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!

Sanford Leaves Car less Constituents behind in Hurricane Evacuation

Mark Sanford just sent out an email about hurricane preparations.  Like last weeks disastrously incomplete State Hurricane Preparation Guide Sanford’s email ignores the reality that tens of thousands of people living in his district don’t have access to an automobile to evacuate. On Tuesday, June 12 Change your Congressman.

One telling paragraph indicates how completely blind Sanford remains to the struggle some people in the Lowcountry have to merely get to their employment or medical appointments on a good day, much less evacuate their families and belongings before an oncoming storm.

Someone on Sanford’s staff writes (and he presumably approved)

“Keep your automobile fully fueled; if electric power is cut off, gas stations may not be able to operate pumps for several days.”

Evidently it never occurred to anyone on Sanford’s staff that thousands of people don’t have an automobile to fuel for a quick run up to Asheville or Atlanta to escape the storm. Like last year they’ll be calling overloaded emergency lines to collect inaccurate and improperly grounded information about poorly organized hurricane evacuation system cobbled together with unused school buses in the hands of well meaning, but ill prepared drivers. See video about the struggle of ahomeless woman in Charleston’s effort to connect with an evacuation bus as Irma roared towards Charleston.

Of course a Hurricane merely magnifies the impact of the changes in American society Sanford is clueless about that his opponent Dimitri Cherny indicates are destroying American society and economic upward mobility. See Cherny campaign video on the plight of the next generation.

Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit emailed a copy of their blogpost to Sanford's staff last week and sent out a press release to local media. When called about the problems in the letter as the letter itself suggested, Sanford's Mt. Pleasant staff hung up.

Late in the Email Sanford does mention Island Breeze, the hired help bus system which attempts to keep Hilton Head supplied with service labor. However unless you know that, you would stand little chance of guessing that Island Breeze might be providing the vehicles for an emergency evacuation program for those without cars.

When you do figure that out, the referenced emergency phone lines are likely to be overloaded and if you go online this year, as we did for Irma, it’s likely any description of the emergency evacuation system will be incomplete and poorly planned by someone who comfortably drives a car to work and has never even seen where the exposed bus stops for the maybe evacuation buses are located.

Last year Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit protested the miserable condition of our Hurricane Evacuation bus procedures on Charleston County. They prepared a detailed report and recommendations to solve the problems after Hurricane Irma.. They delivered a copy to Sanford’s Mount Pleasant office as well as CARTA, Mount Pleasant Town Council, the full CARTA Board (Executive Director of CARTA Ron Mitchum adopted the recommendations as his own) and the private company which actually ran the buses.

The problems haven’t been fixed. Sanford and our other leaders have decided merely to ignore them and leave the pesky details out of their planning of how people who don’t have a car can escape oncoming death in the form of a hurricane which our long, very hot summer is likely to breed and sustain until it grinds across our community.

A powerful transit system like the long planned BRT line between Summerville and Charleston would not only improve everyday life in Charleston but also serve as the spine of a powerful evacuation system in an emergency. Shelter spaces should be developed along the line. Sanford has failed to support getting the BRT built and has introduced legislation to end all federal public transit funding.

We urge you to vote for a new and better congressman on June 12. Blind neglect like this kills people.  It did so in New Orleans 13 years ago and in Houston last year. Sanford's letter betrays a level of self indulgent ignorance inconsistent with responsible civic leadership in an area subject to hurricane emergencies every year.

Votefor Dimitry Cherny and change your congressman next week in the Republican Primary on May 12.

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 

 

Sanford Change Your SC1 Congressman Effort for Better Transit Hits the Streets

Field outreach workers with Lowcountry Up is Good, PAC began voter contact regarding support of better transit and Dimitri Cherny and opposing reelection of Transit hostile Mark Sanford in the June 12 Republican Primary on June 12.

Transit reduces congestion

Over 750 citizens have had face to face contact at locations in Charleston, James Island, Folly Beach and Mount Pleasant. 170 people participating in the June 5 Transportation meeting in Mt. Pleasant, a community reeling from a three-week localized economic contraction which devastated locally owned (often Republican owned) businesses when the Westbound Wando Bridge was Closed to Traffic.

Some people contacted are making their own copies of the simple black and white cards (PDF) and handing copies out to friends.

One owner of a food and beverage-oriented delivery service downtown met on King Street said traffic congestion is increasing his costs for staff, fuel and reducing the number of deliveries he can make in a day. He blames Sanford’s decision not to support federal funding for local transportation projects: transit and roads.

Talking to the public about Sanford outside Mt. Pleasant Town Hall

Not everyone contacted immediately decided to vote for Cherney, however most said they would research their choices online. We’re happy to hear from Sanford’s other opponent if she’s become a transit supporter.  This is Katie Arrington's web page on Transpiration issues.

