By
Ed Kilgore,
political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
The very former governor and congressman Mark Sanford.
The timing of South Carolina’s upcoming special Republican U.S. Senate primary is a nightmare for any candidate who needs a long runway to become known by voters. The field won’t be set until qualifying ends on July 28, the same day that the officeholder whose death created the rare Senate vacancy will be commemorated in a Washington memorial service (with services back home occurring the following day). That leaves just eight days before the brief early-voting window and then six more days before the primary. If no one wins a majority on August 11, there will be another sprint to an August 25 runoff. And this will all happen in August in South Carolina, which the devil has been known to avoid. It will take a lot of money and effort to get out the vote, and those who do show up may well be ideological zealots.
