My Vanishing Country

by Bakari Sellers

  “If you think this is the right time to do it, I got your back,” he replied.

  We immediately talked strategy, we looked at dates, and Ike told me who we’d need to meet. Soft spoken and hardworking, Ike made the campaign run as smoothly as possible, keeping in contact with other campaign staff, checking mail and emails, driving me around, and making sure everything kept moving.

  Jill Fletcher had raised $700,000, so besides Ike, I hired two Republican consultants—Republican because I wanted people who knew what it was like to win in South Carolina. We had a small paid staff but a large pool of volunteers. Ike and I named close to fifty team leaders, many of them from various colleges and some who were part of Young Democrats organizations.

  Ike believed people were excited to see an energetic black Democrat make a serious run for a major statewide office. “People were impressed with how smart he was,” Ike says, “and no one had seen someone this young step to the plate and be so articulate about policy.” To this day, he says millennials, both black and white, never doubted I could win. Overall, we had about 250 volunteers fanned out across the state.

  But among those who didn’t get on board, most were shocked that I was serious about taking on McMaster. “For a young African American to not give up hope, people started thinking, well, maybe he could do this,” Ike recalls.

  For sixteen months, Ike and I traveled to forty-six counties. And then we did all those forty-six counties again during the last thirty days of the campaign.

  * * *

  One of our first stops during our thirty-day tour was a church in Britton’s Neck, which is in Marion County—one of the poorest areas in the state. Outside the church a man was frying a large pan of fish. Inside, the room was packed with mostly African Americans. I try to meet people where they are. Everyone in that room reminded me of people in Denmark, people you’d bump into at the Piggly Wiggly.

  “You know, I believe I have the audacity to look at people and say that it’s not about black or white,” I told them. “If you ain’t got health insurance and you’re white, and you ain’t got health insurance and you’re black, you know what? You’re gonna get sick, and it’s going to bankrupt your family. It’s the same problem. I can’t tell you what’s going on in China, I ain’t never been there. But I can tell you about what’s going on in South Carolina right in Bamberg County. Let’s say you break your toe. You know you gotta go thirty or forty-five minutes to the nearest hospital? Because the hospital sign in Bamberg County, you know what it says? ‘In case of emergency dial 911,’ because it closed in 2012. And what are we doing about it? Absolutely nothing.”

  Those last thirty days were grueling. A day would start with us talking early in the morning, and we’d hit the road by 8 a.m., driving from one end of the state to the other, sometimes through more than three counties a day.

  * * *

  Ellen said she knew that it was going to take a lot out of me to run for statewide office. She understood it could be a long and sometimes ugly campaign, which it was. She also knew I was going to be away a lot, but she supported me because she understood this wasn’t just something I wanted to do, but something I needed to do.

  I met Ellen in 2008 at a wedding in Cancun. She’s one of eight children; her late father was a dentist and her mother is a homemaker. She grew up in Lancaster, South Carolina, within a very tight-knit and religious family. Her sister Ruby introduced us. I was immediately attracted to Ellen, who my sister claims fit what she said was my type: gorgeous, country, witty, and grounded.

  A hair product entrepreneur, Ellen is only five-foot-three, which my six-foot-two sister Nosizwe jokingly says she doesn’t understand because all the women in our family are so tall (our mother is nearly six feet tall).

  “The day that he met Ellen, he called me, and he said that she was beautiful, but when I got to know her, I saw she’s beautiful on the inside too,” Nosizwe said.

  Ellen was eight years my senior and divorced when we met, but that didn’t matter to me. She also had a three-year-old daughter, Kai, with her ex-husband, the NBA basketball star Vince Carter. Although Ellen and I didn’t interact much during that Cancun trip, I told Kai while we were all in the swimming pool, including nearby Ellen, who was within earshot, “I’m going to be your dad one day.” Rightfully and hilariously, Kai said, “I already have a daddy,” and swam away. To be sure, I’ve never again told anyone I’m Kai’s dad (though she is my daughter), but mainly because she has an amazing dad. I’m a bonus dad. I know my role.

  During that “courting” period in my life, I was wrapping up my first term as a legislator and gearing up for reelection. I was also twenty-three years old and broke. Most people do not realize this, but South Carolina legislators make only $10,000 a year, plus reimbursements. I had just finished law school but was so busy that I couldn’t prepare adequately to pass the bar exam. I secured a job at Strom Law Firm, where I still work, but at the time I wasn’t yet a licensed lawyer, and I also owed $113,000 in school loans.

  Still, when we returned to South Carolina from Cancun, I sent Ellen flowers and asked her whether I could take her out to dinner. With all of eighty-three dollars in my pocket, I drove up to Charlotte to see her. She lived in a beautiful high-end condo near the SouthPark Mall. She picked a nice wine bar that served tapas, but little did I know Ellen likes lamb chops, which are expensive. Now, when you don’t have a lot of money, and you’re dating above your means, you best allow your date to order first. Your appetite, or should I say your budget, ought to be based upon what she orders. If she orders a lot, then you’re just not hungry. The bill came to seventy-six dollars, and so I skated by.

