History will be made on Tuesday in South Carolina as the state is poised to elect its first female senator in an incredibly close race.
Republican Sen. Darline Graham made history as the first woman senator from South Carolina when Gov. Henry McMaster appointed her to the seat on July 13, two days after her brother, Lindsey Graham, died suddenly at age 71.
Now Graham, with Democrat Dr. Annie Andrews and Libertarian Kasie Whitener are competing to become the first elected woman to represent South Carolina in the Senate.
A Trafalgar Group poll released Monday showed Graham and Andrews within 2 percentage points of each other, well within the 3% margin of error and with 4% of South Carolinians still undecided when the poll was conducted over the weekend.
Constitution Party nominee Mark Hackett is also on the ballot.
He is polling in fourth place with 1%.
Samantha Pettey is a political science professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, who teaches women and politics, campaigns and elections and political psychology.
She spoke with "This Week in South Carolina host" Gavin Jackson about the historic nature of this race.
This interview was edited for brevity.
JACKSON: Talk about the historic nature of what we’re seeing here in South Carolina.
PETTEY: I watched the debate and Sen. Graham pointed that out, and I think she was the only candidate to point out the makeup of the stage because it is a big moment for South Carolina to have three women in a debate together. And, frankly, one I thought was very respectfully done.
They all were willing to hear each other and certainly disagreements happened. But I was looking at South Carolina from the angle of like my research as well and the state legislature — there's not many women in the state legislature. And so I was thinking about why this is the first time you have a woman senator and there's usually a political ladder that folks climb and you start low and you move up.
What strikes me in this case is that it's historic in many ways, right? So there's these women, major party nominations, but none of them have like that typical path of prior office-holding experience. But they're all qualified in their own ways. And they're trying to emphasize that in the debate and on the campaign trail as well. So it's an interesting race to follow.
JACKSON: Is there a reason we’re not dwelling on the historic nature of this race? Do you think it's maybe a backlash to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and concerns about how that could play out politically? Or do you think folks are just like, ‘We’re just running on our merits and we're looking beyond the gender of it all?’
PETTEY: I think there are folks out there who are still and will emphasize the fact that this will be the first time a woman is elected to the Senate in South Carolina. So why I wonder if it's just playing less in the news is frankly because it's a woman versus woman race. So that outcome is already inevitable in many ways.
In many ways, it's very much expected that a woman is going to win. The context of the race matters, partisanship is going to play a role, so I think your point is astute with the DEI of it and the Republican candidate who is favored to win in a southern red state is probably not going to want to emphasize being the first woman as much as maybe a Democrat would. But, again, because it's a woman versus woman race, the emphasis on that is maybe diminished because it's inevitable.
JACKSON: With Nikki Haley being elected our first female and minority governor in 2010 and again in 2014, do you think that also helped pave this path in a sense where, as naive as it sounds, voters say ‘Oh, we had a woman governor before. We can have a woman U.S. senator’ and be OK? Breaking these boundaries and not being concerned about gender and the historic norms that we tied to them?
PETTEY: There’s great research on this. It's called the role model effect, and the emphasis is on governors. It’s this idea that you can't really see yourself in this position without somebody else looking like you. So the fact that Nikki Haley ran successfully and made her way up through the Republican Party, becoming UN (United Nations) ambassador, and becoming this prominent woman in the Republican Party, it makes it so that even Democratic women feel like they can take a chance and run.
JACKSON: The 1st Congressional District race to replace Rep. Nancy Mace is between two women: Republican Charleston County Councilwoman Jenny Honeycutt and Democrat former Rear Admiral Nancy Lacore. So a woman will retain that seat regardless of who wins and will join Sheri Biggs up in the 3rd Congressional District, and then whoever wins the U.S. Senate race. That’s three out of our nine members of our congressional delegation being women for the first time ever.
PETTEY: Researchers divide this into two spaces: one is descriptive representation, and it's that goes back to that role model effect where people who look like you, they tend to have a shared experience. So they might be better at representing you. And frankly, the fact that you'll have three women in the same congressional delegation, they can work together, too.
I think what's hurting on the women representation side is on the Republican side. So the more women Republicans you can elect to Congress, the more that female Republican voice will be heard at a policy level. So we would call it substantive representation.
And, again, there's some shared experience there that they would all be South Carolina women and they can work together. I do think the three women on that debate stage do want to do good things for South Carolinians.
So whatever that delegation looks like, I would imagine those three women (in the delegation) work together at some level. There is a bit of research historically that women tend to cross the aisle a little bit more, but that also is very dependent upon who's winning the House, who's winning the Senate.
In theory, if this blue wave comes and Democrats win the House and or Senate, you might also see South Carolinian Republican women working with Democrats again. Partisanship matters, they're not going to flip flop and change their policies, but there might be more room for compromise than otherwise.
I think the only other thing I'd add is that it is still very rare that women run against women in races.
