Transit Hostility Cost Sanford Reelection

Mark Sanford, June 9 Summerville Farmers market

Soon to be former Congressman Mark Sanford introduced three bills in the US Congress to defund public Transit. He never came to the support of CARTA or Tri County Link when seeking federal funds for local transit projects. The critical Bus Rapid Transit project, with over 3 million dollars and twenty years of planning was stalled because everyone knew he wouldn't support getting federal matching funds.

The cost of Sanford's twenty years indifference to the Lowcountry's growing mobilty deficit and traffic congestion only began to tell when local transit advocates first with Hungryneck Straphangers, later with Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit (both nonprofits) and finally with Political Action Committee Up is Good, began to inform the public of what Sanford's actions were costing them.

Transit Education at Citadel Mall Bus Stop, 6:15 am

The Lowcountry, conservative and liberal, rich and poor, and black, white and hispanic wants better public transit. In the November 2016 referendum the issue never was do we need a better transit system, but could we trust the politicians with 600 million dollars in sales tax funding. (The answer to that is no longer in dispute, you can't.). What you can do is fight to be sure that money, once made available by the voters and taxpayers, is protected and preserved for the purpose for which they granted it.

Even after Charleston County voters approved 250 million dollars to build the bus rapid transit line from Summerville to Charleston, Sanford didn't come around. We delivered stacks of information to his office. We brought him petitions. We held demonstrations on the sidewalk in front of his office in Mt. Pleasant.  We distributed over 10 thousand pieces of literature, face to face on his unwilingness to do a job which conservative Congressmen representing his district like Mendel Rivers or Arthur Ravenel would have been happy to do. Letting federal transit money go to Texas or Florida doesn't' reduce the deficit. It just means federal dollars will help them move while we stand still.

Dimitri Cherny, Right in Blue

To his credit, even up to Saturday June 9 at the Summerville Farmer's Market and on King Street the Following day, when he was under extreme pressure, Sanford was always cordial and polite to us. I never ceased to be amazed at his capacity to let our most pointed criticisms roll of his back and extend a friendly hand. I never did dislike him personally.

However his actions leave tens of thousands of people we've vowed to represent in misery, standing in the rain for 22 year old buses which come once an hour. Shivering in the winter cold and broiling in the summer heat where there are no shelters. CARTA's excuse was always that they had no money. Sanford wouldn't help. After a while, CARTA wouldn't ask. Our Transit system shrank to half it's original size. It retreated from area beaches. It fractured barely tolerable routes like the 40 so waiting and transfers were required. Finally, in part to deal with increasing congestion in summer of 2016 it cut service and ridership has been falling since under part time CARTA Exectutive Director Ron Mitchum

Skyelynn, Louise Brown & Julia Hamilton (red)

Sanford's bad example of neglecting transit soon inspired others.  Charleston County Council and municipal governments decided to take 11 million dollars in precious bus transit half penny regressive sales tax money, wrested from the pockets of working people and use it as an interest free loan for road construction in a secretly approved "Pay Go" Plan which finances cheaper road construction, mostly in areas of Suburban sprawl by leaving bus riders waiting hundreds of hours per year for a slow, disconnected transit trip.  We call that plan, "We Pay, You Go."

In the South everyone is taught to believe we're so divided and dysfunctional that nothing anyone does will ever make a difference. We wait on "them" to take care of us like a field hand at the Twelve Oaks Bar-B-Que in Gone with the Wind hoping Melanie Wilkes will hand them a chicken leg. That's a lie that died with large scale interstate migration, the internet and education from elsewhere. If you grow up in a poor community in Allendale, got to school there and never log on to a web page, that is still true. If you are a conservative 25 year old kid from Maryland who graduated from the College of Charleston and is stuck in a dead end F&B job downtown with three roommates and no way to get out to Folly Beach viewing your citizenship as a pointless waiting game dependent on the charity of people you didn't go to high school with makes no sense to you.

Dominic Brown, at Mt. Pleasant Town Hall

We found those people, thousands of them over the past three years. Since they don't come to meetings, we got fast with our tablets. I've endured this BRT video hundreds of times, but each time the only question anyone asked after they finished it (and often before) was "when?"

