Isle of Palms Spring 2016

more time in Columbia, but, in 1972, the Democratic Party

nominated George McGovern as its candidate for president,

and he was just too liberal for Hartnett.

“I fell out with the Democrats,” Hartnett explained.

“My name was already on the ballot for the June (Dem-

ocratic) primary when I went to a meeting and they were

asking all the candidates who they were planning on

voting for for president. I couldn’t lie. I said ‘I’m voting

for Richard Nixon, and if me voting for Nixon means

I don’t get your vote for the Statehouse, then keep your

vote. I quit.’”

Local Republicans quickly recruited Hartnett to run

for the State Senate, and, when he and future Gov. James

B. Edwards won their seats, half of the Charleston-area

Senate delegation was on the Republican side of the

aisle. After two terms in the Senate, he was ready for

a new challenge. When U.S. Rep. Mendel Davis an-

nounced that he would not seek re-election in 1980,

Hartnett set his sights on Washington, D.C., and the

U.S. House of Representatives.

The last time voters had sent a Republican to the

House from Charleston was during the post-Civil War

Reconstruction era in 1876, when African-American

Joseph Rainey was re-elected to his fourth term. Recon-

struction ended the following year when federal troops

were withdrawn from the South and Rainey was defeated

in the election of 1878.

Mr. Hartnett Goes to WasHinGton

While Ronald Reagan was changing the national

political landscape with his landslide victory in 1980,

Tommy Hartnett was doing some landscaping of his own

back in Charleston. In running for Congress in the 1st

District, he was challenging 102 years of Democratic

Bonnie and Tommy Hartnett with President Richard Nixon.

Photo provided by Tommy Hartnett.