  It must have been a great date, because we’ve been talking ever since.

  By the time I was running for lieutenant governor, Ellen and I were planning to marry and have babies. However, the campaign kept me on the road all the time. “He’s from one city to the next,” Ellen told a documentary filmmaker, who was following me throughout the campaign. “I don’t see him. It’s just like any other long-distance couple. . . . You know, we text, we FaceTime, we talk on the phone every morning, every night.”

  I would be lying if I said it wasn’t difficult to be away from Ellen and Kai for an entire week, but they supported me to the very end of this journey.

  * * *

  There are many reasons why neither African Americans nor Democrats can win statewide elections in South Carolina: Although African Americans make up more than 60 percent of registered Democratic voters, the party doesn’t engage them during midterm elections or coordinate efforts to get out the vote—and my race was in a midterm election year. By the time each of these election days come around, according to most polling data, African Americans often are disillusioned and stay home.

  So I asked my consultants, “How many white voters do I need to win statewide if I maxed out African Americans?” One said that South Carolina Democrats typically can count on one of five white voters. That’s about 18 percent, the other consultant added. Accordingly, we were hoping for a race where I would max out black voters and increase white voters from 25 to 35 percent. That was our strategy.

  Obama’s South Carolina primary win informed us and convinced me that we could make history. We also counted on a good debate, and we already realized the campaign generated lots of media. Poll numbers were slowly growing.

  The problem, that second consultant explained, was that the trend for white people in South Carolina was to vote less and less for Democrats.

  “So, what do we do?” I asked. “Stop focusing on black people?”

  No, she said—start focusing on whites.

  She was right, but it was easier said than done. I would have been more comfortable trying to max out the black vote, which was potentially huge in South Carolina. I believed we could build a Democratic base by increasing African American turnout. Some days I felt like we were getting closer, other days, not so much.

  About two weeks before the election, on Nov
ember 4, 2014, I had a meet-and-greet in a cozy home in Darlington. Most of the people who attended were retired African Americans. I said to them that in our beautiful state, “We do two things very poorly. We hold onto old ghosts . . . whether it’s the Confederate flag or anything else. And we just send the same folk back to do the same thing, and we don’t get any different results.”

  An older gentleman spoke up. “I think historically, we just haven’t found that the off-presidential election years were that important.”

  I shook my head. “Two hundred and sixty thousand African Americans who look like me and you showed up for Barack Obama. Y’all cried all those tears the night he won and thought we’d overcome something. But then we didn’t come out in 2010. Every single vote in these off-year elections matters—they all matter. It’s not often we say this in an election, but we have a chance here to make history in South Carolina. It’s amazing that we have that type of power. We have to have that same type of energy now.”

  “We believe in you,” the man said. “You’re an extension of our dreams. I’m eighty years old. My wife is seventy-nine. There are so many things we want to see for our children and grandchildren, and you represent hope for us. You don’t know how excited we are about you.”

  Although it was encouraging to talk to black voters, who believed they had a stake in my winning, I stayed the course we charted: I tried hard to increase the white vote, which was often an uphill battle in South Carolina. It’s such a red state that people will tell you to your face that you’ll never win because you’re a Democrat. We stood on street corners with signs, and people were just mean. They ignored us or spit out hate not only about me, but about the Democratic Party and, of course, then–President Obama.

  Others were kind as could be and supportive. Some older white American voters would come up to me and give me the biggest hug and kiss and say, “I’ve never voted for a Democrat, but I’ll vote for you.” Young white voters would tell me, “I encouraged my grandparents to vote for you.”

  These kind words kept me going through the tough times. And there were many.

  Ghosts and Trolls

  Here’s a sample of the hateful tweets I get every day: “Pussy nigger, just because I proved you wrong on Twitter you blocked. That does not make you powerful, it makes you a chicken shit nigger.” Or, “I like blacks, but I hate niggers. You, my friend, are one of those niggers and an ugly ass chimp in a suit.”

  The hate came in the form of tweets, letters, and phone calls. Ike recalls I got hundreds, if not a thousand, tweets and hate mail during my eight years as a member of the South Carolina General Assembly. My run for lieutenant governor generated lots of buzz and news coverage, which Ike believes also energized the hate. I laughed off most of the comments because that kind of hate speech was far too common for me to waste my energy getting upset about it. Besides, most comments were just racist, not threatening, though a few times I had to involve law enforcement.

  * * *

  I challenged Henry McMaster to renounce his membership at a reportedly all-white country club. I told MSNBC: “I just want Mr. McMaster to join me in thinking about ideas to move forward. And yes, I challenged him to renounce his membership because I want people to be able to look at South Carolina and see that we’re raising the stature of our state, that we no longer have to be held back by those ghosts of yesterday.”

  McMaster was part of the problem, part of a culture in South Carolina that refused to change, part of the culture I needed to root out. McMaster, whose good ol’ boy ways had done him just fine, coolly told the news organization through his campaign manager that he didn’t plan on resigning at a club where he’d been a member for more than three decades.

