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Jim Clyburn and 3 challengers seek 6th District noms
COLUMBIA — The primary races for South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District suddenly are much more straightforward.
With the death last week of the Republican Statehouse effort to redraw the state’s congressional maps, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn’s chances to retain the seat he’s held since 1993 remained strong.
He faces one challenger for the Democrat nomination in Frederick Goodwin, who ran unsuccessfully last year for a town council seat in the small Orangeburg County town of Santee.
On the Republican side, John Peterson, a banquet supervisor for Embassy Suites at the North Charleston Convention Center, faces off against Maurice Washington, who served on Charleston City Council from 1991 to 1999 and as a former chairman of the Charleston County Republican Party.
The district includes parts of Charleston, Colleton, Dorchester, Florence, Jasper, Orangeburg, Richland and Sumter counties and all of Allendale, Bamberg, Calhoun, Clarendon, Hampton, and Williamsburg counties.
In announcing earlier this year that he would seek re-election, Clyburn, 85, told reporters that experience in Washington matters.
“The Bible says that the young are called because of their strength and the older, because of their knowledge,” the state’s only Democrat in Congress said, adding he believed there should be an adequate balance of both for a society to be successful.
“What would you prefer to have?” he asked. “An older Thurgood Marshall? Or a younger Clarence Thomas?”
Clyburn’s commitment to seek an 18th term comes amid a historic exodus of members from Congress. As of this winter, some 56 incumbent members of the House of Representatives — 35 Republicans and 21 Democrats — say they will not seek re-election this cycle, many of whom had been in office for decades.
Among those departing include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat with whom Clyburn served as House Majority Whip in the final half of President Donald Trump’s first term.
Goodwin didn’t respond to The Post and Courier’s requests for information about his candidacy and has no campaign website or social media available.
On the Republican side, Peterson’s campaign website emphasizes that he worked for President Trump in 2020 in North Carolina.
His site states that he would “support the Trump agenda and Prevent the Democrats from impeaching President Trump.”
The site also puts forward that he would require voter ID in an effort to “fight for free and fair elections” and that he would support DOGE and other work to uncover fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.
Washington’s campaign told The Post and Courier that his decision to run for Congress comes “from a conviction that too many communities in the district have been left behind economically, despite decades of political promises and billions in federal spending.”
His campaign said residents of the 6th District “deserve leadership focused on measurable results, expanded economic opportunity, stronger infrastructure, educational advancement, and real accountability.”