This Week in South Carolina | Politics and Tourism

[Music] [Music] welcome to this week in south carolina i'm gavin jackson memorial day weekend is the official start of summer and south carolina parks and recreation and tourism director dwayne parrish joins us to talk about the latest tourism numbers and what we can expect for the rest of the summer but first gibbs knotts dean of the school of humanities and social sciences at the college of charleston breaks down the latest in the first congressional race and what we can expect as we get closer to election day gibbs thanks for joining us gavin it's so great to be here so gibbs let's start with the big news this week and we're talking about the first congressional district debate that happened down at burke high school in charleston you were part of the panel that was questioning nancy mace katie errington and linz piper loomis who got the first question in that debate and then proceeded to endorse katie arrington right there on the spot took her microphone off walked off the stage uh what did you think about that moment was kind of the big a big highlight from that debate yeah i had no prior knowledge that was going to happen so that really took me and the other folks on stage by surprise first off the audience was going crazy uh there's a lot of arrington supporters real vocal it was like a mini trump rally uh gavin in a lot of ways and then i initially then after after sort of it settled i started to panic because we had 15 questions which would have been more than enough for three people but then when you only have two people and they still have the same amount of time to respond uh you know i was having trouble even listening to the responses of the campus because i was scribbling questions down really quick and we were exchanging them with the other panelists but we survived we added a couple questions but uh yeah i did not i've never seen that before and it was you know probably going to be the only debate so really kind of the biggest venue for uh lens to sort of do that and make the arrington endorsement but definitely took us by surprise and seemed to take nancy mace by surprise not sure as much about katie orrington whether she knew or not but it was made for a very interesting start to the debate yeah having been a debate moderator myself and been on those debate stages uh can i imagine how nerve-wracking that would have been because you are trying to juggle time you're making sure everyone's in line and and then all of a sudden you're a person down to them that's right the question we added was you know one of the ones was do you why do you think you're the best person to beat annie andrews because she's the likely democrat the only person running on the democratic side the next question we had in the queue was what's joe biden's biggest mistake and given the tenor of that debate that would have been a fun question we didn't get to it but you could see uh you know those two candidates would have probably gone on for a really long time exceeded time explaining what they are frustrated about with joe biden so that was the next thing but it was it was a really interesting debate and gibbs talking about that endorsement from lin's uh she's still on the ballot so she can still kind of maybe even affect this election in some ways since uh any candidate who's in this primary battle yet that 50 plus one 50 plus one vote so this could you know sway things and probably lead to a runoff we'll see we don't really have too much polling on this race but do you think that was an effective way to endorse her i mean it seems like it was a really quick thing and then it was kind of done uh anything you can kind of gauge from that it probably was it got the most attention that she probably could have gotten saying has had she just done a press conference you know at the base of the ravenel bridge or something like that uh but i don't think you know when you look at the amount of money she's raised and her name recognition i don't think it really was always a race between mason oriented so you know i don't think there are a lot of lynn's supporters that are going to come over and be with arrington uh but it did make for some some some high drama and fireworks but uh i still think she's probably even though she's going to be on the ballot i don't expect her to get a lot of those and when we look at the rest of the debate what were some big takeaways there what were some of the big uh jabs that you thought uh landed from either arrington or maze yeah i mean arrington you know could have been on uh you know a nightly fox news show or at a trump rally so you know she talked about everything from whether pig should give birth standing up or laying down criticizing mace on some funding that government funding that i think she must have voted for at some point or allegedly voted for or something like that uh but uh but yeah just a lot of like to me the question that really stuck with me is we asked something about are you willing to work with the other side even when it means you're not going to get everything you want as a republican and mace is like absolutely that's her bread and butter that's kind of she she sort of feels like i'm in a district that's a little bit of a swing district i have to be able to work with democrats when it's best for south carolina arrington completely different she's like the democrats are unhinged uh we can't work with them this is uh you know basically we have to sort of we can't compromise and so that really to me sort of showed the biggest differences between the two mace has a conservative voting record uh she's endorsed some policies like legalization of marijuana this may be a little bit out of state step with her conservative voting record uh but arrington was i thought an effective speaker she uh could command