Mandy Powers Norrell

Tue, Oct. 14, 2008
By RODDIE BURRIS 

The State

Three S.C. women have three weeks to press their cases to voters for seats in the state Senate, the outcome determining whether the chamber returns to its single-gender roots.

Lancaster attorney Mandy Powers Norrell, Sumter school board member Karen Michalik and former Lexington County Rep. Margaret Gamble face similar challenges in snagging a seat in the 46-member chamber, if different odds.

The Senate has not been all-male since 1980, when Elizabeth Patterson, who later served in Congress, took a seat in the state Senate. This year began with two female senators.

But, Chester Sen. Linda Short, a Democrat, retired and Beaufort Sen. Catherine Ceips, a Republican, was defeated in the June primaries.

Already, South Carolina was the lowest-ranking state in the country for electing women. The prospects for change are shaky at best.

It’s ironic “that women make up 52 percent of the voters in South Carolina, and vote in even higher numbers, somewhere around 60 percent, but fail to turn out and support each other,” said Barbara Zia, president of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina.

The lack of elected women exists across all levels of government and is steeped in history.

“It’s not just the General Assembly,” Zia noted. “There are no (elected) women in federal or constitutional office in South Carolina.”

THE BEST SHOT

Norrell, a Democrat and newcomer to elective politics, seeks to fill the open Senate seat vacated by the retirement this year of four-term Republican Greg Gregory. She faces Rep. Mick Mulvaney in a burgeoning Upstate Senate district marked by explosive growth in both Lancaster County and the Fort Mill area of York County.

A bankruptcy lawyer, Norrell is locked in a fierce battle against Mulvaney over using public money to pay for private school — an issue magnified by financial strains that have been placed on the district due to growth and the Legislature’s change this year that shifts school funding from property taxes to sales tax.

Republican Mulvaney, a real estate developer who received the second-highest financial contribution from controversial New York benefactor Howard Rich, supports school choice through vouchers and tax credits.

Norrell opposes using public money to support private schools in any form, and said it is the seminal issue that caused her to run for office.

“I think it would be very bad for our state if the Senate were all-male,” said Norrell, whom political pundits give the best chance of gender-integrating the body in January 2009. “Women offer a vital perspective and I think it would be a shame not to have that perspective available.”

THE LONG SHOTS

While winning elective office is always a dicey issue in the Palmetto State, Republicans Michalik and Gamble face even more daunting odds. They will need to unseat — in a general election — two of the Senate’s longest-serving incumbents, Sen. Phil Leventis of Sumter and Sen. Nikki Setzler of West Columbia, both Democrats.

“It’s a tough mountain to climb,” Michalilk acknowledges, feeling the strains of the challenge she faces in taking on Leventis. “Where are all the people who so support women in politics in South Carolina?” she asks rhetorically.

School district consolidation is the issue Michalik mentions most, pointing out she differs with her opponent, Leventis, on the issue.

“I’m for term limits,” she said Monday, preparing for a debate with Leventis, who has served in the Senate since 1981.

It’s not just name recognition and incumbency that newcomers like Michalik have to overcome this year, however. A self-professed independent all her life, Michalik is running as a Republican in a heavily Democratic district.

Sumter County and portions of Lee County, which make up House District 35, are Democratic strongholds. Michalik said new voter registrations in Sumter County have doubled since 2004. She suspects that favors Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, and, she fears, helps other Democrats on the ballot.

“It’s a real battle to get people to split their vote,” Michalik said half-jokingly, “but please know they can vote for Barack Obama, and for Karen Michalik.”

IT’S ‘UNLADY-LIKE’

Rep. Joan Brady, R-Richland, who chairs the General Assembly’s Women’s Caucus and is one of the Legislature’s most vocal supporters of increased female representation, said it is tough running for office — and even tougher for women.

“The problem is paternalism here in South Carolina,” she said. “Running for office is considered very unlady-like.” The fact that a woman has to leave her home and family for at least three days a week to come to Columbia makes the job harder, she said.

Brady thinks the sacrifice is worth it.

“Women do bring a consciousness and a sensibility, particularly to issues that affect family and children. We are mothers, we are sisters, we are daughters — there are so many issues that affect the family.”

Brady said women will need to break those paternalistic tendencies, step up and step out if they are to successfully impact government on any level.

Gamble, of West Columbia, who served in the House from 1992 to 2000, is an example. However, she faces Setzler, a conservative, incumbent Democrat first elected to the Senate in 1977 in one of the most conservative counties in the state.

Gamble said such incumbency allows Setzler to amass a war chest that she, nor most women in the state, would be able to compete against.

“I’m not running because I’m a woman, but I am certainly qualified to run and I think women deserve a place at the table.”

Gamble said the thought of a woman-less state Senate is “alarming.”

“If a woman is not elected, it’s not because people don’t think (a woman) can do the job.”