guess, for all South Carolinians, because when our kids do better, we do better. And apparently our kids are doing better. That's it. I mean, Kelly, we know that education is the foundation of our entire economic future. If we don't have an educated... citizenry to self-govern themselves in this great American SC-250 year, as well as students who have the skills that it takes to fill the jobs of the future, we're going to be dead in the water as a state. And my commitment and my passion and my vision is that we will never let South Carolina falter or fall behind. We are going to focus like a laser all day, every day, on making sure. Our kids in every corner of our state have what they need to be successful in their future. Well, I'm so excited for the kids and the families down there. What was the name of the school again that you're going to? It's formerly Burns Elementary School, and now they call it Meeting Street at Burns. That's fantastic work that they were able to turn that around so dramatically. But we're going to hear playing more stories, I'm sure, about throughout the state, how we're having success stories all over the place. He says South Carolina moves in a better direction, and you're right about self-governing and all that stuff. But I also will point out. You people are going to be in charge sooner rather than later, and I need you to do well because I'll be retired then. So don't mess this up. That's right. All right. You really need some health care, you know? Absolutely. If you youngsters blow this, oh, my life, my retirement will suck. Anyway, thank you for checking in Superintendent Ellen Weaver. We wish you all the best and look forward to hearing all of the details a little bit later on today. Sounds great. Thanks, Kelly. Talk to you later. You got it. All right. It is 630, excuse me, 838 on South Carolina's morning news. This is South Carolina's morning news.

It's an interesting strategy, Cotton. Those of you who are fans of Dodgeball might get the reference. A 14-page letter came out over the weekend from Mark Zuckerberg, who by the way, actually came out, I guess early Monday morning. By the way, side note, this has nothing to do with that. Did you see the story, Christopher, about his yacht? No. All right. So this, he was not on the yacht. And apparently, and again, I'm sure it's a very impressive yacht. It's like 386 feet long or whatever. Apparently there was a boat sending out a distress signal. And his yacht was the closest to it. and did not respond. And a lot of people are making this Mark Zuckerberg, you're so evil, blah, blah, blah, blah. The people on the boat were saved by somebody else. And Mark Zuckerberg's yacht crew said we were monitoring a different channel. And by the time we had flipped to the channel that they were putting out their SOS on or whatever, we heard that they were already being rescued. That's why we didn't circle back. So there's that. But anyway, back to the story, the 14-page letter entitled The Future is for Everyone, the Path to a Positive AI Future, Future. Mark Zuckerberg argues that the broadly distributing super-intelligent AI represents an economic opportunity and a safeguard against concentrating too much power in the hands of the government, a business, or any other institution. So this is, you know, this can appeal to socialists. and conservatives. If you're a conservative who's like, we don't want the government to have too much power, he's saying AI's the answer. If you're somebody who says we want the wealth distributed, he says AI is the answer. We propose a philosophy based on individual empowerment as the source of prosperity, invention, as the primary purpose of superintelligence and balance of power as the foundation of safety. And then he goes on to talk about how they will. They have a billion dollars set up already to, what's the word, reward communities that have the meta AI centers built there. And I'm trying. Oh, yeah. There's an enticement for a data center. Yes. You get free AI with it. Well, yeah, previewing his billion-dollar futures for everyone fund to invest directly into the local communities where META operates a data center, which would support teachers, law enforcement, infrastructure, and other community priorities. Sustainable infrastructure development means communities must benefit from each project. So I would think that you're then saying that there is a risk. There's something going on there. Otherwise, why would you be giving them the money? So anyway, very interesting. This is a new development from Mark Zuckerberg this morning. His 14-page letter, we might talk about that more coming up. It is South Carolina's morning news. You're listening to South Carolina's morning news. I am cheering. I am like a full-throated, like fanatic right now for the reporter Nick Reynolds.

Nick Reynolds is, he's with the Graham campaign currently at the Lizards Thicket. This is happening right now in West Columbia. So Darling Graham is at the Lizards Thicket. She's doing a live hit. I think it might still, I don't have television on. I think she's probably on Fox News right now doing her live hit. But he's been with her, he's been tweeting about this for about 25 minutes, still trying to get a question. Still, just a, hang on, she got to talk to these people first. Hold on. Has he been promised an interview? No. Okay. No, but he's with her. he's with her he's there he's got great photos by the way if you want to see the nick reynolds i suggest everybody follow i am nick reynolds as he and he is a fair and balanced person you can tell i'm assuming i don't know nick i've never spoken with nick uh i might have him on the show at some point in the future just because i think he does such a great job as a reporter i assume like most reporters he leans left that would be my assumption um but he does give conservatives a fair analysis or whatever. He's not making up stuff in the stories. But it's just funny to watch. Here he is. At Lizards Thicket this morning in West Columbia, where Darling Graham has been meeting with voters, she's about to do her live hit with Fox News from the middle of the room. So far, pretty on message. Right now she's talking about her bargain shopper line. Affirmations for the Trump policies and what sounded like the question on gas prices. currently slamming the Russell Fry campaign over its DEI attack, which she raised in the local press call yesterday. Next post, people are ready for something different, she says, someone who's not a politician, she says in an interview after the live hit when asked about her lack of experience. So that's where we're at. So I'm hoping that Nick Reynolds gets his questions in. It would be great. I'm pulling for you, Nick. Come on. Let's give Nick a check. I don't even want one for myself. I want one for Nick Reynolds. He's perseverant. I mean, he has been on this case for a while. And there have been a number of reporters who have said that, you know, they've tried. They've tried. I think she's done one interview with SCE TV, one interview with the Greenville TV station. And as you pointed out, she did a teleconference yesterday with a number of reporters. And this is not being negative. I know a lot of you are interpreting what. Christopher and I are saying as negative, we're just telling you what's happened. Like if you go to Darlene Graham's page, and I haven't been to it since early this morning, let me just go to it right now. Nope, nothing's changed. So on her Twitter account right now, unlike most candidates, most candidates have videos of themselves talking about stuff. If you go to her page, it's filled to the brim with endorsements. Not saying there's anything wrong with it? That it is what it is. Unlike most candidates who would rather have themselves speaking about the issues, she's choosing to let other people speak on her behalf. And who's like, who's endorsing me? You know, here's another thing. Oh, we got a teller rally coming up, by the way, tonight. Don't miss it. 630. Donald Trump hosts a teller rally for Darlene Graham at 630. See, I'm supporting this. 8552740644. If you want to be a part of that, there you go.

I am supporting it. Nothing negative. You've been positive all morning. I feel like I'm giving it my best. I can't win for trying. All right. Well, tomorrow, by the way, we are supposed to have Secretary Scott Bessent on the show tomorrow. We'll be talking to him and others on South Carolina's morning news.