Revisiting SCPC’s interviews with South Carolina’s new Republican nominees

The Tuesday, June 23, 2026 runoffs are in the books. 

With the dust settling, the Republican side of the ticket for statewide offices is now set. In the gubernatorial runoff, Attorney General Alan Wilson defeated Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette by a margin of 68.56% to 31.44%. 

Another statewide race that came up during our interview series was the race for attorney general. In that contest, Eighth Circuit Solicitor David Stumbo defeated state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch by a margin of 55.75% to 44.25%. 

Further down the ticket, though we did not interview the candidates for commissioner of agriculture, Cody Simpson defeated Danny Ford 62.58% to 37.42%. 

With the primary now settled, we thought it would be worth looking back at some of the best soundbites from our candidate interview series filmed earlier this year. For simplicity, this review will focus on the candidates’ positions on some of the biggest issues facing South Carolina: judicial reform, government spending, and taxes. 

Alan Wilson, Republican nominee for governor 

Since the last competitive South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary was nearly a decade ago, we’ll start there. With current Attorney General Alan Wilson now set to be the Republican nominee for governor, it is worth revisiting what he had to say about taxes and spending. 

We sat down with Wilson in early March, and when asked about eliminating the income tax, he was warm to the idea, responding: 

“We're in a global competition, and it starts right here in the Southeast of the US. So I believe that South Carolina needs to take its 6% down to 0% income tax. That's the first thing that I want to focus on as governor – on an economic package.” 

The natural counterpart to any discussion about taxes is government spending, so we also asked Wilson about his views there. He gave a detailed response: 

"I've looked at the numbers over a 10-year period. ... South Carolina state government spending grew at 6.5%, while the population of South Carolina index with inflation grew at 3.4%. What that means is we were spending 3.1% (points) faster as a state than we were growing as a state population. Had we indexed or basically capped state government spending on average every year to the level of population plus inflation growth, over a 10-year period that would have been $19.7 billion in tax cuts. … I believe that we should do what other states are doing and create revenue triggers where we're not going to spend more than we're growing.”  

As a follow-up, we asked how he would use the line-item veto in relation to that approach. Wilson said: 

“I would use a line-item veto as that cap we talked about until we passed it statutorily. I would give the General Assembly predictability. ... If you want to know what my veto is going to look like, look at population plus inflation or whatever metric we can use that is similar to that. I'm open to finding a different formula, but I think predictability is important.” 

Lastly, it is worth highlighting Wilson’s answer on judicial reform. When asked what system he would prefer, he said: 

“I think in a perfect world, the federal model is the best way to go. The governor nominates; the Legislature up or down votes (on) a person. But if that is not the best we can do, the governor should appoint all the members of the JMSC (Judicial Merit Selection Commission). I would also like to see the governor appoint all the at-large judges so that the judges moving around the state helping to move the backlog of cases would be accountable to the governor, who would be in turn accountable to the entire population of South Carolina.” 

David Stumbo, Republican nominee for attorney general 

Attorney general nominee David Stumbo appeared to agree with that general approach. When asked whether he supported the JMSC reform proposal from last session, he said: 

“I do. It's better—it's vastly better than what we have now—and it's because the governor, at that point, would be able to at least appoint the members that screen the candidates which will eventually be in front of the legislature.   

What I would like to see ultimately in our state—and if this bill passes, I think it's an improvement—[is for us] to implement a model that is similar to what we see in Washington. […] But to do that, we would have to get a constitutional amendment in front of the voters because the JMSC was baked into the constitution in the 1990’s. I would love to see us revisit that.   

I think the voters of our state are ready for a model that they're used to […]. The only difference that I would like to see with the federal model is that I don't think we need lifetime appointments like those on the federal bench. I think every six years they should come back and have the confirmation process again.” 

Now that the runoff has concluded, we look ahead to the general election rapidly approaching. SCPC looks forward to welcoming these candidates back for another discussion, as well as inviting those who were unable to participate in the initial round of interviews in March. 

Publication notes: Invitations were extended to all candidates who had filed prior to filming. SCPC extended an interview offer to Democratic candidate Jermaine Johnson. Additionally Democratic Attorney General candidate Richard Hricik had not yet filed at the time our interviews took place.   

SCPC is an independent, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting and protecting the principles of limited government, individual liberties, free markets, and South Carolina values.