Only a very few highly literate and exceptionally inquisitive South Carolinians know who Joseph Warren ("Tieless Joe") Tolbert is. Those who do recognize this unkempt, unshaven oldster from Ninety Six as the Republican leader of the most overwhelmingly Democratic State in the Union, regard him with political scorn and social contempt. To most decent whites he is guilty of South Carolina's supreme sin: trafficking with Negroes for political purposes. Nevertheless, in one day last week "Tieless Joe" Tolbert and his black-&-whites turned a trick the like of which it takes the State's Democrats more than two months to achieve. Meeting in Columbia Boss Tolbert and his Republican committee quickly nominated his nephew, Joseph Augustis Tolbert of Greenville, to stand for the U. S. Senate this November.
South Carolina Democrats will pick their Senatorial nominee in next week's primary—and simultaneously the next Senator from this once aristocratic State.
To most of them the only question to be settled by a prolonged campaign is whether two anti-New Deal Democrats opposing President Roosevelt's personal friend, Senator James Francis Byrnes, can make a sufficient dent in his majority to injure the prestige of the New Deal in the country at large.
Unique is South Carolina's method of campaigning for a primary election. In 1890 Benjamin Ryan ("Pitchfork Ben") Tillman, out for Governor, charged that only a man of wealth could reach the people through the Press,* stumped each & every county in the State in person, won a great victory. Two years later the anti-Tillman faction sent its candidate out to dog the Governor around the State. Thus the custom developed of having all the candidates in a State-wide primary travel together, speak in the same place at the same time. This system is hard on office-seekers but easy on the voters who have to turn out only once to hear all the candidates. To enter such a Democratic primary, each & every candidate binds himself to obey the party's rules, one of which is to follow the State-wide campaign itinerary drawn up by the State committee.
This year's Senatorial campaign began at Lexington, across the Congaree River from Columbia, on June 9 and rolled on, a county a day, through the west central part of the State. After two weeks an adjournment was taken so that candidates could attend the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. By July 4 the tour had covered the southern "low country" counties along the coast, then skipped to the Piedmont. In mid-July the stumpsters knocked off for another week to allow voters time to harvest their tobacco crop, resumed their speech-making in the northeastern tier of counties.