the room but sort of when you look deeper at some of her answers you know she was you know definitely singing from the donald j trump uh hymnal or playbook whichever whichever whichever metaphor you like yeah definitely since she is uh endorsed by him back by him and you know i think gibbs one thing that really stood out to me too is that uh you know maybe they're trying to get each other off their game i think both women managed to kind of stay in their lane and keep their own energy and cool in their own ways uh it seemed like they got heated towards the end there and i one thing really stood out to me was kind of going back to uh the debate from the state house talking about the 2017 gas tax debate which you know a lot of republicans uh took issue with you know talking about it being like the biggest tax increase in the state's history things like that and mace just really hammering katie on that and it seemed like you know you can really kind of draw some conclusions from that and how that you could actually pinpoint something besides besides arrington saying oh we can blame katie we can blame nancy for all these problems whereas you know nancy was actually picking one and really drilling down on it yeah i mean nancy mace is like look i'm the only conservative on the stage i'm i'm going to keep your taxes low katie arrington supported the biggest tax increase in history so i thought she was really effective on that and then nancy mace to me was also really strong when she said look i've beat a democrat i can beat a democrat again you didn't beat a democrat and so i'm a better candidate for this district and so i just i'm so fascinated by this race because it's races like this that are ultimately going to decide whether it's going to be the democrats in control on the house or the republicans in control the house so obviously these are playing out around the country but you know this will be a type of race that if a republican can win a race like this they've got a pretty good chance of uh electing a republican speaker if not then it's a chance for the democrats to hold on and so you know it's just really interesting to see that playing out right in our backyard right here in south carolina yeah we've got to get to the primary first june 14th but then we'll definitely see what happens in the general but gibbs really wrapping up on this debate before we move on to other topics do you think there was a clear winner or do you think in the eyes of their followers they were they were both the winners i think they were both the winners i mean arrington got in the jabs and sort of you know got in the one-liners that i think will make her supporters very very happy you know for the mace folks i mean they like her they like her fiscal conservatism but they like her willingness to reach across the aisle and think she's just a great fit for sc1 and so i think they both uh they both probably had folks that felt like they did well so i don't think there was a real clear winner but it definitely it's going to give the democrats have already started to run ads uh you know compiling together some of the parts of the debate and so it's definitely given you know a lot of a lot of room for criticism uh from folks who didn't like what they heard on stage on monday night and we saw on tuesday former president donald trump reiterating his support for katie arrington on a video on twitter a really short one but just really kind of you know boosting her support so i'm guessing really taking out all the stops now as we get in the final stretch here but i want to talk to you about uh dr annie andrews that charleston pediatrician who's the only democrat on the ticket so she's advanced to go essentially she'll be there in november facing off whoever wins this june 14th primary but how do you see andrews right now i know it's you know we're still in the primary season but you know whoever wins this is going to face her she's a political newcomer what what's your take on her at this point so she participated in the college of charleston bully pulpit series so i got to sit down with her for about an hour on stage and ask her some questions of my own and then we went to audience questions and i mean you know she's an extremely compelling candidate i mean she's you know somebody who it works for musc uh like you said is a pediatrician and she has a very evidence-based science-based approach to her thinking you know which is you know very different than a lot of what's going on uh out in american politics right now certainly on on the right and so i think that that's an interesting dynamic uh she's you know very i think has a really good social media strategy she's out you know all the time talking about you know she can weigh in and then she's also done a lot of her own research and kind of as i can tell kind of what her expertise within the medical field is is uh gun violence and you know children who uh and particularly the impacts of guns on young people and so you know obviously with what happened uh in texas on tuesday you know she can really speak to those issues and so i think she's she's really an ideal candidate for the democrats in a lot of ways uh you know ultimately she's going to have to raise some money and uh it's just not a district that's setting up even you know even with with redistricting is slightly more republican than it was when joe cunningham won in 2018 and lost to nancy mason 2020 so that's an additional battle that she's gonna have to overcome but you know she's able to not spend money keep her powder dry uh and you know gear up for whoever she goes up against mace or arrington in november and gibbs this whole primary is really just based off of the issues surrounding republicans and their allegiance to donald trump specifically supporting his false claims that the election was stolen