S.C. to Vote in 11 Statewide Elections Today

South Carolina voters will pick their candidates Tuesday in 11 statewide races along with the state's U.S. House members and state House members.

It appears to be an Election Day without many surprises in a state where no Democrat has beaten an incumbent Republican in a statewide or congressional race since 1998.

Republicans appear heavy favorites across the board, but Democrats have said they can shake things up with a massive get-out-the-vote effort.

It will also be the first statewide general election under South Carolina's new voter ID law.

Here are the stories to watch for Tuesday.

Two senators on the ballot

Because of the resignation of U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint in December 2012, South Carolina voters will get to choose not just one but two senators. Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Scott is seeking to finish the final two years of DeMint's term.

The result in Scott's race will be historic no matter what. Scott and his Democratic opponent, Richland County councilwoman Joyce Dickerson, are both black in a state that has never elected an African-American to a statewide office since just after the Civil War. The third person in the race, American Party candidate Jill Bossi, would be the first woman to be a U.S. senator in the state.

South Carolina's other U.S. senator, Republican Lindsey Graham, is also on the ballot seeking a third term. After a string of U.S. Senate candidates like Alvin Greene who commanded little respect, Democrats chose highly-regarded state Sen. Brad Hutto to run against Graham. Also in the race are former state treasurer and convicted felon Thomas Ravenel and Libertarian Victor Kocher.

Same candidates, different year

This year's ballot features some rematches too. Top of the list is the governor's race, where Republican incumbent Nikki Haley and her Democratic challenger Vincent Sheheen each spent the final days crisscrossing the state.

Haley won by 60,000 votes, or just over 4 percentage points in 2010.

In a fairly genteel election season across South Carolina, the Haley-Sheheen race has displayed the most animosity. Sheheen has called Haley corrupt, and independent candidate Tom Ervin, who will remain on the ballot despite suspending his campaign and endorsing Sheheen, has called her a tyrant who doesn't respect the rule of law.

For the most part, Haley has remained above the fray, allowing others to attack Sheheen as a trial lawyer who defends clients accused of child abuse or domestic violence.

As Republican U.S. House member Tom Rice seeks a second term, he has a rematch against Democrat Gloria Bromell Tinubu. Rice won the 2012 contest with 56 percent. The district includes the Pee Dee and Grand Strand.

Get out the vote

Republicans and Democrats are making a big push to draw more of their voters to the polls.

Democrats are banking on increased turnout for an upset. Each of their candidates points out that President Barack Obama received almost 866,000 votes in 2012 in South Carolina, while Sheheen got 630,500 votes in the 2010 governor's race. Democrats say if they can get those extra 236,000 Obama voters back to the polls in 2014, they can win several races.

Republicans have been doing their own get-out-the vote work. Graham is spending hundreds-of-thousands of dollars from his campaign to help the GOP with a massive get-out-the-vote project.

As of midday Monday, nearly 141,000 absentee ballots have been cast, according to the South Carolina Election Commission. In the 2010 midterm election, about 154,000 absentee votes were counted.

Down the ballot

The eight lower statewide offices are up for grabs too.

Secretary of State Mark Hammond is in an unexpectedly tough fight with Democrat Ginny Deerin. Deerin has targeted what she calls fraud and abuse in Hammond's office, and she has gotten a surprising amount of Republican support.

South Carolina voters are choosing a lieutenant governor for the last time. Democrat Bakari Sellers, 30, son of a civil rights leader, is taking on 67-year-old Republican stalwart Henry McMaster in a race of contrasts. Beginning in 2018, the governor will choose a running mate to be the potential lieutenant governor.

Votes will have to choose between Republican incumbents and Democratic challengers for attorney general and comptroller. The office of education superintendent is open, while two third-party candidates are challenging the incumbent agriculture commissioner.

Treasurer Curtis Loftis and Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Bob Livingston Jr. are running unopposed. Livingston has campaigned for a state constitutional amendment that would make adjutant general an appointed position in 2018.

