Actions Speak Louder Than Words: SC Legislators’ Voting Histories

BY STEVE NUZUM

It’s a standard complaint that politicians lie. 

Of course, politicians are just people, and like people in general, some are more honest than others. In an election year, the pressure to tell constituents what they want to hear is intense, and the electoral process often rewards those willing to say whatever they need to say to gain or keep an office-- particularly in a state as heavily gerrymandered as South Carolina.

That’s why voting records are essential. 

In South Carolina, every candidate who has held previous office in the state House or Senate has an easily-accessible voting record. I’ve created a spreadsheet including some of the votes our incumbent legislators have taken since 2018, but full voting records are available through the SC Legislature website. (Click on the website, go to either the House or Senate tab, choose an individual legislator, and see their entire voting history, as well as any bills they sponsored. You can also use the “Quick Search” bar on the homepage to find individual bills, choose “full text,” and click on “legislative information” in the bill history to see how every representative and senator voted-- or didn’t vote-- on that particular bill.) 

This is a process that helps understand the real priorities and tendencies of every incumbent candidate. But since ballots vary across the state, let’s take a moment to review and compare the voting records of Senate Education Chair Greg Hembree and House Education and Public Works Chair Shannon Erickson.   

Senator Greg Hembree

Senator Hembree generally presents himself as someone who values and understands public education, and in my interactions with him, this has seemed to be mostly sincere.  When he was in my classroom, for example, he shared with me that he didn’t think book bans should be a priority, and seemed concerned about teacher retention-- even if he also told my students teachers were partly to blame for driving off prospective employees by gossiping in “the teacher’s lounge”. Still, though he was opposed to the quick passage of Superintendent Weaver’s book censorship regulation, he ultimately voted for a third reading of H. 3728, the censorship bill which narrowly failed to pass last year, in part due to a disagreement between the Freedom Caucus and mainstream conservatives in the conference committee.

And the rest of Hembree’s voting record gives a clearer idea of his version of being pro-education. During the most recent session, Hembree voted in favor-- along with most of the House-- of H. 4624, a bill that expands the controversial Read to Succeed law and requires school staff to out students, S.418, a bill that restricts the methods educators can use to teach reading and in favor of S. 39, a voucher bill which was ultimately ruled partly unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court. (That decision was upheld after an appeal from Weaver’s Department of Education.) 

Hembree has a history of voting in favor of voucher bills, including S. 935 during the 2021-22 session. He personally sponsored at least two voucher bills (labeled as “education savings account” bills) during the 2019-20 session), and at least once voucher bill during the 2018-19 session. The language from at least some of these bills came from the anti-regulation, pro-voucher “bill mill” American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). 

Hembree also voted in favor of the controversial education “omnibus” bill S. 419-- a bill opposed by enough teachers that it was a major factor in the 10,000-person march on the SC State House in 2019. (At the time, Hembree was willing to meet with teachers to discuss their concerns, but told at least one group that, essentially, they did not understand the bill because they were “specialists” in education, while he was a “generalist”.)

Representative Shannon Erickson

Erickson, also, has tended to present herself as pro-public education. But her voting record, like Hembree’s, suggests that she has priorities that regularly stand in opposition to those of many educators.

Like Hembree, she voted in favor of last session’s forced outing and school voucher language, and for the Read to Succeed expansion. And Erickson is arguably much more of an explicit voucher promoter than Hembree.

She was even credited by Palmetto Promise’s Oran Smith as introducing the term “education savings account” to the state. Her voting record is sometimes hard to parse, because she has missed a very large number of votes due to absence.  She has been absent more than twice as much as Hembree during all of at least the last three legislative sessions, although they hold similar roles and both live in coastal areas distant from Columbia. (On at least a few occasions, she or the House Journal have cited “medical reasons” to explain her absences.)

For example, though Erickson promised at the start of last session to bring a version of the previous session’s controversial anti- “CRT” bill (aimed primarily at restricting the teaching of African American history) to the full House, Erickson missed multiple votes on one of the bills that resulted from this promise, H. 5183.

However, she has repeatedly voted throughout her career in favor of school vouchers. She has also voted in favor of amending the State Constitution to allow the direct funding of private and religious schools (suggesting that she knew her many voucher bills likely violated the State Constitution’s explicit prohibition against doing exactly this).

What can you do with this information?

Partly due to SC’s widespread and documented partisan gerrymandering, both Erickson and Hembree have long enjoyed fairly safe seats. Hembree is currently running unopposed after his challenger withdrew from the race. Erickson notably does have a challenger this time around, Melinda Henrickson, co-founder of Families Against Book Bans (FABB).   

But beyond voting, this information is important for pushing back on candidates who tend to skate by with slogans and generalizations. If we take Hembree and Erickson at their word, they would like to help teachers, and care about the ongoing teacher recruitment and retention crises afflicting the state. They need to be reminded that their actions speak louder than their words, and that educators and education supporters are watching those actions.  

It’s also important to look at bills which didn’t make it far, but which demonstrate efforts by sponsors. For example, Senator Mike Fanning introduced a bill to address SC’s problematic teacher contract rules. The bill died in Senator Hembree’s Education Committee without a vote by the full Senate. Similarly, Representative Neal Collins introduced a bill to limit teacher “other duties as assigned”; it died in Representative Erickson’s Education and Public Works Committee without a vote by the House. Conversely, led by the Freedom Caucus, Representatives Long, McCravy, Burns, Magnuson, Chumley, Pace, Kilmartin, Beach, Harris, Leber, Nutt, Hartnett and Oremus sponsored a bill that would make the budget proviso explicitly cited in the banning of books like Between the World and Me, a part of permanent law. 

And, most importantly, if you are voting in one of South Carolina’s many contested races on November 5 (see your candidates here), you can use legislators’ voting records to help yourself and anyone else who values your opinion make an informed decision.