in 2020 then also how they reacted to january 6. uh you know we saw nancy mace be very critical of the president for january 6. we saw tom rice in the 7th congressional district vote for impeachment of the president for inciting insurrection so how do you see all that playing into these primaries uh maybe here and elsewhere when it comes to just the role to stop the steel plays it's a referendum on trump and kind of where republican voters in south carolina are on this rhetoric right now and you know when you see uh you know in a place like alabama you know trump may still have a good bit of sway what we saw in our neighboring state of georgia though is that you know the trump back candidates didn't do as well i mean you know somebody who studies the south and thinks about south carolina kind of in the context of the larger region uh i think we're probably a little closer to georgia than alabama but we're probably somewhere in the middle and so that's what i really am curious to see you know i'm curious to see how it plays out statewide uh we'll see that with the governor's race but also how it plays out in the first congressional district uh and again i think i think mace is a stronger general election candidate for the republicans for this particular district katie arrington obviously disagrees with me and she talked about that uh on on stage but you know it's gonna going to really be interesting to see how much sort of the the the stop the steal you know not necessarily as critical of january 6 you know if that's gonna win out among south carolina's republican voters uh here in a couple of weeks yeah because trump has had a pretty good track record when it comes to the federal candidates he's endorsing talk about house members and that's you know russell fry in the seventh katie arrington even you know william timmons up in the fourth congressional district too so we'll see how that plays out if it maintains that track record but yeah anything else you gleaned from that the the primaries over there in georgia with uh david with uh camp brian campbell out david perdue and then also the secretary of state's race which is also something to watch yeah just so you know just really i mean george is a different state georgia has two democrats in the senate right now in the u.s senate representing representing that state but but yeah just at how uh you know trump the trump-backed candidates you know not only you know i figured it would be a little bit closer i was surprised that kemp did as well as he did that secretary of state did as well as he did and so yeah i mean i think georgia has always been a state that is very business oriented atlanta has uh you know tons of tons of commerce and many many companies and and they always tend to focus on okay what's good for business and it seems like kemp was able to you know really kind of you know make a better case to georgia republicans and not and sort of break away sort of breaking away from the president in a way that you know i didn't necessarily anticipate and it could be a sign for what we're going to see in south carolina a little bit as well and gibbs just to kind of start wrapping up here i want to talk about the winthrop poll that came out this week from your good colleague scott huffman up there at winthrop university uh he's political political science professor and the poll director there and one of the big findings from his poll was that the general population that he pulled found that 47 of respondents said the 2020 presidential election was fair 45 said it wasn't kind of going back to what we were talking about here about stopping this deal what do you see for the future of our country our state when you start seeing numbers like that and people really believing that the 2020 election wasn't fair it makes me really worried i mean you have to have you know faith in the election system and when people start to question that and obviously when you know it's like sports or anything else if you know when your team loses you never you're always going to blame it on on on the refs or the umpires or the system you know it sort of becomes you know sort of integrity and the system and faith and belief in the system is lost and so those numbers were concerning to me and obviously you know you just i mean look i mean there are certain you know there are air no one's questioning republicans aren't questioning when republicans won they're questioning when it was really really close or when democrats won uh is our election system perfect of course it's not perfect there's always ways for improvement and both sides need to come together and make sure the right people are voting but uh but but overall when people serious people nonpartisan people have studied it and looked at it you know there's there's very little evidence of widespread but voter fraud uh and and there's really very little evidence if any that voter fraud is changing election outcomes and so uh let's let's continue to figure out how to make it better but you know south carolina voters can feel confident that their vote counts and that there's not some kind of underlying uh scheme to sort of have one part advance one party over the other yeah we just saw that voter election early voting bill and election integrity bill just gets signed into law too so early voting will start may 31st yeah and just really quick gibbs just uh two more numbers there we saw 55 of those polled uh proof of how governor mcmaster is doing his job so i'm guessing that bodes well for him in election year like this as does tim scott who still remains the most popular republican in the state with 66 percent approval rating and now behind was nikki haley too it's 63. yeah tim scott's