Little competition

In South Carolina's U.S. House races, the six Republican and one Democratic incumbent are all expected to return.

Likewise, at the Statehouse level there are only a handful of competitive South Carolina House races. Eighty-three of the 124 members up for re-election have no opposition Tuesday.

The most controversial member of South Carolina's congressional delegation, Republican Mark Sanford, faced no opposition in the primary or the general election.

In the other races, the incumbents combined have outspent the challengers combined by about 12-to-1.

Polls Shows GOP Gaining Momentum for Tuesday

Republicans woke up Sunday to a wave of new polls that showed their Senate candidates surging ahead in key states -- including one in Iowa that looked particularly grim for Democrats -- giving the GOP a jolt of enthusiasm going into the 2014 campaign cycle's final hours.

Two days from the midterm election, Washington's political class was buzzing around news that Iowa GOP Senate hopeful Joni Ernst was 7 percentage points up in a Des Moines Register poll, and Republican candidates and surrogates popped up on the Sunday news shows, gleeful about their prospects.

"I think the wind is at our back," Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said on CNN's "State of the Union." He added that Republicans will "in all likelihood" win control of the Senate and added: "I think people are ready for new leadership."

Fueling the Republicans' optimism was a Register poll that showed Ernst leading Democrat Bruce Braley, 51% to 44% -- prompting pollster J. Ann Selzer to tell the newspaper that "this race looks like it's decided."

Full Story Here

Opinion: GOP Attack on Kasich Highlights Hypocricy

Could Republican Gov. John Kasich run for president? According to the Washington Post, he’s poised to, and he certainly seems to be among the better options out there, with the other obvious choices either clearly deranged (Ted Cruz) or totally uninterested (Mitt Romney). But conservatives have not been roundly pleased with Kasich, in part because he is evidently something of a committed Christian.

Last year, Kasich fought doggedly to expand Medicaid coverage in Ohio, extending healthcare to some 275,000 poor people. When queried as to why a conservative would push for expanded coverage, Kasich explained his reasoning thus:

“I had a conversation with one of the members of the legislature the other day. I said, ‘I respect the fact that you believe in small government. I do, too. I also know that you’re a person of faith.  Now, when you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor. You better have a good answer.’  ”

Conservative critics did not have a good answer. If Kasich’s challenge required a faith-based, well-reasoned critique of Medicaid to defend Republican animus, that wasn’t what it received. Instead, Kasich’s right-wing opponents produced a series of attacks that seemed straight out of the Richard Dawkins school of rhetoric. At RedState, for instance, Jason Hart complained that “Kasich leaned heavily on his Christian faith to push the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” and glossed over Kasich’s explanation of his Christian reasoning as: “anyone who opposes Medicaid expansion will have to answer for their opposition when they die.”

Of course, Kasich didn’t suggest that anyone who opposes Medicaid expansion will have to answer for such at the pearly gates; he merely pointed out that, at this point in time, Medicaid expansion is the only option for extending healthcare coverage to poor people in Ohio, making it the most sensible Christian option. Were there other options – that is, if Republicans had some small-government program that resulted in equal or better coverage – Kasich’s argument would fall out in favor of that. But as it stands no such substitute exists.

Full Story Here

Democrats Still Hoping to Beat Expectations Tuesday

Most pundits and pollsters expect the Republican Party to do well in Tuesday's midterm elections. The Democratic Party may outperform expectations, however, for these three reasons.

1. Democrats raised and spent a lot of money, and spent it well.

In overall campaign spending, Republicans have done better than Democrats. Democrats, however, have kept the spending race close. Plus, the Republican advantage is mostly in House races, where the outcome is more certain, than in the races that will determine which party controls the Senate. And, Democratic candidates in several tight races have spent their campaign funds more wisely than their Republican challengers.

Republicans do have a sizable advantage in House races. Republican House candidates have outspent Democratic House candidates by about $98 million ($444 million to $346 million), according to OpenSecrets.org. But, since Democrats have little chance of taking control of the House, the Senate races are where most of the action lies.

