Rep. Joe Wilson heads to recount against 25-year-old first-time candidate

COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s longest-serving Republican in Congress is heading to a recount against a Democrat barely old enough to run for the job.

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson leads challenger Zyon Khalifa by 0.99 percentage points, according to unofficial election results. That’s just within the 1-point margin that triggers an automatic recount under state law.

State election officials are expected Tuesday to order a retallying. In an era of electronic vote-counting, the outcome is unlikely to change.

But it’s a photo finish no political prognosticator saw coming. South Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District wasn’t expected to be close, much less a possible flip.

Yet less than 2,950 votes separate Wilson from Khalifa out of almost 297,000 ballots cast. It’s not only South Carolina’s tightest contest of any statewide or federal race this election, but also the closest Wilson’s ever come to losing the seat he’s held since 2001 — against far better-funded challengers.

Wilson attributed this year’s slim margin to Democratic enthusiasm. It wasn’t that Republicans stayed home, he said, noting his vote tally was roughly the same as it’s been in the past.

“I have to give credit: The turnout by the Democratic Party was remarkable,” Wilson told the SC Daily Gazette on Monday. Democrats’ “voters were motivated for whatever reason. I can’t wait to find out why. But anyway, they came. I don’t begrudge it at all. But indeed, their vote turnout was very good.”

Wilson received about 148,000 votes, or about 100 votes more than four years ago, the last midterm, when he won re-election by more than 20 percentage points.

Wilson, 79, has represented the 2nd District almost as long as Khalifa has been alive. He was 7 months old when voters first sent Wilson to Congress from the state Senate in a December 2001 special election following the death of his mentor, U.S. Rep. Floyd Spence.

Who is Khalifa?

At 25, Khalifa is just old enough to meet the Constitution’s age requirement for a U.S. House member.

The Aiken County native said his youth helped him win over voters.

“We draw the greatest contrast in every way, shape, and form,” Khalifa said. “People see that contrast. They see the excitement, the energy, and the willingness to serve.”

Adding to his remarkable finish is that he didn’t live full-time in the state until May, when he graduated with a law degree from Southern University Law Center, a historically Black college in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

He decided in February to seek the job representing his home district. Over the next few months, he flew home most weekends to campaign, he said.

No one recruited him, he said. The opposite happened, he said, with people discouraging him from running. He didn’t say who.

But he said he wanted to bring change. His campaign mantra was “why not us.”

Khalifa, who ran track while earning his bachelor’s degree at the University of South Carolina, said his campaign momentum came from grassroots campaigning: knocking on doors, walking in community festivals and even attending local GOP meetings.

His first hurdle was winning the Democratic nomination. After placing second in a four-way June primary, he defeated David Robinson II in the runoff with 54% of the vote, according to election results. (Robinson lost to Wilson two years ago by more than 19 percentage points.)

Khalifa came close to ousting Wilson with a fraction of the congressman’s campaign cash.

According to the latest campaign filings, Khalifa raised less than $30,000 total and spent about $18,000, as of Oct. 14.

That compares to about $845,000 spent by Wilson this campaign cycle, which included sending out color, two-sided mailers so big, they had to be folded in half to fit into mailboxes. Voters received his giant mailers ahead of both the primary, when he walloped two GOP challengers, and general election.

High schoolers host only debate for this SC congressional seat

With his limited cash, Khalifa put ads on digital billboards and Roku, a streaming service, in the campaign’s final weeks, he said.

Khalifa insists he always knew the race would be tight, adding it was “aggravating” that pollsters and reporters ignored the 2nd District. After the results came in, he said, Democratic donors called him to apologize.

Wilson’s perspective

Wilson told the SC Daily Gazette he wasn’t shocked by the results.

However, he said, “I did not anticipate the voter turnout by the Democratic Party,” Wilson said.

“I had faith in the voters,” he said, noting he was in the state Senate for 17 years before Congress. “I’ve always had faith in the voters.”

Wilson’s tight race came in an election that saw Democrat Annie Andrews flip the U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Lindsey Graham and, before him, Strom Thurmond.

Nancy Lacore flipped the coastal 1st District back to blue with a 1-percentage-point win — the seat’s third flip in eight years and the first since the post-2020-census redrawing of voting lines made the seat safer for a Republican. And in the state House, Democrats ousted 10 Republicans to erase the chamber’s GOP supermajority.

But Republicans won all other statewide races, including Gov.-elect Alan Wilson, the state’s four-term attorney general and the congressman’s son.

Joe Wilson called the nationwide blue tsunami “an aberration.” He predicted a Republican will flip the 1st District back again in two years.

“The Republican future in South Carolina, I believe, is going to be very bright,” Wilson said.

Wilson has met formidable opponents before, but has never gotten so close to being unseated. In 2020, Democrat Adair Ford Boroughs raised $2.5 million to campaign against Wilson. The congressman still won with 55.7% of the vote.

Debbie Epling, the chair of the Aiken County Republican Party, said she doesn’t believe the small margin was a reflection on Wilson himself, but instead the broader momentum Democrats had this midterm cycle.

“I really think he did about as much as he could this campaign cycle,” Epling said, adding that Wilson has appeared at several events in Aiken County.

The main takeaway, Epling said, is for voters to know to not take their vote for granted.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.