I guess if you got elected on a bumper sticker slogan you didn’t really mean, it makes perfect sense to try to get reelected the same way. But there’s a problem if your record doesn’t match your rhetoric. Instead of a guiding principle, it becomes an empty promise.
I know we’re all used to seeing it, but frankly, even I was surprised this week when the latest politician acted this way, too — our very own congressman Joe Cunningham.
I think a lot of us share the same disappointment in our current representative: disappointment that he isn’t who he said he would be, and disappointment that he didn’t follow through on his promise to put the Lowcountry first.
I’m talking, of course, about Joe Cunningham’s announcement that he has chosen his political party over the Lowcountry yet again; he has chosen to hand Nancy Pelosi and national Democrats his voting card, and vote for impeachment.
As if his vote was not bad enough, now, with election season around the corner, he writes a hand-wringing op-ed in these pages that really takes the cake. He’s not listening to his constituents, and now he wants you to vote for him. He’s trying to pretend he stood up for us here in the Lowcountry. But the fact is, this district voted for President Trump. This district does not want to go through an impeachment that flies in the face of our electoral system. This district will vote for the president again next year.
What Joe actually did is what he’s been doing all along in Washington — just what the national Democratic Party and Nancy Pelosi tell him to do. Like many of us, when he was elected, I wanted to believe Joe would be different like he said he would be, to believe he wouldn’t be partisan or beholden to national Democrats.
Unfortunately, this simply isn’t the case. And this isn’t the only time. In fact, the bill he proudly cited in his op-ed puts his partisanship on full display, too. He and I share a love of our coastline and want to protect it from drilling. But Joe is claiming credit for what was actually a mistake on his part. Instead of working on a bipartisan bill, he chose a partisan path on drilling that has absolutely zero chance of ever becoming law. In fact, not a single other member of South Carolina’s delegation even voted for it.
In other words, it was either for show, or he simply can’t make the case for the Lowcountry.
We deserve better.
I believe I better represent the fiscally conservative conservationist values of the Lowcountry. I also have a 98 percent rating with conservationists, and I’ve worked with both Democrats and Republicans to stop drilling along our coast and protect our land.
I won’t put my party ahead of my constituents or what I believe in, and I’ve proven that over and over again in my time in the South Carolina Legislature. I actually work across the aisle; in fact, my first bill that was passed out of the House was a bipartisan criminal justice bill, and I’ve crossed my own party to vote against its wasteful spending.
In other words, I’m the true independent voice Joe only claims to be but isn’t.
The Lowcountry deserves this, but we’re not getting it right now, and that’s why our representatives must answer to their constituents.