We would be even happier to hear from Congressman Sanford with an unequivocal, signed commitment to pursue the 160 million in Federal Matching funds needed to build the Bus Rapid Transit System and the other pending grant requests to upgrade CARTA equipment and facilities as well as his promise to support all existing federal programs which support and might expand local transit service.

We’ve been delivering information to his office in Mt. Pleasant and his office in DC for years.

The grass roots person to person, nose to nose ground campaign will continue until the polls close on Tuesday evening at 7 pm. Early voting in the primary has already started.  Any person with one of 17 reasons why they can’t vote election day can vote now at Charleston County Election Headquartes on Headquarters road in N. Charleston.

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 

Up is Good- An Overview

Charleston, SC, USA- Low country Up is Good, Inc. is a Political Action Committee currently being reactivated for the 2018 election cycle. It focuses on four issues with which the SC Lowcountry is currently engaged in a frustrating struggle: affordable housing, functional public transit, a living wage and maintaining a trained cadre of change makers.

How We Got Started 2016

In the 2016 election cycle a group of activists working with the Bernie Sanders campaign concluded that working for effective change in the local political environment required an organization which dealt with a group of systemic issues: poor transit, low wages, lack of affordable housing and the need for a new type of local activist leader operating independently of the established party system. This organization would work energetically through free speech activity, economic activism such as boycotts and social activism. It has also from time to time stepped up to challenge threats to local democracy like those posed by Moms for Liberty and Unity City. 

Affordable Housing

Our first project was construction of the Tiny House Fit for a King on Martin Luther King Weekend, 2016 which produced an 8 x 12-foot electrified tiny house. After a long struggle with official hostility, cloaked behind a superficial concern about the issue, the Tiny house was briefly opened for occupancy in N. Charleston before the city demanded that it be shuttered and the mentally ill woman living there forced back on to the street. It was one of five tiny houses in the cluster which were hauled away by various people for use elsewhere, we hope to provide affordable housing in the large, underground tiny house movement active here.  Records on who got the tiny homes and where they were going were not collected to make tracking them down by government officials or hostile nonprofit homeless service organizations impossible.

Our work on this issue currently continues with a sponsored program in January and support of a group of local activists working towards a tiny house village in the area. A tiny house village for veterans in currently under construction in Savannah and we’re planning a field trip to that village soon.

Transit Complete the Penny

Our second major project was support of the Transit Complete the Penny Campaign in fall 2016 which delivered the margin for victory in the 2016 half penny sales tax referendum. We funded the Lowcountry Commitment to Transit effort which obtained a resolution from County Council that 600 million dollars in transit funding would come out of the half penny sales tax funding (1.5 billion will be spent in a futile effort to resolve rising congestion by building more sprawl inducing roads and 200 million on greenspace preservation).  The Referendum wording and drafting process were deeply flawed, but we pushed for passage even after organizations like the League of Women Voters and Coastal Conservation League came out against the referendum.

We continued our support for two reasons. First, lack of decent transit is deeply oppressive to Charleston’s elderly, disabled, working class and transit dependent people and we could not accept a four year wait to try again.  Second, experience around the country indicated that regardless of what the referendum said an extended on the ground fight to protect the funding and assure that it was spent on transit would be required.  The campaign delievered a narrow margin of victory for the referendum in November 2016, allowing the deeply flawed process of getting better transit for the Lowcountry to move forward.

Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc., a 501c3 non-profit was established to sustain the non-electoral elements of the Transit effort and later received a 20-thousand-dollar grant from Transit Center for that work. While post Citizen’s United Federal Court decisions allow great latitude in political activities by non-profits, we continue to pursue the classical separation of partisan electoral politics and issue education and advocacy Federal law long and still (as the statutes are still written) requires.  Up is Good endorses and opposes candidates.  Best Friends educates the public about transit issues and works on making sure the promised Transit improvements are implemented. Each group maintains separate funding with Best Friends Funds being maintained by the Coastal Community Foundation.

The separation between the two groups is expressed symbolically. Up is Good is blue. Best Friends is red, green and gold.  Up is Good can contribute to Best Friends and distribute materials produced by Best Friends. Best Friends can’t contribute funds or work for Up is Good. Staff working for both organizations are paid out of different funds. Some of the gear and equipment used by both organizations (Radios, PA & Computers) are the private property of third parties.

Lowcountry Living Wage

Up is Good supports a living wage of $15 or more in the Lowcountry. Since several other organizations already work on this issue, most of our effort on this issue has been as a supporting partner at their events.

Sharpening the Knife, Preparing Activists to Bring Change

Up is Good’s leadership and advocacy training for its volunteers and staff in cooperation with Americans for Transit, Transit Center, Democracy for America and other organizations.  Our goal is to help develop and maintain a cadre of local activist’s organizers capable of operating independently of the debilitating entanglements and delusions of the Lowcountry’s political culture.  Much of this training is done in national electronic forums, however an annual summer boot camp is planned.
Some events begin by pouring a pitcher of sweet tea into the ground, symbolic of our rejection of the Lowcountry’s culture of failure in the effort for progressive change.

