By Skylar Laird, Kentucky Lantern · May 30, 2026

COLUMBIA — After record-smashing early voter numbers helped defeat a GOP redistricting proposal, South Carolina should at least remain the first state in the South to decide Democrats’ presidential nominee, the state’s leading Democrat and potential 2028 contenders said Friday night.

The pronouncements from U.S. Reps. Jim Clyburn, whose district Republicans sought to flip, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna of California, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear came a day after South Carolina’s Democratic Party chair made a pitch for why South Carolina should retain its spot as first in the nation on the Democratic Party’s nominating calendar.

Hundreds of Democrats at the paid Blue Palmetto Dinner and Clyburn’s free fish fry Friday night cheered as the three praised the South Carolinians who showed up to vote Tuesday in an effort to raise the stakes on a bill that would redraw the state’s congressional lines.

It worked. Five hours after polls opened, the Senate scuttled the bill despite weeks of pressure from President Donald Trump, the state Republican Party and GOP candidates for governor.

Of the 56,400 ballots cast Tuesday — far and above the previous record of 23,000 votes cast on a single day of early voting — more than 80% came from Democrats, according to state voting data.

“Thank you for the miracle you pulled off in this state,” Khanna told nearly 900 people at the annual fundraising dinner.

“If South Carolina can show this country what it means to stand up for freedom, then the (Democratic National Convention) can show South Carolina what it means to be the first in the South,” Khanna added.

He later told reporters he would also support the state party’s efforts to keep South Carolina’s first-in-the-nation status, as pitched Thursday to a panel of Democratic National Convention members.

Two Southern states should fall in the early voting window, and South Carolina should be the first of those, Beshear told reporters. He didn’t specify what he wanted the other to be.

South Carolina is among a dozen states vying for early primary spots. Among those in contention are neighboring North Carolina and Georgia.

“If our candidates can come through and can win in the South, can show that we can turn people out, that we can put together coalitions that cannot only compete in primaries but start winning in general, start flipping some of these states, then I think it’s going to create better candidates,” Beshear said.

South Carolina picks winners, Clyburn told reporters.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly thanked South Carolina voters for propelling him to the White House. It was Clyburn’s endorsement days ahead of the state’s February 2020 presidential primary that gave Biden a blow-away victory here, rescuing a campaign faltering after fourth- and fifth-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire.

If a candidate can win over Palmetto State voters, “that candidate can go on to win the presidency,” said Clyburn, the only Democrat and longest-serving member in South Carolina’s congressional delegation.

“That, to me, tells the story,” he said, without specifically saying he wants South Carolina to stay first.

Earlier at the fundraising dinner, Clyburn also thanked the Democratic legislators who fought the legislation that would have drawn him out of the district he’s represented for 34 years. The purpose of the proposed overhaul of the map was an all-Republican delegation.

“You have delivered for the people of this state and this nation in an unbelievable way,” Clyburn told them.

Democratic presidential hopefuls make a point of visiting South Carolina early, including appearances at King Day at the Dome, the annual NAACP event held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Clyburn’s “World Famous Annual Fish Fry,” held Friday night.

Hundreds of people ate the free fried fish, drank, danced and listened to speeches from Democratic candidates for office outside the children’s museum EdVenture.

Although the 2028 presidential elections didn’t come up directly Friday, Beshear and Khanna are likely among the potential candidates visiting the Palmetto State to put out feelers.

During a speech at the fundraising dinner, Beshear, the keynote speaker, promoted his own record as governor, while advocating for Democrats to continue fighting in red states like his own.

Beshear pointed to efforts in Southern states to redraw congressional districts to favor Republicans, which intensified following an April 29 U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring Louisiana’s map unconstitutional, as an example of what should motivate voters.

“As a Southern governor, I’m here to say it is wrong and we all have to push back, just like you did here in South Carolina,” Beshear told attendees of the Blue Palmetto Dinner. “Because people showed up in record numbers on the first day of early voting, Rep. Clyburn will continue fighting for the people of South Carolina.”

Ten states — Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Utah — have redrawn their maps since last year. In Democratic-controlled Virginia, voters approved new lines that aimed to flip GOP seats, but the Virginia Supreme Court threw out the redistricting amendment as unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Democrats’ emergency appeal.

The mid-decade redistricting frenzy is an effort by Republicans to keep their thin majority in the U.S. House, while Democrats fight to take control.

First in the nation

On Thursday, state Chair Christale Spain and House Assistant Minority Leader Roger Kirby made their case to a national party panel for why South Carolina’s presidential primary should stay first in 2028.

South Carolina voters have long been the first in the South to cast their ballots for presidential candidates.

But South Carolina got pushed to the front of the nominating calendar in 2024, both as a reward for catapulting Biden’s win and its diversity. Then-National Chairman Jaime Harrison, who’s from Columbia, pitched it as an opportunity for Black voters, “the heart and the backbone of the Democratic Party,” to set the agenda for 2024 and beyond.

New Hampshire ended up leapfrogging the line to vote first, but the national party didn’t recognize the Granite State’s primary and Biden refused to put his name on the ballot— allowing South Carolina to still tout its “first-in-the-nation” status. (Biden won New Hampshire anyway with a write-in campaign.)

The huge number of Democrats who cast their ballots Tuesday, the first day of early voting for the June 9 statewide primary, should prove South Carolina voters’ muster, Kirby and Spain told the panel.

“The fight is on,” Kirby, a Lake City Democrat, said Thursday. “This is not the time for you, the DNC, to take away South Carolina’s first-in-the-nation primary. It’s just not.”

Five other Southern states are rallying behind South Carolina’s effort.

In a Thursday letter, party chairs from Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia urged the Democratic National Convention to keep the Palmetto State first in recognition of the importance of Black voters, who make up a large portion of the state’s party.

“When South Carolina goes first, we send a message to the nation that the Democratic Party will not retreat from its commitment to multiracial democracy, even as the courts and the Republican Party work in concert to undermine it,” the letter read.

South Carolina’s voters, who encompass a diverse cross-section of people, are a blueprint for Democrats nationwide, Spain told the panel.

The state is “big enough to test candidates and small enough for voters to actually meet them,” she said.

“It’s no secret that the potential 2028 candidates are already testing the waters in some states,” Spain said. “We have 46 counties in South Carolina, and our voters in 20 of those counties have already had the opportunity to meet potential 2028 hopefuls.”

Regardless of New Hampshire skipping the line in 2024, South Carolina voters didn’t have the chance to really shine that year because Biden, at the time of the primary, was guaranteed to win, Spain said. Biden’s competition on the ballot fully expected to be trounced.

Giving the state another year at the front of the calendar would allow the state to “battle test” the candidates in 2028, she said.

“This decision is bigger than South Carolina,” Spain said. “It’s about whether the Democratic Party will stand with the voters who have stood with the party through everything.”