There are a significant number of tight Senate races that will determine control of the next Senate. In those races, Republican Senate candidates have outspent Democratic Senate candidates by only about $15 million ($263 million to $248 million). Plus, Democrats have a spending advantage with advocacy groups. Liberal advocacy groups have outspent outside conservative advocacy groups by $41 million ($66 million to $25 million) in federal races.

Additionally, spending is only one measure of a successful campaign. How that money is spent is another.

In many of the key Senate races, the Democratic candidate prudently bought much of the available ad time early. This strategy had several advantages: It means they were able to run more ads than their challengers, they bought the ads when it was cheaper, and it drove up the prices for the ads that Republicans eventually bought.

An Oct. 9 Slate article pointed out, for instance, that Democratic candidates and liberal groups aired more TV ads than their opponents in seven of the nine most competitive Senate races.

2. Democrats still have the sophisticated turnout operation that helped Obama win in 2012.

Democrats built a sophisticated voter turnout operation to help President Barack Obama beat Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. That operation involves a mixed use of large amounts of data with new Internet technologies and active volunteers.

Republicans have generally done better in midterm elections because they get most of their support from demographic groups that vote at higher rates in midterms — voters that are older, white and have higher levels of income.

For Democrats to do well, they must get non-whites, the younger and those with lower levels of income to vote at higher rates than they normally do in midterm elections. If they are able to do that, many of the polls that are based upon "likely voters" could be off by several percentage points.

The Democrat's voter turnout operation already appears to be showing some results in Colorado, Georgia, Iowa and North Carolina. As Nate Cohn pointed out for The New York Times, over 20 percent of the early voters so far in those states did not vote in the 2010 midterm elections.

3. The demographic shift that is expected to hurt Republicans in the future may already be here.

The Republican Party has some significant demographic challenges it must overcome to remain competitive at the national level. Since the country's becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, Republicans will need to do a better job at reaching out to non-whites.

Some Republican strategists have argued that the Party does not need to do that yet. In the short term, they argue, they can win elections by mobilizing more white voters. (An Aug. 1 Christian Post analysis pointed out why that strategy would be a disaster.)

It could be, however, (and this dovetails with reason #2) that the demographic shift that Republicans are dreading is already here. They would know this is the case if non-whites turnout in high numbers and prevent the big Republican wave that the pundits and pollsters are expecting on Tuesday. After all, if Republicans cannot win in 2014, when can they?

Freeze Expected Across Area Tonight, Sunday

Skies will continue to clear up overnight as temperatures approach 30 degrees across the upstate and dip into the upper 20s across western North Carolina. A freeze warning will be in effect for all of the upstate and parts of western North Carolina until 9 a.m. Sunday.

A winter weather advisory will last until 9 a.m. Sunday for our mountain counties along the Tennessee border and higher elevations. Snow showers along the Tennessee border will dissipate by Sunday morning arrives.

Sunny skies return for the second half of the weekend but cool temperatures and breezy conditions stick around. Temperatures will climb into the mid-50s across the Upstate and upper 40s in western North Carolina.

Winds will mainly come out of the north throughout the day at about 10 to 15 mph. Wind gusts will reach about 20 mph in the upstate while western North Carolina see gusts approach 30 mph.

Sunday evening into Monday will once again fall into the lower 30s and mid to upper 20s before we begin to return to fall like weather throughout the work week.

State High Court Says Lawyers Liable for Estate Planning Errors

The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled that lawyers who make mistakes in drafting wills resulting in people being deprived of inheritances can now be held accountable.

The Sun News of Myrtle Beach reports the justices ruled this week that beneficiaries in estate planning cases can now sue attorneys over errors in wills that deprive them of or reduce their inheritances.

Previously state malpractice laws had limited law suits against lawyers to be brought only by their clients. But in the case of a will, the client who has the document drawn up has died before a mistake may be discovered.

The justices said they wanted to fix a loophole in the state's malpractice laws.

Anderson TD Club Announces Week 9 Winners

Winners for Week of October 24th. 

