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 County results Thurmond: 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% Ravenel: 50–60% | |||||||||||||||||
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| Elections in South Carolina |
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The 1978 South Carolina United States Senate election was held on November 7, 1978, to select the U.S. senator from the state of South Carolina. Popular incumbent Republican Senator Strom Thurmond defeated Democratic challenger Charles D. Ravenel.
The South Carolina Democratic Party held their primary for governor on June 13, 1978. Charles D. Ravenel, an unsuccessful candidate in the 1974 gubernatorial contest, originally planned to run for governor again in 1978, but was convinced by Vice President Walter Mondale in 1977 to run for senator. He garnered over 50% of the vote in the primary and avoided a runoff election.
| Democratic Primary | ||
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Votes | % |
| Charles D. Ravenel | 205,348 | 55.9% |
| John Bolt Culbertson | 69,184 | 18.9% |
| Tom Triplett | 50,957 | 13.9% |
| Tom McElveen | 41,550 | 11.3% |
Senator Strom Thurmond faced no opposition from South Carolina Republicans and avoided a primary election.
Thurmond generally ignored Ravenel on the campaign and refused to debate him. When they did cross paths, Thurmond criticized Ravenel for never having held a political office. Ravenel did not help his cause by his actions in the 1974 gubernatorial race when he refused to endorse the Democratic nominee after he had been disqualified. This irritated many Democrats and they also accused him of being nothing more than a liberal New Yorker. Age was beginning to become an issue with Thurmond, so to combat perceptions of old age, Thurmond often appeared with his children on the campaign trail. While 1978 was generally a Democratic year, Thurmond was able to pull off a commanding victory over Ravenel.
Thurmond, having first been elected on a segregationist platform in the 1950s, had somewhat moderated his racial views in the 1970s, having hired African American staffers, championed grants to black colleges and businesses, voted in favor of extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and established scholarships for black students at four South Carolina colleges with religious affiliations. That garnered him the endorsement of 10 of South Carolina's 11 African American mayors. In addition, Isaac W. Williams, the Field Director of the state's NAACP chapter, did not outright endorse him, but considered what Thurmond would do for the Black community in 1978 more important than his actions in the 1940s and 1950s, saying that "if voters just try to punish a politician for the sins of the past, what does it profit him to improve?" thus also managing to increase his African American support.[1]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Strom Thurmond (incumbent) | 351,733 | 55.56% | -7.73% | |
| Democratic | Charles D. Ravenel | 281,119 | 44.40% | +7.71% | |
| No party | Write-Ins | 257 | 0.04% | N/A | |
| Majority | 70,614 | 11.15% | -15.45% | ||
| Turnout | 633,109 | 57.7% | -7.5% | ||
| Republican hold | |||||