amazing i always feel like tim scott and nikki haley are always neck and neck from the popular lindsey graham makes enough republicans mad that he sometimes uh is is a little bit behind them but yeah i mean master he's an incumbent he's you know done well in previous elections uh he's not facing you know he's going to be able to not he's not you know having to spend a lot of money to feed off a challenge in the primary and so for all those reasons you know he's certainly certainly the favorite uh you know we have democratic governors there's democrat governor in kentucky democratic governor in louisiana democratic governor in north carolina democrats can win in the south but it's been an awful long time in south carolina so i think you know certainly mcmaster has to feel pretty good about his chances in november yeah that 10 margin when he won the last time so a lot to be made up there for democrats this fall but thank you gibbs knots he's the dean of the school of humanities and social sciences at the college of charleston and he's going to be joining me and scott huffman on primary night june 14th at 8pm on etv we'll have live analysis and coverage from around the state so again thank you gibbs thanks kevin joining me to discuss the summer tourism season is dwayne parrish he's director of the department of parks recreation and tourism in south carolina duane thanks for coming back thank you glad gabby glad to be here so dwayne let's talk about the tourism industry in south carolina it's one of our biggest ones in the state uh how are things going tell us how things are have been going so far since the recovery since the pandemic and now that we're about to kick off more day weekend which is obviously the kickoff for summer um things are going very well if you'd asked me a year ago they're much better than i expected 2021 while sort of up and down a little bit finished very very strong um outdoor recreation became sort of the preferred engagement for people traveling that's still the case today and that includes everything from golf to canoeing to fishing to boating to kayaking to camping to hiking and we are states sort of known for those things so that's been very very popular um 2022 we started out um you know i've learned not to try to predict too much but it could be a record year for us as bad as 2020 was 2022 looks the other way gotcha and then when we're looking at the revenues i mean how did last year shape up and do you think kind of what you're saying i don't want to predict anything but maybe what you're looking at in terms of spring break maybe early bookings for summer how things are looking right now um things look very good for the summer you know the triple a has even said that you know it's maybe the best memorial day weekend ever for people traveling i certainly believe that particularly in the south our gas prices are still well high still low compared to some other parts of the country i do believe the five dollar mark may cause some pause with people but not stop travel um you know we haven't been above five in the southeast really but so far it really has not slowed it down at all future reservations look very good for both memorial day weekend and throughout the summer i expect that to continue at least for the next three to six months through the spring and early fall 2022 should be a record year for tourism barring some unforeseen circumstances now you never know what's out there whether it be coveted or a hurricane or the likes but so far so good knock on wood it's encouraging to hear how was our spring break dwayne looking back is can you maybe make any assumptions based on what we saw this year yeah very strong hotel occupancy was sort of mirrored 2019 statewide even stronger on the coast what's changed uh dramatically hotel room rates are up significantly from the spring of 2019. hotels have uh um you know demand has been very strong and you know we're in a uh um you know it is demand when demand strong the rates are going to go up and that's what's happened and of course now you have gas prices and inflation other things have gone up but but certainly expect to spend more but um you're going to have a great time because if you've been cooped up for a year it's a great time to get out and enjoy some of what south carolina has to offer and the hospitality industry itself workers that that's really strongly rebounded as well from what you're seeing his rebound to some you know still our biggest challenge we still we're still not quite at the employment we had prior to covet but getting closer um wages have gone up about 23 in the hospitality leisure category things like that um you know making people feel more valued we've done some workforce housing in places along the coast in our industry um some new things being tried i think that are helping the employment situation but it's not it's a complica it's a complicated issue and we'll take some complex uh resolutions to fix it so dwayne you're saying things are pretty encouraging right now especially the economy with inflation going the way it is gas prices are averaging about four dollars and 27 cents a gallon right now in the state like you said one of the lower prices in the southeast uh how does that affect some of these you know these drive-in markets that you guys always talk about and tout about when it comes to affecting tourism here um you know it actually helped airline prices have typically followed because the jet fuel price goes up as well and that's the case here fortunately for south carolina about eighty percent of the people block excuse me drive into the state and so we're typically what's called a drive market state and we mark it outside we've expanded that market used to be 350 mile radius now it goes out about 700 miles from the market out even all the way up into the northeast in the midwest for the drive mark particularly uh interstate travel you know i-77 goes all the way up into ohio and in the midwest