Coach:   Jeff Tate, Wren 

CO-Offensive:  Nathaniel Ekwere, Wren 

Nicquan Ramsey, Pendleton

CO-Defensive:  Dayquan Telley, Westside - not pictured

Brandon Burger, Powdersville 

Lineman:       Chandler Atkinson, Crescent

Seattle Megachurch to Dissolve after Pastor Steps Down

The Seattle-based megachurch Mars Hill, once led by pastor Mark Driscoll, has begun the process of dissolving, and its 13 regional congregations have been asked to either go independent, merge with another church, or disband entirely, announced Dave Bruskas, the church's teaching pastor while in transition, at noon on Friday.

Although Driscoll was not mentioned in the "Local Mission, Local Churches" blogpost on the church's website released as a letter to Mars Hill by Bruskas, the normally outspoken pastor resigned on Oct. 14 from the multi-city megachurch he and his wife helped found 18 years ago after a series of calls were made for him to step down from ministry due to his admitted "divisive" leadership style.

In the letter, Bruskas writes that the elders recognize that the "reorganization plan is a significant and complex undertaking on many fronts; however, our goal is to have the process completed by January 1, 2015."

He asks the regional churches to be in prayer for local elder teams as they contemplate in the next few weeks whether to become an independent, self-governed church, merge with an existing church to create one independent, self-governed church, or disband as a church and shepherd members to find other local church homes. He adds that the decision will be made by the local church's lead pastor and elder team.

Full Story Here

S.C. to Vote on Allowing Raffles

Amendment 1 on the South Carolina ballot asks voters whether they want to change the state constitution to allow nonprofit groups to hold raffles as fundraisers. The money would have to be used for charitable, religious, or educational purposes. Right now, raffles are considered a form of illegal gambling.

The SC Lions Club has been fighting for eight years to get the change. It used to hold raffles as a way to raise money for its vision and hearing services for the uninsured, until someone complained about one of the raffles. The State Law Enforcement Division ordered them to shut it down.

"It's hurt significantly," says SC Lions director Gregg Turner. "We did a poll across the state shortly after we issued the cease-and-desist to find out how many members were conducting raffles, or how many clubs were conducting raffles, and we found that it equated to about half-a-million dollars a year statewide through the 150 chapters."

The bill that goes with the constitutional amendment puts limits on the raffles. For example, nonprofits would not be allowed to hire professional companies to run the raffles, since those companies keep a percentage of the money. That clause also prevents a professional "raffle" company from setting up a permanent operation and just saying the raffles are for charity.

The bill also prevents fundraising events known as "casino night", "Las Vegas night", or "Monte Carlo night" involving games like roulette, poker, blackjack, or other card games. It also specifically bans the use of any electronic device or machine like video poker.

P.A.W.S. Offers Reduced Adoptions Through Nov. 10

Anderson County's Pets Are Worth Saving (P.A.W.S.) is offering reduced animal adoptions rates for certain pets through Nov. 10. 

Prices for all dogs weighing over 35 pounds and all cats over 1 year of age have been reduced from $65 down to $35.

You can check out the adoptable pet at PAWS from your computer

www.petango.com/andersoncountypaws

90 Percent of Christians Forced Out of Baghdad

As Islamic State extremists continue their reign of terror through Iraq and Syria, the chaos, violence and persecution forced upon the thousands of people in the region has caused 90 percent of Orthodox Christians in Iraq to flee the sanctity of their homes, according to the Greek Orthodox Bishop for Baghdad, Ghattas Hazim.

Hazim, who is also the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Kuwait and other surrounding areas, said in a recent interview with Al Monitor that he fears for the future of the Orthodox Christian presence in Iraq, Syria, and the whole Mesopotamia region. Citing unspecified statistics, Hazim said that 90 percent of Iraqi Orthodox Christians have been displaced from their homes. He added that only 30 of 600 Orthodox families remain in Baghdad as ISIS' quest to conquer the city continues.

