Democrats confirm Wingard as candidate in S.C. House 63 race

The S.C. Democratic Party has confirmed that Barry Wingard will be its nominee to face incumbent Republican Kris Crawford in the S.C. House 63 contest this fall.

“I’m really glad that maybe this will put this issue to bed and we can get on with this race,” Wingard said.

The S.C. Republican Party was seeking to have Wingard removed from the ballot in the state House District 63 race because it said Wingard failed to file by the deadline.

Crawford is seeking a second term representing the district in Florence County.

“While I welcome Mr. Wingard on the ballot, I do find it troubling that the Democratic party would place someone on the ballot while clearly admitting that the rule of law wasn’t followed,” Crawford said.

Wingard said in a previous interview that the county Democratic Party’s filing offices were closed when he arrived around 11 a.m. March 30, about an hour before the filing deadline.

The Republican Party says that Wingard’s paperwork shows he filed for office at 1:35 p.m. March 30, although filing ended at noon that day.

Wingard said Tuesday that he’s had to explain to several voters and campaign donors a day that he is still a candidate for the House seat.

State Democratic party chairwoman Carol Fowler said none of the confusion on the deadline day was Wingard’s fault and that she doesn’t blame the county party, either.

“It’s our belief that he did, as a candidate, everything that he was supposed to do,” she said.

The state Republican party stands by its assertion that Wingard shouldn’t be on the ballot, party spokesman Rob Godfrey said.

“This an example of Democrats in South Carolina doing and saying anything in an act of desperation to regain a footing, and it’s not going to work,” Godfrey said.

State Republican leaders will meet with their legal team to decide what their next step should be, Godfrey said.

A state attorney general’s ruling states that an elections commission has no authority to determine whether a candidate has properly filed, S.C. State Elections Commission spokesman Garry Baum said. The state commission has provided the opinion to both political parties, Baum said.

Florence County Elections Director Mike Young, now serving an unpaid suspension for unrelated matters, said in May that when he received Wingard’s paperwork, he told Florence County Democratic Party chairman Spencer Scott that the forms hadn’t been filed on time.

Scott then said the time on the paperwork was incorrect because of a clerical error and changed it to 11:35 a.m., he wrote in a letter to the state elections commission.

Young said that procedure was nothing unusual and that he would have done the same thing for the Republicans.

Scott said in May that Wingard had done the necessary paperwork on time, but the filing location hadn’t been opened at the correct hour.

Scott also said the county Democratic Party had thought the filing office had to be open for four hours on March 30, but was unaware that those hours had to run from 8 a.m. to noon. Therefore, he said, the county party had advertised that filing would run from noon until 4 p.m. that day.

Wingard said in May that he called Scott nearly a half-hour after arriving at the filing office. The county party’s official filing officer Barbara Gardner later arrived to accept his statement of intention for candidacy.