and that helps us as a state for that drop market you know myrtle beach charleston hilton head all strong brands that are well known in the midwest and in the northeast yeah dwayne i ask you do do you guys have an ideal profile of a visitor to our state have we expanded that profile we've seen more folks from from the northeast like new york new jersey especially since the pandemic maybe they got turned on to the state because of you know looser restrictions down here well yeah exactly they were exposed early two things have happened we've always had a high profile i think with the midwest and northeast what's happened is uh they visit here more frequently now because of particularly when coveted started and then a lot of them realized that they could live and work here and it's a lot of bought real estate and so real estate obviously is very strong particularly along the coast but when you can work from home but i always tell people they would they didn't buy they didn't buy real estate without becoming a visitor first and so they visited had a great experience learning hey i want to live here work here play here and that's a lot of what's happened to us and we've been you know which is why we've been the second highest migration in the state in the united states and when we look at other travel forms of travel i know you're talking about a lot of drive-in markets uh how have the air traffic how has that rebounded especially international air traffic now air traffic is in south carolina is almost at the same level it was pre-covered and in some cases myrtle beach and charleston they're actually more direct flights to cities than there were pre-coping airlines realized they moved planes to where people will fly when business travel was still down they moved to leisure markets like charleston and myrtle beach and and that's still still the case today and then we have new areas new airlines like breeze airways which has introduced i think uh you know almost 10 cities directly from charleston which has helped add to the capacity as well as the destinations dwayne looking more towards what we have here in the state the outdoors especially state parks really took off during the pandemic i want to ask you about just how you guys are keeping up with the popularity of these state parks what's maybe in the budget what do you expect to see to improve these conditions because they have become so popular they have as soon as we reopened in may of 2020 we had people waiting at the gates and that's still the case today state parks have been extremely busy very popular we had been spending the last several years catching up on deferred maintenance and that's still the case today we also have five new parks coming in the next couple of years which will help with some of the capacity and they're spread out throughout the state but really excited about state parks they've become as i mentioned earlier preferred engagement for a lot of travelers we've a lot to offer in state park and then of course like you're saying five new state parks that's pretty exciting to add to the repertoire uh yeah very much so it is we are fortunate to get uh we have one on lake murray in the middle of the state uh we have one misty lake which is up in the aiken area uh ramsey grove which is in the down in the georgetown area we have may forest which is a former convent that overlooks the charleston harbor and then we have the black river project which is actually a series of seven different sites along the black river that are connected by water which is a little bit new for us that's a state park unlike any other we have today but really excited about getting that open next year and uh if you're into kayaking and paddling into a special place along the river that's that's a great a great place to go very exciting news here and of course you know you guys had some big priorities from the pandemic as well in terms of marketing grants for a lot of these different places throughout the state not necessarily the big cities but the smaller cities too i think some of those have been recently awarded uh what are you guys hoping to do with those grants to try and drive traffic to smaller markets in the state well when the federal government you know first the cares act and then the arpa funds that are in place now um the state was gracious enough to uh allow us the legislature in the governor's office spent 20 million that spread was spread throughout the state and kind of gave us a leg up on our surrounding states and we certainly did well um particularly with the outdoor engagement that i mentioned a moment ago you know now the other states have those funds too and so the marketing is impaired that we maintain uh at least maintain our fair share if not increase it but we'll certainly put that in place with today's digital world we can you know we can make moves and be very nimble and change our our target or our message on the fly almost and in just different markets we haven't been to before we i'll give you one quick example texas um never marketed really there before we did some of that with some of the extra funds and it wasn't a lot large percent of the population but texas has a lot of people so that was a big number for us we in texas love south carolina so we're going to continue to do that exciting things on the horizon there uh for parks and of course tourism in the state that's dwayne parrish he's director of state parks recreation and tourism here in south carolina thanks duane thank you again to stay up to date with the latest news throughout the week check out the south carolina lead it's a podcast that i host on tuesdays on saturdays that you can find on southcarolinapublicradio.org or wherever you find podcasts for south carolina etv i'm gavin jackson bewell south carolina [Music] you

2022-05-28 18:13

Other news