H1, Segment 1 - Charlie James recaps Senate candidate events, straw poll results, and early voting updates.

What this episode covers

Transcript Charlie James: All right, welcome to the program on a TGI Friday afternoon! Everybody's getting ready for the weekend and I don't blame you. I don't blame you one little bit. Absolutely. So, had a very interesting day today. Went to—oh, by the way, this is the last day for early voting. You got a little less than two hours now to get out there and cast your vote early. If you don't make it by 5:00—the polls close at 5:00 PM—if you don't make it by 5:00, then you got to go vote on Tuesday, when the polls will be open from 7:00 AM until 7:00 PM, that is on Tuesday. Okay? So, there you go. My wife and I, we went and voted today, but before we did that, we went to the "Road to Washington" breakfast today at the City Club. And that was kind of interesting. It really was. Now, first of all, fantastic event. Absolutely magnificent event. Want to thank Nate Leup and all the folks involved in that. It was really, really top-notch. And we had some of the Senate candidates there. We had Ralph Norman, we had Mark Sanford, and we had Russell Fry, all speaking about why they should be the next senator from South Carolina. Now, absent—I mean, you got some others that were absent, but the two notable absences that were there today were Mark Lynch and Darlene Graham. Apparently, Mark Lynch had an event down in the Lowcountry, so he couldn't make it. Darlene Graham said she was in Washington, D.C. doing some work in D.C. And we all know that's because of the Russian tariff bill that they were voting on today, which by the way—hey! Finally, finally got another bill passed in the Senate! And that's going to the President's desk. So, she was not there. But the weird thing about that was, she was allowed to send in a video. Okay. Now, the reason—I'll just tell you about this, all right. So, Ralph Norman got up—well, who was first? Yeah, Ralph Norman got up first, gave his talk, got some questions asked from him. Then you had Russell Fry, same thing, gave his little opening monologue, took some—you know, was asked some questions. Then Mark Sanford, same exact thing. But the difference between those three and what they did at that event, and Darlene Graham sending in a video is, she wasn't asked any questions. And now, if you're the campaign—which is what I'm really fascinated in, is how campaigns are run—if you're the campaign, that's exactly what you want. You want control of the situation. Okay? So Darlene Graham had control of the background, she had control of the lighting, she had control of the makeup, she had control of the audio, and obviously, it was very well scripted. Whoever wrote it was really, really good. Now, if you're a campaign, that's exactly what you want. But I was talking with Meg Kinnard from the Associated Press before everybody got up there, and she was just like me. She's like, "Why isn't she answering any questions? She's done very few interviews here lately. She should be everywhere, but she's not." So then they did a straw poll at the breakfast this morning. And well, I'll just run it down for you. This is how it went today. I think there were about 150 ballots cast in this straw poll. Ralph Norman came in first place with 42.7%. Russell Fry came in second place with 22%. Mark Sanford came in third place at 18%. Darlene Graham came in fourth place with 16%. Mark Lynch came in fifth place at 1.3%. So that—I mean, that was kind of interesting. It really is that we got Ralph Norman, he almost doubled Russell Fry, who came in second. And I don't know if that's going to be telling, but we'll see. We'll see how this thing runs out. So again, what is good for the campaign—like the video that was put out there—not necessarily all that groovy for the people that are looking to vote. They would like to actually meet—now, again, understand, I understand you got business. By the way, John, some people say they can't hear me on the stream, so make sure that everything's up and running. And yeah, I'm looking, ...

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