Voters throw all Republican women out of South Carolina Senate

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The only three Republican women in the South Carolina Senate stood up to their party and stopped a total abortion ban in their state last year, only to lose their jobs in return.

Voters unseated Senators Sandy Senn, Penry Gustafson and Katrina Shealy in the sparsely turned out June primaries, completely evicting the Republican wing of the five-member “Sister Senators,” a female contingent that included two Democrats and joined in opposing the abortion ban.

For Republicans, the departures of Senn, Gustafson and Shealy likely mean there will be no women in the Senate majority party when the next session begins in 2025. It could also mean women will be without power for decades in the fiercely conservative state, where they have long struggled to gain legislative seats.

How scarce has the political influence of women been in South Carolina historically? Tiny portraits of every woman who has ever served in the 170-seat General Assembly in its 250-year history fit on a poster hanging just outside the governor’s office.

The sudden departure of Republican women poses a potential power problem, because the Senate allocates influence and responsibility to the majority party based on seniority. Half of the members in the GOP-dominated state were elected in 2012 or earlier, so it will likely take until the 2040s for a Republican woman to ascend to leadership or committee chairships in the future.

South Carolina Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, right, speaks with Sen. Michael Johnson, R-Tega Cay, the morning after she lost her runoff election Wednesday, June 26, 2024, in Columbia, S.C. Shealy and two other Republican female senators were all voted out of office in their party’s primaries. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Jeffrey Collins

“Women, someone else will have to step up. Someone else will have to come and set things right,” Senn said in her farewell speech on June 26.

Unless a woman wins a race in a district dominated by the other party in November, there will be just two women in South Carolina’s 46-member Senate when the 126th session begins in January. No other state in the country has fewer women in its upper chamber, according to the Center for American Women in Politics. Women make up 55% of the state’s registered voters.

That gap should be alarming to everyone in South Carolina, said Sen. Tameika Isaac Devine, who won her seat in a special election this year, becoming the sixth member of the Sister Senators. Next year, Devine and fellow Democratic Sen. Margie Bright Matthews will likely be the only women in the chamber.

“As much empathy as men can have, they haven’t had babies. They haven’t had hysterectomies. They haven’t had to deal with the health care issues or the community issues that we deal with every day,” Devine said.

Rather than banning abortions outright, South Carolina ultimately opted for a ban once cardiac activity is detected, typically after six weeks of pregnancy.

Thereafter, the three Sister Senators — followed by two Democrats — gained international fame. Cover stories and TV appearances culminated in the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award for people who risk their careers for the greater good.

But there was another side to that attention. Strict abortion opponents put up billboards and sent out flyers in their districts calling the three Republicans “baby killers.”

“When you’re on CNN and you’re on MSNBC and you’re on the front page of the New York Times and the front page of the Washington Post, you’re repeatedly sticking your finger in the eye of a lot of conservative people,” said Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey.

Massey said abortion wasn’t the only issue facing the Republican Sister Senators. “Their opponents have done a good job of portraying them all as weak and out of touch,” he said.

Voters in Lexington County, a conservative suburb west of Columbia, said they couldn’t trust Shealy after electing her three times.

“She lost me on the abortion vote,” Alexis Monts said. “And I don’t think I have to just pick a woman who is going to be equally represented.”

Historically, the South Carolina Senate has been worse for women. There were no women from 2009 to 2013, when Shealy was first elected. Her goals were to protect veterans, women, families, children and other vulnerable groups.

In her 12 years in the Senate, Shealy has had a major impact. Thirty-eight of her bills have passed, including those requiring investigations into every suspicious infant death, banning minimum wages for people with disabilities, and requiring the state to come up with a plan to address rising dementia rates. No senator has passed more legislation in recent years.

“We’ve helped children, we’ve helped families, we’ve helped disabled people. We’ve helped women, we’ve helped veterans,” Shealy said after her second-round loss. “And what I’m so worried about is who’s going to do that now?”

Shealy has made small changes, too. The ladies’ restrooms in the Senate Office Building were gray and drab when she arrived. She brought her own art and trinkets and stocked them with lotions and other items.

It’s all been an attempt to force change in a General Assembly where women are often minimized and forgotten. On Shealy’s first day in 2013, the session opened with, “Gentlemen of the Senate, please rise.”

Annoyed, the leadership changed it to “gentlemen and lady of the Senate.” Shealy said that was also disparaging, because it suggested there were different levels of membership. Sessions now begin with “members of the Senate.”

Shealy often looked at the walls of the Senate chamber and saw not a single woman honored with a portrait.

“You can see how hard it is by some of the comments that some of the people in the lobby have made. Things like, ‘Women are not fit to serve,’ that ‘God doesn’t want us here,'” Shealy said during the abortion debate last year. “Well, God is pretty smart. If God didn’t want us here, I’m sure we wouldn’t be here.”

A group called SC Women in Leadership is in its sixth year of encouraging women to run for office. They train Democrats and Republicans to be better candidates in local and state races and support them when they are elected. But they said it will take time to get more women into office. Shealy didn’t win her first race. And neither did fellow Republican Gustafson.

Each of the Republican sister senators said the GOP is tougher on women because of conservative ideas about gender roles. A man finds problems. A woman complains. A man is forceful and decisive. A woman is bossy and pushy.

“Sometimes it can be exhausting. I felt like I was always being judged in a way that my friends who are Democrats aren’t,” Gustafson said after her primary loss.

As she gave her farewell speech, Shealy pulled out the $36,000 lantern trophy that the Profile in Courage group gives to its winners. Her four original Sister Senators—only Matthews, who returns next session—ran to her aid as she struggled a bit to get the trophy out of the case.

“Here it is. And it’s beautiful. And I’m proud of it. I’m proud that I lost this Senate race just to get this because I stood up for what was right. I stood up for women. I stood up for children. I stood up for South Carolina. And all of these sister senators with me, we’re not ashamed,” Shealy said.

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