Dems Pack ILA Hall for Victory Convention

CHARLESTON — Area Democrats packed the International Longshoremen Association Hall downtown Saturday to kick off the local campaign season.

In addition to installing new party officers, the assembled county party delegates also heard from just about everyone who will show up on ballots later this year, and from a couple of people who appeared on ballots in previous years. Chairman of the Board of the Charleston School, and former U.S. Senate candidate Alex Sanders introduced the 2012 Victory Convention's keynote speaker Linda Ketner who ran for the South Carolina District 1 seat in the House of Representatives in 2008.

"We are ready to go to work," Ketner told the crowd. "And it's a good thing because e have a lot of work to do."

The convention served as a rallying cry for Charleston County Democrats who hope to capitalize on strong election showings since 2008 when then candidate Barack Obama received approximately 13,000 more votes in Charleston County than John McCain.

Ketner told the crowd that Democrats have to give voters a reason to fire Republicans, who have controlled the State House for the past 18 years and the State Senate for the past 12 years. Then she went on to tick off several categories in which the state, under Republican leadership, has attained a top 10 status nationally including unemployment, poverty, domestic violence, food insecurity and others.

"Well when you look at the things we're 10 worst in they fall into the categories of education, poverty, health, among those categories," Ketner said.

She added that Democrats also needed to give voters reasons to hire them.

"You can look at our track record where Democrats have made a huge difference, for instance when Dick Riley was governor, his emphasis on education showed immediately, and we rose in the ranks to the top on education," she said. "When you look at Joe Riley, here, Democrat, and what he's done for the city, you're looking at an attention on housing and homelessness and poverty and children that you don't see when Republicans have control, or we haven't seen in the last 18 years while they've been in control."

In addition to rallying the troops, the party also installed new officers and Mount Pleasant attorney Richard Hricik was elected as Executive Chair.

"I think it's an exciting opportunity a lot of wonderful work was done ahead of me, and has made my job much easier on a going forward basis," Hricik said. "You know George and Carol [Tempel] did tremendous things in turning to help organize the party as did Organizing for America and Pres. Obama in 2008. And it's my job to simply continue that enthusiasm and continue that organization and build on it, and continue to build a future for the Democratic Party in Charleston County"

Hricik and Ketner had similar messages to Democrats - they have to get involved if they want to change the direction of the state.

"You know if you are tired of seeing the politics of what it is that we have seen, then you need to do something about it," Hricik said. "You know the time for people to say you know it's going to be somebody else's job I don't need to do anything about it when we have a Republican dominated state, Senate, Legislature, governor, it's time for people who believe in something different to do something about it. Change doesn't happen on its own."

"Truly, no hyperbole, our future depends on how hard you work and how good you are, not only at work, but as a person," Ketner said. "We need a number of very smart candidates with integrity to run for office in South Carolina from either party, but in particular, because the Republicans have failed so badly we need to re-double, triple, quadruple our efforts as Democrats in this election in particular."

"None of us have the luxury of being disillusioned," she added. "there is simply too much at stake."

In addition to Hricik, Ruby Fielding was elected First Vice-chiar, Lynn Meffert was elected Second Vice-chair and J.A. Moore was elected Third Vice-chair. Kaye Lingle Koonce and Abe Jenkins were elected as State Democratic Party Executive Committee representatives.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly idetified Alex Sanders' position at the Charleston School of Law. We regret the error.