  It’s been like this forever in South Carolina, but my dad always said it doesn’t have to be this way. He’d reassure me, if not provoke a little bit: “It’ll all change with your generation, but you still have to pick up the mantle and go ahead and fight for it.”

  I was wary. “I’m not sure when that will happen.”

  Yet, despite all those people telling me I was too young, my father knew it was the young people who make the change: Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t even forty when he was murdered. “You have to take those risks and put yourself in those kinds of positions,” he said. “That’s what it takes to come in as a young upstart and run a campaign and be successful.”

  What was left unsaid was the fact that others would make damn sure to try to stop me from doing just that.

  * * *

  Two years before, on October 7, 2012, I had been pulled over by a Chester County sheriff, who asked me whether I had been drinking. I had, but I wasn’t drunk. I was returning from a University of South Carolina–Georgia football game while likely driving too fast along I-77, just after 1 a.m.

  And so, during my run for lieutenant governor, a video of me being arrested became public. I was anxious that it would go public, but I wasn’t shocked when it did. The case eventually was dropped because the evidence didn’t add up, but I still pleaded guilty to reckless driving. I was too sleepy to be driving that night, and so I exercised bad judgment that grew into something that will be with me forever.

  One of the most off-putting things about running for the statewide spot was that a Republican tracker was sent out to follow me. Everywhere we went, a tracker was there—usually the same medium-height, stocky white guy pointing a video camera at me during speeches. Sometimes he’d hide in bushes, but he nearly always showed up at our meetings, hoping to catch me drinking or doing something I wasn’t supposed to do. Or he would just give McMaster’s people information on what I was saying. It made me extremely nervous and anxiety-ridden to have someone pointing a camera at me and stalking the campaign. Sometimes our volunteers would try to shoo him away, but most of the time we ignored him.

  The Church Fish Fry

  I am aware, of course, of the role the black church played in the civil rights movement, but I have been disappointed with the church lately. During the past fifty years, the church has retreated from its rightful spot as a bastion of activism and is losing its definition. Once the epicenter of change, black churches in some cases have been transformed into hollowed-out megachurches, where pastors are thirsting more for fame than social justice.

  However, we are starting to see the emergence of a new generation of social activists who are also pastors and faith leaders, whether it’s Jamal Bryant and his fight to prevent unjust police shootings; or William Barber on the front lines of transforming the political landscape of North Carolina; or Sarah Jakes Roberts, William Murphy, and Charles Jenkins, all using their ministries to teach members of their flocks to be part of something bigger than themselves.

  And still, we have done some backsliding. Since Dr. King’s death, the church has become passive and insular at best at a time when it needs to be younger and more progressive. For instance, it must become more active. In my father’s generation, activists used church buses to shuttle people to vote and church buildings to hold community meetings, and pastors were never afraid to speak their minds on issues that affected the entire community, not just members of their own churches.

  Today, and this is purely a political observation, in American society, the GOP is seen as “God’s Only Party.” Just as “the working-class vote” in the media often means the white vote, as if other voters don’t work, “the Christian vote” often means the Republican vote. But what reporters don’t seem to realize, or maybe are overlooking, is that African Americans are conservative in their religious beliefs.

  Despite my challenge to the church, I have spent a lot of time there, either to feed my own spiritual life or to build community; and so I know that if you want to move black people to the ballot box, you have to move them spiritually and you have to move them in their places of worship.

  Therefore, if you want to run a political race in South Carolina, it’s essential that you visit as many churches as possible. The African Methodist Episcopal Churc
h, in particular, is one of the most politically persuasive bodies for Democratic politics in the region. What the Southern Baptist Convention is for white folk, the AME church is for us. I went to all of the churches during my campaign, and I knew church protocol from my experience running for the statehouse: You call a week before your visit. You see the pastor first, and then you say your piece to the church parishioners. My maternal grandfather was a Baptist minister in Memphis, and he always said, “Make sure when speaking at a church that you leave the preaching to the pastor.”

  Political fish fries at churches are often how to meet hundreds of potential voters. They are never held in the main sanctuary but in the fellowship hall, which all look alike: a spacious room in the back of the church or in the basement. The floor is always tiled, bulletin boards are hung on the walls, and the kitchen has that little cutout window through which members can be seen cooking up grits and fried fish. It never fails that the walls are adorned with a framed portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus. And as the years passed, President Obama’s photograph was added to the mix.

  In these churches, the ministers are second in importance to the church ladies, who organize voters, make sure the church-run buses are ready on Election Day, and help people fill out absentee ballots. These ladies often, but not always, are also the ones cooking the fish. The churches almost always serve whiting because it’s cheap. Whiting is also delicious after it’s been fried golden in hot grease and Lawry’s Seasoned Salt and slathered with hot sauce and mustard. You walk into the fellowship hall to the sound of crackling and popping and the smell of hot grease wafting through the air. Every politician knows you eat white bread with fried fish, but they’re also aware that white bread sticks to your teeth and the roof of your mouth like glue. If you’re an elected official, the thing you don’t want to do is get that white bread stuck in your teeth. So you need to use your tongue and suck that bread off your teeth very, very hard.