SC voters concerned about four big issues

If you want to know what the biggest election-year issue is in South Carolina, you only have to look at a local office of the state Employment Security Commission. Unemployed South Carolinians have been there, wall-to-wall, since before the latest Wall Street collapse put the economy at the forefront of the presidential campaign.

The state's current unemployment rate of 7.6 percent is the highest it's been in 15 years. Only four states have a higher unemployment rate.

Shelbey Bookert was in the Columbia Employment Security Commission office Monday faxing out resumes. She's been out of work for more than four months after the lawyer she worked for had to close his doors because of the economy.

"Hopefully, things will get better," she says. "I pray it will, 'cause it's tough. I mean, what are we to do? We have bills, you know. We have children we have to support." She's a single mom with three children to take care of. She says she'll definitely be voting in November, basing her choices on who she thinks can turn around the economy nationally and at the state level.

Another major issue for voters is related to the economy. Gas prices around $4 a gallon have forced many drivers, like Terrainio McNeil of Columbia, to cut back in other areas. "It's no more movies, no more going out to eat, no more little recreational things that they do have around this city. It's everything's cut out," he says. He's worried because he's got four-week-old twins to support.

But Flo Patchman of Lexington is concerned about another issue that, for her, is a matter of life and death. She has high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis and arthritis.

"If I had to pay for my medicine every month, it's more than what I make a month. So I couldn't afford to take it," she says. "And my mother died at 48 from the same problems I've got now because she couldn't afford her medications."

Patchman gets her medicine now from a state program called Communi-Care. But she makes too much money to qualify for Medicaid and she doesn't get health insurance through her job. "Health care should be a big issue," she says, adding that it will be when she goes to vote.

South Carolina has 16.2 percent of its population without health insurance compared to the national average of 15.3 percent. We're one of only 18 states above the national average for percentage of people without coverage.

But for Pam Shepard, all of the other issues won't matter much if our nation isn't secure. Her husband, Greg, is in the Army and is in Iraq. "Even though I miss him and I really, I worry for his safety along with everyone else, there's things that need to be done over there and completed. And that's what they're trying to do," she says. For her, national security is the number one issue of the coming elections.

She says, "Look at 9/11. No one ever expected that to happen. Not here, and it did. So I think it's very important and it should be important to everyone."