SCEPAC - PAC PLATFORM

The South Carolina Equity PAC advances six interconnected priorities: democratic governance, cannabis reform, justice and public safety, healthcare access, public education, and workforce development. We organize working-class communities, advocate for measurable policy outcomes, and hold public officials accountable for results.

Democratic Governance: One party holds veto-proof control of South Carolina's House and Senate, enough to override any check including the governor's. Republicans hold 88 of 124 House seats and over 31 of 46 Senate seats. In May 2026, that supermajority came within a handful of votes of redrawing the state's only Black-held congressional seat mid-decade. Public objection alone didn't stop it — organized, informed pressure did. Impact on working families: one-party rule means no one has to negotiate on wages, healthcare, or school funding; closing that gap takes mobilization and informed voters, not just protest.

A cornerstone of the SCEPAC platform: real accountability for a government that answers to one party instead of the people.

Cannabis Reform: South Carolina still has no medical cannabis program, while unregulated hemp-derived THC is sold to anyone, any age. In 2024, 9,638 marijuana possession arrests were made statewide, and the hemp/THC market operates with no dedicated state tax. The Compassionate Care Act passed the Senate again in 2025-26 but died without a House vote, leaving patients with no legal path. Nearly all of the 9,638 arrests were simple possession — the kind of charge that costs someone a job or a lease before it costs a day in jail. The $1.5 billion hemp and THC market operates tax-free; a modest 5% retail tax, proposed and never passed, would capture tens of millions of dollars a year currently left on the table. Impact on working families: a possession charge wrecks a family's finances before it reaches a courtroom through lost jobs, lost housing, and a record that makes both harder to recover — outcomes research links to deeper poverty and more repeat arrests, not less. Real reform ends the arrests and finally taxes the market.

Central to the SCEPAC platform: ending arrests that cost families more than they ever cost the state.

Justice & Public Safety: South Carolina spends heavily to incarcerate people who could be working, and the weight of that system falls hardest on Black families. Roughly 10,100 Black South Carolinians are in state prison, 58 percent of the total prison population though Black residents are 27 percent of the state's population. The state spends $32,247 per inmate per year. South Carolina law permits $0 a day pay for some inmate work assignments, and only about 1,200 of the state's 17,500-plus inmates are in any paid industries program. One in eight South Carolina jail inmates has been held over unpaid child support, not a new crime, with 95 percent jailed with no court finding they could pay, and about 70 percent of those jailed were Black. 41 percent of 2024 weapons-offense arrestees were under 25, a pattern that tracks with poverty and lost opportunity, not chance. Impact on working families: roughly 10,100 Black South Carolinians are in state prison today, at a cost of $32,247 per person per year, spent while most aren't earning a wage, paying child support, or working at all. Real reform means second-chance systems that put people back to work.

Core to the SCEPAC platform: a system that spends more to lock people up than to help them work."

Healthcare Access: South Carolina markets a booming 'Golden Economy' to attract workers and industry, while most of its own births depend on Medicaid. 60 percent of South Carolina births are financed by Medicaid, rising to 71 percent in rural counties. Black women in South Carolina face a maternal death rate 4.2 times higher than white women. Senator Darrell Jackson's new paid parental leave law, signed June 2026, is real progress, but it only covers government employees; private-sector working families get nothing. South Carolina enforces one of the nation's strictest abortion bans while ranking 8th-worst in the U.S. for maternal deaths, restricting the choice to have a child without funding what keeps mothers alive afterward. Medicaid finances 60 percent of all South Carolina births and 71 percent of rural births, the same working families the state courts with its jobs boom being the ones most dependent on coverage South Carolina has refused to expand. Impact on working families: South Carolina markets itself as a Golden Economy built on new jobs and investment, but Medicaid pays for 6 in 10 births here, and most working parents get no guaranteed paid leave unless they work for the government. An economy can't call itself golden while leaving the families building it without support.

A key pillar of the SCEPAC platform: an economy that calls itself golden while most births still depend on Medicaid.

Public Education: South Carolina's own courts found the state failed to fund poor school districts fairly, and the case was closed before the funding formula was ever fixed. The 1993 Abbeville school-funding lawsuit ended with a 2014 ruling that South Carolina failed rural students, but a new Supreme Court closed the case in 2017 with the local-tax funding gap still in place, a 24-year fight that changed nothing. South Carolina now leads the nation in state-mandated school book bans, 22 titles and counting, decided by the same Board of Education families trust to run schools fairly. Black students are 35 percent of South Carolina's public school enrollment but 59 percent of out-of-school suspensions and expulsions, a gap tied directly to dropout and incarceration risk. Impact on working families: South Carolina spends money either way, it just depends on where a student lives. A dollar sent to a wealthier district, or a student pushed out by suspension, is a worker the state won't have later. South Carolina's physician shortage is already 23 percent below the national average, including in fields like OB-GYN. A state that can't educate all its kids equally can't staff its own economy either.

Anchoring the platform: a school-funding fight South Carolina's courts closed without ever fixing.

Workforce & Economic Development: South Carolina's economic boom is real, but it's landing in specific zip codes while the workforce already here isn't being pulled along with it. Dillon County, on the I-95 corridor, has a 31.6 percent poverty rate, the highest in the state. South Carolina's labor force participation rate is 58.1 percent, tied for 45th in the nation. The I-95 Corridor Authority Act, meant to help 14 of South Carolina's poorest counties, has stalled in committee every session since at least 2021, including again in January 2026. Even with record job-growth numbers, a huge share of working-age South Carolinians aren't in the workforce at all. In December 2025, the governor ended state contracting set-asides for minority-owned businesses, cutting off roughly $27 million a year in contracts overnight. Impact on working families: South Carolina's new factories create real jobs, but a state ranked 45th in the nation for labor force participation isn't turning that boom into work for people already here. The same technical colleges meant to train that workforce sit in counties still waiting on the I-95 Corridor Authority. Growth and workforce development have to move together, or the boom just passes people by.

A driving force in the SCEPAC platform: growth that works for people, not around them.

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