Polls open Tuesday for Senate District 42 runoff primary election

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – Polls opened Tuesday for the Democratic Senate District 42 run-off election between State Reps. Deon Tedder and Wendell Gilliard. The two candidates are left on the ballot for this special runoff election because neither won 50% of the votes in the first election, which was held on September 5.

Wendell Gilliard is serving the South Carolina House of Representatives in District 111, covering Charleston County, and Deon Tedder, who currently serves in the SC House for District 109, represents Charleston and Dorchester counties.

The Charleston County Board of Elections says a candidate must win at least 50% of the votes plus one. Representative Gilliard led the initial election with over 1,800 (more than 40 percent) of the votes. Representative Tedder followed with more than 1,500 (more than 30 percent) votes.

State Rep. JA Moore also ran in the Sept. 5 special election.

Nearly 4,000 voters participated in the first election. The Charleston County Board of Elections said turnout was low but that’s not unusual for a special election. News 2 sat down with each candidate ahead of Tuesday’s runoff election, hearing from both on their visions if successful in the election.

“Working on bettering our public education system, working on affordable housing, economic development is a huge thing in our district,” said Tedder.

“You look at all 46 counties in the state of South Carolina, there is an economic de-funk. The economic part of this has always been my pet peeve, I feel strongly that we have things, that we’ve made some progress but we have a long way to go,” said Gilliard.

The winner of Tuesday’s runoff election will run against Republican candidate Rosa Kay in the November election.