Former aide to civil rights icon completes Democratic ticket for SC governor

COLUMBIA — Rep. Jermaine Johnson picked a former congressional aide to the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis to be his running mate on Democrats’ gubernatorial ticket.

Mount Pleasant native Sam Skardon will join the Richland County legislator in a campaign that could make history.

Skardon, 38, works for the nonprofit Clean Energy Fund of the Carolinas, lending money to finance clean energy projects, including solar and electric vehicle infrastructure. Before that, he spent several years at a nonprofit community lender financing small businesses, with a focus on women, minority, and veteran owned businesses, and affordable housing developments in the state.

He lives in Charleston with his wife and twin 4-year-old sons.

“I wanted a partner who has spent his career doing the work, not just talking about it,” Johnson, of Hopkins, said in a statement. “Sam Skardon has spent the last seven years putting capital directly into the hands of South Carolina small business owners and clean energy projects that our state’s big banks would not touch. He has sat across the table from the line cook trying to open their own restaurant and the family trying to bring solar power to their community, and he found a way to say yes. That is the kind of leadership South Carolina needs in this moment, and I am honored to have him by my side.”

Skardon also is a past chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party and made an unsuccessful bid for state Senate in 2020, when he came within 2 percentage points of defeating incumbent GOP Sen. Sandy Senn.

While at Emory University in Atlanta, he was a student organizer for the 2008 Obama campaign, first in South Carolina’s presidential primary and later in Georgia’s general election.

After graduating college, Skardon joined Lewis’ congressional staff for a four-year stint before going on to earn his master’s degree in business at Georgetown University.

He then returned home to South Carolina to begin his career.

“There are two kinds of people in the South,” Skardon said in a statement. “There are people who love the South, and there are people who love it so much they want to change it. I love South Carolina enough to want to change it, because I’ve always seen the untapped potential here, and that is what this campaign is about.”

It’s been 28 years since South Carolina voters sent a Democrat to the Governor’s Mansion.

If elected, Johnson would become South Carolina’s first ever Black governor. The state’s first minority governor was elected in 2010. Nikki Haley, also the state’s first female governor, was born in South Carolina to Indian immigrants.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.