DONALD HEYWARD (58) wore sunglasses, a knit cap, grimy trousers and flip-flops. Voters were scarce outside the Sanders Clyde elementary school-turned-polling station in a poor, African-American neighbourhood of Charleston. Heyward, who is white and a retired welder, was the first one I found.
Heyward spent 25 years welding girders on building sites in Charleston. “My mother raised 13 of us in a little s**thole beer joint in Bennettsville,” he said. “It was smalltown USA. Where I grew up, in Marlboro County, you could shoot a black person and they’d shake your hand for it. That’s the way my mother raised me. She was in the Klan. I felt like I was free when I joined the military.”
The last debate in the South Carolina primary persuaded Heyward to vote for Newt Gingrich. It was the way the former speaker of the House of Representatives rounded on the CNN presenter for asking if he had suggested an “open marriage” to his second wife, Marianne.
“Newt Gingrich is tryin’ to get a job,” Heyward said, drawing on the cigarette he held between tobacco-stained fingers. “He don’t need to be answerin’ that. Either his wife is mad at him or she got paid to say that.”
The man everyone refers to as Newt “has been through the mud and blood and beer, just like me”, Heyward continued. “I’ve lied, cheated and stolen, drank and drugged. Newt has been through the nuts and bolts of life.”
The elementary school stands between a motorway and rows of barracks-like lodgings. Clothes lines, rubbish bins and abandoned mattresses dot the ragged strips of grass between the houses.
In the 3½ hours since the polling station had opened, only 30 people had voted.
South Carolina politics divides along racial lines, with the white majority voting Republican and the black minority voting Democrat. Although anyone could vote in the Republican primary, black people seemed disengaged. The voters at Sanders Clyde all seemed to be white Democrats, like Heyward. Despite his affection for “Newt”, Heyward will vote again for US president Barack Obama next November.
“I love Obama because he’s the underdog,” he explained, “and I love his children.”
Another polling station is based at the Hazel Parker playground on East Bay Street at the opposite end of town, amid columned Georgian mansions with sea views from the Battery. Bruce Burris (57), the owner of a shipping company, chose Mitt Romney.
“I don’t know how he made his money, but it’s his money. I don’t care,” Burris said, referring to Romney’s role at private-equity firm Bain Capital and his offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands.
“Gingrich is indignant, and I don’t like that.”
Well-dressed voters greeted Burris as we talked on the pavement. “Everybody south of Broad Street knows each other,” he explained. “This part of Charleston is voting for Romney. They better identify with him, because they have money and they’d like to keep it.”
Reacting to predictions that Gingrich would win, an elegant blonde who had taken her pet terrier to the polling station asserted bravely: “Even if he loses South Carolina, Romney will win the nomination.”
South Carolina is split between Charleston and the rest of the state, Burris said. “They hate us.”
When the results came in on Saturday night, Charleston was one of the few enclaves carried by Romney.
“The north is the Bible belt,” Burris said. “They’d never vote for Romney because he’s a Mormon.”
Martha and Glenn Debiasi, both 62-year-old businesspeople, voted for Romney, but for nuanced reasons. Both are independents – the largest group in the nation. “He’s the best of a bad lot,” said Glenn.
“I like his drive. I think he’d be good for business but bad for the environment and bad for folks who’re not part of the power structure.”
“I think Romney is a more balanced person,” said Martha.
“Newt Gingrich is erratic. Marriage is a binding contract. You can’t allow yourself to violate the terms that don’t suit you. If he’s president, he’s going to be responsible for the commitments our country has made.”
But Martha understood why Gingrich’s outbursts in last week’s debates swung the balance in his favour. “South Carolinans are anti-establishment,” she said. “It was not about his answer. It was about his ability to fight back. It was about standing up for your rights.”
Glenn Debiasi has joined a group called americanselect.org, which is campaigning for a more democratic process in the election. They want the president to be elected by popular vote – not by the electoral college. They want candidates to campaign in all 50 states, not just 12 battleground swing states. And they want an end to the "super political action committees" that inundated South Carolina with negative advertising.
Americanselect.orgmay endorse a third, independent candidate for November. "I don't think they stand a chance of winning," Glenn Debiasi said. "My vote is very much a protest vote."