How Palmetto Examiner Endorsed Candidates Did Tuesday

Palmetto Examiner endorsements are not predictions. They’re an assessment of who and why we back certain candidates. Like your vote, sometimes it goes the way you want and sometimes it doesn’t.

Yes, it is our hope that our analysis and reasoning will sway you to vote for our candidates and positions, but when they are rejected, it’s not because we got the race wrong. It just means our candidate didn’t win. Palmetto Examiner candidates went 1-1 on Tuesday.

Let’s start with the victory. We were pleased to see Mike Ward win the Irmo Town Council race with 57.3 percent of the vote.

Ward defeated George Frazier and Ed Greco in a special election race that had low voter turnout as most special elections do.

Voter turnout was 6.3 percent of 5,556 registered Richland County voters and 7.8 percent of 2,937 Lexington County voters in the town.

Ward is a business owner in the technology and cybersecurity fields and previously ran for Mayor in 2019 but lost to Barry Walker. He also ran for school board in an unsuccessful bid in 2024.  

Now for the loss. Bill Oden lost the heavily blue SC House District 50 as we expected. Bishopville City Councilman Keishan Scott won decisively with 71 percent of the vote.

Again, this was no surprise to us. The heavily blue district has only had one other republican candidate in the last 20 years. Marvin Jones was the last republican to run for the seat in 2022 when republicans won a supermajority in the house. Jones lost the election 60% to 40% to long time Democrat Will Wheeler, another Bishopville Democrat who surprisingly announced his resignation three days before the legislation session began in January prompted the special election.

Sometimes you can get a surprise win in a special election that historically has a lower voter turnout. We got the low turnout, but no surprises here.

15,000 voters cast ballots in 2022 vs 3,671 on Tuesday.