Our activities share characteristics which arise from our values and experience.

We believe that action in the community, face to face and nose to nose is the only activity likely to produce change. While we’re active online, we recognize that most of the progressive noise being blogged in Charleston doesn’t cross the blood brain barrier into reality.

We believe activism must engage all the senses in reality: sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. Music, art, food and culture must be a part of an effective effort for change. Building a tiny house is harder than making paper signs or posting notes on Facebook, but it forces everyone to deal with and change the reality.  Winning 600 million dollars for better transit in an election is hard and fighting politicians to keep it from being wasted on suburban turn lanes and road projects is even harder. However, nobody ever rode to work on a tweet.

We pay people when we can. Though we don’t pay anyone $15 an hour yet, we and other organization managed to pay out over 10k to independent contractor activists since the Transit Complete the Penny Campaign, our executive Director William Hamilton, is not paid at all. His wife Julia does accept pay for her work at the rate of $10 per hour and 0.20 per mile mileage.  The Transit Complete the Penny Campaign did pay $15 per hour for the last two weeks of the campaign.  We’ll begin fundraising this summer with the goal of making payment of $15 per hour to all contractor activists possible within the next year.

We take imperfect people.  Many of our contractor activists are disabled, elderly, homeless, have criminal records or are mentally ill. We hire these people and we fight for them. They fight for us. In a superficial political and social culture like Charleston, we don’t always fit in. We’re not pretty or cute. We don’t really want to go to your parties. We just want affordable housing, better transit and a living wage. If you want to pretend you do too, that’s fine, but please don’t get in our way because we’re serious.

The Lowcountry is a big place. There is plenty of room for the lifelong series of parties a lot of people confuse with real life and what we do. Just don’t attempt to assume your privilege allows you to make decisions for others.  Don’t tell the homeless how they must live and how much their rent should be. Don’t plan transit systems you don’t expect to ride or a nice one for you and your friends and the same old crappy one for the working class. Don’t control an economy where people don’t earn enough to survive here. That’s when we have problems.

We don’t want to intrude on your garden party. We don’t want you diverting our transit funding to build your highway.  We helped you win 1.5 billion dollars for your roads. Build 526 with that if you want, or not. We still want a bus to the beach (won after seven years of activism) and a decent ride to work. If you invite us to your event, we’re going to participate (loud and out of turn if necessary). That includes “public” events advertised as community forums or meetings and all government sponsored meetings and meetings and activities held in publicly funded spaces.

If you want to hold a fundraiser for your do nothing non-profit about one of the issues we care about that spends all its money on salary for your relatives, that’s your right if the IRS is OK with it. Just don’t interfere in our ability to hold meetings, raise funds or make friends.

We’re not out to change Charleston. We recognize the futility of attempting to fix a superficial culture of self-indulgence in a city which has fifty years left before its streets go under the ocean twice a day. We understand that most people here choose to believe the version of reality synthesized for tourism and real estate marketing. We doubt anyone can save the Holy City from gentrifying itself out of existence.

Porgy packed up and left. Most of us have too. None of us live in 29401 any longer.  Some of us used to live South of Calhoun street. It was nice. We miss it. We know we can't get that back and whatever we build in the future will have to be different, faster and fairer.

Saving Downtown Charleston

We just want four things: decent transit, affordable housing, a living wage and people equipped with the ability to raise hell until those things are available within the region, joined by a fast, dignified transit ride. We see downtown, historic Charleston as an employment and revenue center most local people should visit and many people need to work. We regard N. Charleston, Lincolnville, Congaree, Summerville, West Ashley, James Island, Folly Beach, Mount Pleasant, Awendaw, Red Top and other areas outside of Charleston as the locations where a decent, affordable quality of life is going to be possible for ordinary people. We’re not trying to save Kiawah Island either for the same reason.

We’ll leave saving downtown Charleston to the City, Historic Charleston Foundation and Preservation Society. We just want to run some fast buses through parts of it on a frequent, regular and reliable schedule so people can reach jobs which pay a living wage from decent communities they can afford to live in with their children and neighbors. That includes being sure the so called “Low Line Park” doesn’t waste the only functional transit corridor into the city on a park to walk dogs in.

That’s it downtown: a quick ride in, the occasional visit for cultural purposes or leisure, a living wage while people work there and a quick ride home after. You can pedal from your overpriced apartment to your artisan craft beer festival where you pretend to care about the issues we’re working on to your hearts content. We won’t mind.

Contact Us

What we do isn’t for everybody here. It’s not supposed to be. Lots of people disagree with us. However, if you want this type of change before the ocean covers most of the Lowcountry contact us

Lowcountry Up is Good
C/O W. J. Hamilton, III
Mt. Pleasant, SC
(843) 870-5299
wjhamilton29464@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/lowcountry.up.is.good.PAC/

Revised- June 2, 2024

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