Free Republic

HOUSTON, Texas - Today, Former South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon endorsed Ted Cruz for President. A two-term AG in the Palmetto State, Condon led in guaranteeing constitutional rights for victims of crime. He served as John McCain's South Carolina Co-Chair in 2008, George Bush’s South Carolina Co-Chairman in 2000, and South Carolina Chairman for Bob Dole in 1996."Ted Cruz's fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law makes him a welcome figure after eight years of Obama's lawlessness," said Condon. "No one has fought harder to protect the rights and freedoms of Americans than Ted Cruz. From Texas...

COLUMBIA - Former S.C. Gov. David Beasley is expected to announce today that he is jumping into an already-crowded pool of candidates for the U.S. Senate seat that will come open when Fritz Hollings retires at the end of this year. Beasley, 46, a Republican who was defeated for re-election in 1998, has called a 1 p.m. news conference in Columbia. GOP sources say Beasley has already told a number of people that he will make the race. The former governor would neither confirm nor deny that in a telephone interview Tuesday from Darlington, S.C. But he did say, "I'll...

Inez Tenenbaum offers Democrats their best hope of hanging on to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Fritz Hollings, experts say. The only question is, can the state superintendent of education pull it off in a state that has been trending Republican for the past 10 years? The GOP holds the governorship, controls both houses of the General Assembly and has a lock on four of the state’s six congressional seats, as well as the other U.S. Senate post. Tenenbaum faces a tough road. “In South Carolina in 2004, she’s going to have an uphill fight,” Winthrop...

With not a campaign poster or bumper sticker in sight, former S.C. Attorney General Charlie Condon announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate Tuesday with a 30-minute speech on the war on terrorism. "Winning this war is the central calling of our time and the central problem of the 21st century," Condon said in the address, in which he mentioned his candidacy only twice. "As a United States senator from South Carolina, I would make it my foremost mission to ensure that freedom is safeguarded at home and nurtured abroad." Condon spoke at The Citadel's alumni house before a crowd...

<p>Two Republican U.S. Senate candidates are in the $1 million fund-raising ballpark and a third said Wednesday he logged the best quarter of his political career.</p> <p>Rep. Jim DeMint of Greenville raised approximately $600,000 from April through June for a campaign total of "just under or over" $1 million, said Barry Wynn of Spartanburg, a former state GOP chairman and a DeMint finance committee leader.</p>

Washington U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings will not run for re-election if his party can find another strong candidate, the 81-year-old Democrat indicated Tuesday. "I'd love to have a candidate that would run, a Democrat candidate," said Hollings, who was first elected to the Senate in 1966. "I've been trying my best for 10 years to find one that will run." Hollings has given S.C. Democratic Party chairman Joe Erwin permission to shop for another Senate candidate. "I told him, 'You go ahead and look,'" Hollings said Tuesday outside the Senate chamber. Asked whether his talk with Erwin and his hope...

Condon plans to run for U.S. Senate seatThe chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee says he won't challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings in 2004, but a fellow Lowcountry Republican says he will. Rep. Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, said Wednesday that family concerns and his senior position on the powerful budget-writing committee led him to decide against a run for the U.S. Senate. Harrell, who has served in the General Assembly since 1992, did not rule out seeking high office sometime later. Former S.C. Attorney General Charlie Condon, however, said he expects to declare his candidacy officially...

Charlie Condon thinks the state is stealing from you. Every time you pay your property taxes, he says, state officials are taking money they don't deserve. And if you fail to pay those taxes, they can take your property, which, by definition, means you're only renting anything you own. "To me, property taxes are immoral and need to be ended," the Republican gubernatorial candidate told several hundred Sun City residents Wednesday afternoon. Condon, the state's attorney general, said the elimination of property taxes is the central plank of his campaign. He vowed not to run for a second term if...

A Palmetto Journal analysis of contributions to federal candidates over the past 20 years by Republican gubernatorial candidates turned up some interesting facts. The two most notable ones involved Lieutenant Governor Bob Peeler and Attorney General Charlie Condon. When both were nominated for their current positions in 1994, an article in The State pointed out that the top 3 GOP nominees (including David Beasley) had all been Democrats less than 5 years before. In 1988, Al Gore ran for President as a moderate Democrat. In fact, at that point Gore's voting record indicated him to be staunchly pro-life (before his...

Another website, Upstate Common Voice, reported today that Sen. John Hawkins would be dropping out of the Attorney General's race either today or Tuesday. As of Monday evening, no such announcement has taken place. In fact, sources close to the situation tell us that no such announcement is forthcoming on Tuesday either. As we told you yesterday (3/10), Larry Richter had a quot;colorfulquot; time as a circuit court judge. Several issues came up when Richter appeared before the Judicial Screening Committee prior to what would have been his re-election campaign in the General Assembly. The issue that attracted the most...