South Carolina gubernatorial candidate calls for end of ‘embarrassing’ Confederate Memorial Day

Democrat Joe Cunningham called the holiday “another example of how our state continues to live in the past.”

Joe Cunningham on the campaign trail. (Getty Images)

One of the leading Democratic candidates for governor of South Carolina has renewed his calls for the state to end its celebration of Confederate Memorial Day and instead make Election Day a state holiday.

Joe Cunningham, a moderate who fomerly represented the Charelston area in the US House of Representatives, first proposed ending the celebration shortly after launching his gubernatorial bid last year.

“This is another example of how our state continues to live in the past,” Mr Cunningham said. “It’s embarrassing. When I’m governor, we’re going to end Confederate Memorial Day and make Election Day a state holiday instead.”

Confederate Memorial Day, which is celebrated on 10 May, is not by any means a longstanding South Carolina tradition. It has only officially observed the day since the year 2000, when the state legislature added it to the calendar along with its commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr Day.

South Carolina, which was the first state to secede from the union and the site of the first battle of the Civil War, was also the last state to recognise Martin Luther King, Jr Day — a full 14 years after the holiday was first observed in 1986.

It was a senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, who worked several years before to block the Senate from voting on the House bill to establish a new national holiday in King’s name. Both South Carolina senators, including the notorious, long-serving segregationist Strom Thurmond, voted to make the day a national holiday.

Its eventual observance in South Carolina, however, has meant the observence of a Confederate Memorial Day along the lines of those celebrated on different days in Alabama and Mississippi. State offices close for the day and state employees are given the day off.

The South Carolina Senate unanimously passed a bill earlier this year that would give state employees the opportunity to take Juneteenth or any other day off instead of Confederate Memorial Day, but the bill has stalled in the state House and is not expected to pass.

Mr Cunningham, who was elected to the US House as part of the Democratic wave of 2018 but lost his seat to first-term representative Nancy Mace two years ago, has been outspoken about his desire to do away with Confederate Memorial Day completely and replace it with a new Election Day holiday.

A number of states currently mark election days as holidays, including southern states like North Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia.

While Mr Cunningham is considered the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for governor this year, his party is facing an uphill fight to reclaim the governor’s mansion in Columbia: a Democrat has not won a statewide election in South Carolina since 2006, with well-funded Democratic Senate candidate Jamie Harrison losing by double digits in 2020 to Republican incumbent Lindsey Graham.

Cook Political Report has rated the race as Safe Republican for incumbent governor Henry McMaster.