When they voted yesterday some of them stayed in the Democratic Primary where winner Joe Cunningham already supports transit and has taken the bus with us. After we talked to 10 thousand people in six days about voting in the Republican primary for better transit, some of them were wiling to vote for oursider Dimitri Cherny, a solid supporter of transit who occasionally dressed as an alien and talked about Planet B. Others just said they weren't going to vote for Sanford. His refusal to support transit projects they needed and were now paying sales taxes to build, enraged people.

On Saturday, we put a three person outreach team with 600 outreach cards criticising Sanford and promoting the rapid transit line into a busy Summerville Farmer's Market. We hit political jackpot. Almost everyone wants the transit line built. They're tired of spending 15 hours a week locked in their cars on I26 commuting from the home they can afford with good schools for their kids to the job the need in Charleston.  They were tired of waiting.

Into this walked Mark Sanford and he caught it from a lot of voters who still had our cards in their hands and our words in their ears. As usual, he was polite and dismissive. In Sanford's world solving problems was always someone else's job and it could always wait. When he was Governor and CARTA shut down for two years, he did nothing.

Katie Arrington, June 9, Summerville Farmer's Market

Katie Arrington, Sanford's Trump conservative opponent, walked into the same market. She also found herself surrounded by Republican public transit supporters.  She was more than a little put out that we hadn't mentioned her on our card She informed us that she supported public transit, up to an including making sure it got paid for and that she had voted in favor of public transit in the state legislature. This had been unmentioned on the transportation page of her campaign website.

We invited Arrington to send us a press release or statement about her support of public transit so we could post it. We didn't get that statement before the primary, but that didn't surprise us because with two days to go most campaigns have sacrificed their policy development capacity to GOTV efforts. We look forward to hearing from Arrington after she's gotten some sleep and filed an FEC disclosure. Nothing is harder than cleaning up after a political campaign.

We understand that Trump pushed Arrington to victory with a tweet, but we're sure that if we hadn't talked to 50 thousand Lowcountry Voters in the past three years that he would have survived it. Politics is won at the ragged margins and Sanford lost a few thousand supporters on Tuesday, some to our friend Cherny, some to Arrington and some to a disgusted decision to stay home. As always, Nobody won because 80% of the registered voters chose to vote for nobody Tuesday. Nobody doesn't' support transit either. On the bright side, our efforts brought a few thousand voters in from the cold, some saying they could be a Republican for two minutes.

Hopefully both Arrington (R) and Cunningham (D) will come out in support of transit and the fight over who should win in november will move on to other territory. We have lots of other elected officials to worry over, a CARTA budget to try to improve, transit that we need to push up to Lincolnville and drag out to Folly.  I'm sure both candidates would like us call in a hit on the other like we delivered to Sanford over three years of determined advocacy.

Larry Carter Center and the Up Mobile

However that is the job of the Democratic and Republican parties and all the other issue groups in the mix. We're here for better transit, affordable housing and a living wage. We've about won the last one since the lack of affordable housing and decent transit is driving so many service workers out of our area that the wage for dishwashers downtown is reaching $15 an hour.  Employers are sniping each  other's line cooks, bus boys and dishwashers. Hotels are offering incentive packages for chamber maids. You still can't afford to live here on $15 an hour in a decent neighborhood with a car or a functional transit trip, but it's closer than it's been since about 1990.

The result isn't the Charleston we once loved or even a real community, but we asked the Devil for $15 an hour and he's going to give it to us. As always, you can't trust him.

We can't get rid of the devil, but we did get rid of Sanford. If the BRT project was pushing dirt and pouring concrete right now while Park and Ride lots and affordable housing were going up along Rivers Ave and Highway 78, Sanford would have been reelected. He would have probably had a station named after him.  The Federal deficit wouldn't have been a penny larger than it is going to be anyway.

Carol and Skyelynn after doing King St. Outreach, June 10

We'll probably end up fighting with whoever wins anyway. Transit cost money and everyone wants money.  What they all need to know is that unlike many local officials, organizations and political parties, we do fight for Transit. Last week we did that throughout the Lowcountry, up before down, all over the place and after three years of effort, we're going to have a new congressman.

We'll do that to other elected officals until we get the transit system we've planned, been promised and are paying for. 

We're not going to be sitting down because Up is Good!