When Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) announced his retirement 14 months ago, the conventional wisdom was that Republicans -- already strong in South Carolina and likely to add to their strength with President Bush on the ballot -- would almost certainly pick up the seat.
But, in one of the biggest surprises of the sharply contested and unpredictable battle for control of the Senate, Democrat Inez Moore Tenenbaum, the state superintendent of education and the state's top vote-getter in the past two elections, has made the race competitive.
Although polls show Rep. Jim DeMint (R) leading Tenenbaum by four or five percentage points, that is considerably closer than before DeMint got caught up in a couple of controversies -- over taxes and gay rights -- that helped revive Tenenbaum's campaign.
Tenenbaum exploited DeMint's support for the scrapping of federal income and payroll taxes in favor of a national sales tax, saying such a move would result in a 23 percent levy on groceries, housing and everything else that people buy. The same poll that showed Tenenbaum had bounced back showed that the sales tax idea had bombed.
A little later, DeMint said in a televised debate that gays should not be allowed to teach in public schools. Then he suggested unmarried mothers should be added to the no-teach list. He later apologized -- not for his views but for the fact that they were a "distraction" from other issues.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3598-2004Oct27.html
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