Forget seat warmers. Get the man we want in so he’s in. An open seat means be could lose to some douche and that no one viable will consider running against Graham in the primary.
And while I HATE creating House vacancies, we won’t lose that seat.
The SC seat I’d worry about is SC-07. The non-viable Black democrat from Georgia did as well as Obama in the district, they might have won with a better candidate.
The SC-07 has the second-largest black population in the state (after the black-majority SC-06) and held Romney to 54.5%, so it is as Republican as the state as a whole (Romney got 54.6% statewide). The fact that the black liberal Democrat from GA who ran for Congress in SC-07 basically matched Obama’s vote percentage should not surprise anyone, since Democrats not turned off by Obama wouldn’t oppose her either. And while some good-ol’-boy “moderate” Democrat (if he can win the nomination despite blacks and liberals forming a large majority of the Dem primary electorate) might increase the Dems’ percentage of the white vote, Congressman Rice has two advantages going forward: (i) 2014 is a non-presidential year, and black turnout will be much lower, and (ii) in 2016 and beyond, he’ll be fairly entrenched, plus black turnout is unlikely to match 2012 levels without Obama on the ballot (plus Horry County is growing so fast that the white percentage of the CD’s population probably will grow).