Vote for Better Transit in the SC1 Open Primary

Vote For Better Transit in SC1

Tues., June 12

Revised June 10

#2 Espress Westbound on the Ravenel.Bridge

Updated- June 11, 2018

Anyone can vote in the primary of any political party in SC.* You can vote in the open Republican primary for better transit.  Choose challenger Cherney over transit hostile incumbent Mark Sanford.

Reach Other Voters- Help elect a Transit positive Congressperson. Download and print these SC1 information cards for your friends, neighbors and fellow transit riders.

Mark Sanford Tried to Bankrupt Public Transit

On May 4, 2017, Sanford asked Congress to approve HR 2391,  which would take 1/3rd of CARTA and Tri County Link’s funding away,  ending over half of our bus service. Sanford has taken no steps to obtain Federal Funding for the planned Lowcountry rapid transit system to speed up transit  and relieve traffic congestion. See a video on how Bus Rapid Transit works around the world. Without 140 million in federal matching funds to go with the 250 million raised by the half penny sales tax,  rapid transit can’t be built here. Future extensions to Ridgeville and Goose Creek won't be able to go forward. As Governor, Sanford did nothing to stop CARTA’s 2003 to 2005 shutdown.

The Post and Courier criticized the Congressman for his bill in this editorial: Keep Public Tranist Funding on Oct. 14, 2017.

Mark Sanford

Sanford's hostility towards transit can be seen on his web posting about this bill where he shares incomplete and dishonest information about public transit. Transit riders save our country billions in highway construction and operating costs by reducing congestion. 

The average transit rider is subsidized by government about $1,200 dollars per year for often slow and uncomfortable trips, primarily to work like those endured by over 10 thousand food and beverage workers in downtown Charleston's essential tourism industry. The average car driver is subsidized by government over $5,000 dollars per year, a cost which includes traffic signal operation, policing, fire department response to Charleston's rising number of wrecks, drainage, landscaping, maintenance and repairs like those just performed on the rapidly deteriorating Westbound Wando Bridge, the failure of which paralyzed the East Cooper economy for three weeks.

Modern Bus Rapid Transit System

As inadequate as it is, CARTA makes Charleston's tourism economy possible as the crash program to establish the new HOP bus service for F&B workers demonstrates. Where is Sanford when hundreds of Republican downtown employers needing service workers for restaurants and hotels can't find the workers they need while people wanting jobs in communities like Lincolnville and Sangaree can't find a way to get to work?  Why is our growing population of elderly people (many Republicans who have contributed a lifetime to military service, work as tax paying citizens, parenting and civic service) are trapped in their homes by traffic they can no longer deal with?

Where was Sanford last summer when a downtown restaurant tried to cope with with chronic staffing shortages downtown by hiring an unchecked person off the street to wash dishes, not knowing he was a former inmate recently released from a long prison sentence. After he was fired a day later, he returned with a pistol to shoot and kill the Chef who hired him and take tourists hostage. The SWAT team had to be called in to kill him. 

Charleston can't go on without an adequate transit system. Even if thousands of low paid tourism workers had cars, there is no where to park them downtown and the streets don't have the capacity to handle them. Traffic congestion is damaging the local economy. 

#20 CARTA buis Northbound at Market St.

Sanford doesn't really think about any of this. He's a nice guy who says whatever people want to hear and then does whatever organizations like the Club for Growth tell him to. When we asked him about his bill, he didn't really remember it. This wasn't the first time his introduced something like it.

Sanford has accepted contributions from both the transit hostile Koch Industries ($6,000) and the CATO institute (5,400), which deploys a hit squad of manipulative operatives to undermine transit efforts across America. The Koch brothers own the CATO institute. See Open Secrets SC1 2018 Campaign Contributions. CATO's agenda for transpiration is a fissile fuel propelled, privatized system which rations mobility to the highest bidder.

You can bet the Federal Administrators who make the decisions about who gets federal matching funds for mass transit projects whose jobs Mark Sanford would eliminate remember his bill. What happens when the Lowcountry goes to the Federal Government seeking the 140 million dollars in federal matching funds our Bus Rapid Transit project needs? They're likely to award that grant to an area where the Congressman isn't trying to make sure they sleep under a bridge.

Dimitri Cherny Supports Transit

Cherny waiting for the #10 bus on Rivers Ave.

Cherny has been a transit rider for most of the past 4 years, living without a car in Charleston for over a year. Cherny has a CDL and drove large trucks for two years. He supports better bus service now and accelerated federal matching funding for the rapid transit system.  Read a blog post by Cherny about riding transit and how Charleston needs better transit.

In that blog, Cherny says, "The public transportation system is critical not just to get our fellow Americans to and from work, but to keep them from quickly starving to death when they can’t get to work.  Perhaps more importantly from a macro-economic point-of-view, if the Americans at the bottom end of the economy aren’t throwing dollars into the economy, very soon manufacturing outputs will be dialed down, shops will close down, and before you know it we’re back into another recession or worse."

Katie Arrington

Arrington at Summerville Farmers Market

Update- Katie Arrington, the other candidate in the race is currently tied with Sanford in a poll which did not include Cherny. At the time we evaluated candidates the transportation page on her website did no mentionp public tranist and still did not as of June 11 at 10 am. We met her at the Summerville Farmer's Market on Saturday. She expressed her disappointment in not being included in our outreach card which mentions only Sanford and Cherny. She says she supports transit and has worked for it in the legislature. We told her if she would prepare a detailed statement to that effect that we would distribute it online. (I'ts too late to reprint the cards and transit was not mentioned on the transportation page of her website.) If her statement is received, we'll post it on our blog and link it from our Facebook page.  You can, of course, contact her directly through her Arrington campaign web page.

We would point out that Sanford also says he supports Tranist in that he thinks its a good thing, he just doesn't believe government should regulate it, pay for it or support it in any way. A mere expression of generalized support for transit without specifics about funding of local projects and operations isn't meaningful.

The Lowcountry can't afford to have a Congressman who is hostile to Transit.  

11 Million Dollars 

Primary Voter education at Mt. Pleasant Town Hall

of your half penny sales tax money for transit has been diverted to an interest free loan for road construction. Get answers about CARTA funding, by calling CARTA Executive Ron Mitchum at the BCD Council of Governments regarding his “Pay Go Plan.”  at  (843) 529-0333.

* SC Voters can vote in any party primary, however they can’t later vote in the other party’s run off in the same election cysle. SC voters do not register by party as voters in some other states do. Voting laws vary form state to state. A registered voter can always cast a secret vote for whoever you like in the Nov. election in any state.

FEC Disclosure and Disclaimer

Paid for by Up is Good, Inc. PAC, W. Hamilton, Chairman, 

(843) 870-5299, 171 Church St. Ste. 160, Charleston, SC 29401 

Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee