COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Days before voters select South Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, a state lawmaker has accused Gov. Henry McMaster’s running mate of publicly berating him for appearing at a news conference in support of another candidate.
McMaster has picked businesswoman Pamela Evette as his running mate in this year’s GOP gubernatorial contest. Rep. Joshua Putnam tells The Associated Press that Evette followed Putnam and his wife down a street in downtown Greenville on June 15, hours after the state House member had appeared at a news conference supporting businessman John Warren, who is challenging McMaster.
Putnam said Evette - accompanied by her husband and a friend - caught up to the couple in the middle of a public sidewalk, shook her finger at him, and said she and McMaster “will never forget this.”
Putnam, just days off a loss in his pursuit of the GOP nomination for South Carolina secretary of state, said he was surprised at the comments from Evette, with whom he said he’d always interacted positively as they encountered each other on the campaign trail.
“Pam was like, ’I can’t believe you did that, I can’t believe you betrayed the governor,’” Putnam said.
In a Facebook post, Putnam’s wife said she found it “very shocking for one, but also distasteful and outright rude to approach us and be so hateful just because we are supporting another candidate over theirs.”
“I don’t like a bully,” Holly Putnam added.
This is the first year South Carolina elects its governor and lieutenant governor as a single ticket, and Evette is not currently part of the administration. In the past year and a half of McMaster’s time as governor, Putnam said he has a good relationship with him and even voted for McMaster in the June 12 GOP primary.
McMaster was the top vote-getter in that contest but fell short of the 50 percent needed to win the nomination outright. Voters decide Tuesday if he or Warren will be the party’s nominee to face Democratic state Rep. James Smith in November.
McMaster’s campaign didn’t immediately comment on Putnam’s allegations. McMaster and Evette are on a bus tour around the state ahead of Tuesday’s runoff.
“When the lieutenant governor pick says, ’We will never forget this,’ what does that communicate to me, as a sitting House member? It says to me that I’m blacklisted,” Putnam said. “If you cannot react better than that, if you don’t have better judgment than that, it makes me question your ability to lead the state.”
___
Sign up for “Politics in Focus,” a weekly newsletter showcasing the AP’s best political reporting from across the United States leading up to the 2018 midterm elections: http://apne.ws/3Gzcraw.
___
Reach Kinnard at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP . Read her work at https://apnews.com/search/meg%20kinnard .
Please read our comment policy before commenting.