In Mosul, the Islamic State's stronghold in Iraq in the northern Nineveh province, Hazim said only 10 Orthodox families remain, although it's believed that the only Christians left in Mosul are those who could not afford to, or physically, flee.

"We have a strong heritage, since before Christianity and during Christianity and Islam," Hazim said. "This heritage is in danger and we see that through the violation of shrines and all other cultural sites. We fear for the culture of acceptance and coexistence because it is in danger as well."

While a United Nations report from earlier this month points out that over 1.8 million people have been displaced in Iraq as of Aug. 30, with two-thirds of those displaced in areas under ISIS control, Hazim said that western Christians are not doing enough to help Middle Eastern Christians emigrate to areas of safety.

"It is not true that the West is facilitating the emigration of Christians," Hazim said. "I know many Christians and Orthodox in particular who went to embassies and did not get visas. Others resorted to the United Nations and other international organizations in order to emigrate and it did not work out."

Full Story Here

SCDOT to Close Austin Road Nov. 17 for Improvements

The South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT), along with S & S Construction, Inc. of Anderson, will close the intersection of SC 252 and Austin Road in Anderson County for improvements beginning Nov. 17. Due to needed elevation changes on the Austin Road portion of the project, S & S Construction will close Austin Road from SC 252 to SC 20. This section of Austin Road is residential with no direct impact to businesses. SCDOT and S & S Construction will maintain access for the properties within the road closure. 

The road will remain closed until approximately Dec. 18. As always, the SCDOT and S & S Construction will make every effort to complete the work necessary to reopen the road as soon as possible.

The detour will reroute traffic from Austin Road to SC 20, to Clinkscales Road to SC 252. The length of the detour is 2.8 miles.

For more information 864.366.4406.

Can Industry Survive Ever-Shrinking Newsrooms?

We know the "news industry", as some still like to call it, is undergoing digital disruption. We also know that journalists are facing up to enormous changes. But how are they coping with ever-shrinking newsrooms?

A group of American academics has been trying to find out and have published a research paper with a lengthy title, "Newswork within a culture of job insecurity: producing news amidst organisational and industry uncertainty."

The study was carried out in the States at Iowa university with Brian Ekdale as the lead author. The co-authors are Melissa Tully, Shawn Harmsen and Jane Singer, who is now at City University London as professor of journalism innovation.

You will have to cope with the clumsy description of journalists as "newsworkers", but shelve your distaste at that. The interesting material concerns the attitudes the researchers discovered among people who survive redundancy. The report, drawing on previous research, begins by stating:

"Workers who remain employed with the downsizing company, the so-called 'survivors', wrestle with grief, guilt, anger and doubt.

Surviving a layoff can be so worrisome that survivors can experience more stress and less autonomy than workers who have lost their jobs and have found new employment."

Unsurprisingly, the "significant undercurrent" among those who are retained is job insecurity. Will they be next to face the axe? Evidently, that fear "has become part of the regular conversation in the newsroom."

But people do face up to the problem differently and the study identifies four types of newsworker:

Hopeful (constructive/active) They perceive greater job security and assist in achieving future goals. Obliging (constructive/passive) They are secure in their job but more likely to accommodate rather than instigate change.

Fearful (destructive/passive) They're insecure in their jobs and feel helpless in the face of industry change. Cynical (destructive/active) These people are insecure in their job and actively challenge change.

The authors give detailed assessments of each category, using responses from their interviewees. The most interesting sections of the report deal with the fearful and cynical news workers.

It emerges that both sets not only dislike change but, rather than grasping the opportunities it offers, see it in negative terms. That negativity expresses itself in an anti-management ethos. And this, of course, tends to place them at greater risk of future redundancy.

In other words, rather than doing all they can to adopt new innovations and practices, which would enhance their chances of staying on because of their value to employers, they place themselves at risk of being let go.

The fearful are covertly critical of management while the cynics tend to be open in their hostility. They show their contempt for their employers and are particularly upset about the hiring of new, younger people with skills they show no enthusiasm to obtain themselves.

Full Story Here