Rep. Viers overcomes attacks on character

Posted on June 11, 2008 
Filed Under News

A three-term incumbent defended his seat against two challengers Tuesday night, his message of conservative leadership winning outright over lingering questions about his character.

Republican State Rep. Thad Viers took 57 percent of the vote over challengers Helen Smith and Steven Neeves with all precincts reporting.

The tally bypasses a runoff and no Democrat has filed to run in November, likely returning Viers to Columbia for a fourth term.

“My commitment to the conservative revolution and bringing about conservative change in the state will be the mantra of my next term,” Viers said.

This election was Viers’ first contested election since his 2006 guilty plea to leaving obscene and threatening messages on an answering machine owned by a man dating Viers’ estranged wife. While neither of his opponents this year said the charges were the reason they ran, both made character central elements of their campaigns.

“My district understood that my personal issues in the past had nothing to do with how I represent them in the state legislature,” Viers said. “They moved on.”

Viers said Smith had made too many personal attacks in her campaign and they backfired – she took 35 percent of the vote. Smith, an 18-year Horry County School Board veteran who lost to Viers in a runoff in 2000, countered that she had merely put Viers’ record out and didn’t know what cost her the election.

“I just won’t have the opportunity to serve the voters like I was hoping I would,” Smith said, wishing Viers well in his term.

While thanking their voters, both Smith and Neeves said they had hoped for higher turnout.

Neeves, a small-business owner and governmental liaison for the Coastal Carolinas Association of Realtors, garnered 8 percent of the vote in his first run for political office. He said he kept his campaign positive, and he did not rule out future bids for office.

“We’ll wait and see what opportunities are there,” Neeves said.

S.C. House of Representatives District 68
Republican primary

(100 percent of precincts reporting)
Steven Neeves, 274
Helen Smith, 1,154
Thad Viers (i), 1,889

What’s next |
Viers said his legislative agenda for the next two-year term includes school choice which he said may or may not involve vouchers lowering insurance prices and making the state internationally competitive for jobs.

The Sun News
By Robert Morris
June 11, 2008