James B. Edwards - Political Career

Political Career

In 1970, Edwards was chairman of the Republican Party for the First Congressional District of South Carolina. In that capacity, as a supporter of Republican U.S. Representative Albert Watson for governor, Edwards claimed that Watson's Democratic opponent, John C. West, had worked covertly in 1969 against the nomination of South Carolina's Clement Haynsworth to the United States Supreme Court. The Nixon nominee failed in the U.S. Senate, 55 to 45, on grounds of alleged bias against organized labor. Edwards predicted that West as governor would install "an ultra-liberal, minority-dominated state government," citing West's political ties to Hubert H. Humphrey and Roy Wilkins, longtime executive director of the NAACP.

Edwards first appeared as a candidate himself in 1971, when he entered a special election to fill the vacancy in the Charleston-centered First Congressional District caused by the death of longtime incumbent L. Mendel Rivers. Edwards narrowly lost to one of Rivers' staffers, Mendel Jackson Davis, in what was the first truly competitive race in the district in memory.

Edwards gained enough name recognition from his strong showing in the special election that he was elected to the South Carolina Senate as a Republican from Charleston County. Two years later, he entered the governor's race as a long-shot candidate. However, Edwards upset General William Westmoreland in the Republican primary, and then defeated Democratic Congressman William Jennings Bryan Dorn in the general election, thus becoming the first Republican governor of the state since Daniel Henry Chamberlain in 1876. Edwards was one of the few bright spots in what was otherwise a very bad year for Republicans due to Watergate (and revulsion against the Vietnam War, a factor that may well have contributed to the defeat of Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces during the late 1960s).