In this episode, Grace talks with Ed Sutton, a candidate for the new State Senate seat in District 20. Sutton, a Citadel graduate and Air Force veteran, shares his unique journey from military service to politics including his experience as a C-17 pilot flying refugees out during the Kabul evacuation. He outlines his campaign's key issues: infrastructure, housing, and education, and critiques current housing and educational policies in South Carolina. He stresses the importance of nuanced political conversations and local-focused solutions, advocating for less political tribalism and more practical governance.

00:00 Introduction to Ed Sutton

00:36 Ed Sutton's Military Background

01:37 Political Views and Democratic Messaging

04:32 Running for State Senate: District 20

07:12 Challenges and Misconceptions in Politics

09:41 The Kabul Evacuation Experience

17:58 Infrastructure, Housing, and Education Policies

23:14 Controversial Legislation on Education

26:33 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Copyright 2024 Grace Cowan

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Hey, it's Grace and this is Frogmore Stoop today we are meeting Ed Sutton. Ed is running for a state Senate seat, district 20. That was redistricted after the last census from the Chapin area to Charleston. Hi, Ed. Hey, how's it going? Great. I'm really looking forward to talking to you today. You have a really interesting background.

Too many jobs. That's usually what I say to folks is, yep, I've got a few different things going on.

So one thing that as a mom who is currently going through the college application process with my daughter. I read that you only applied to one college. It was the Citadel. So you put all your eggs in one basket. You got in.

You went there. You graduated. Became an Air Force officer and then eventually a C 17 pilot and went directly to Afghanistan in 2008. That's a lot to happen at a young life.

You know, part of it, the college decision occurred my senior year in high school. I was way in between USC apply and then September 11th happened and I just felt the call and was like, I've got to go the military route.

I come from a family with a lot of military service. I felt that it was my turn to go down that road. Like you said, put all my eggs in one basket, applied to the Citadel, came down here in 2002. Minus deployment since I'm over overseas military training basically, since then Charleston is, has been home, but it has been a very fun journey.

So I'm always so curious, you said you come from a military family, how people come into their political stripes. Family obviously affects us in which direction we go. As a military veteran, went to the Citadel, military family, those things don't really pop out at me as a Democrat. Were your parents Democrats?

I grew up in a house that long term South Carolina, we was split in the sense that every Senate cycle, my parents would vote for Fritz Hollings. And then the next Senate cycle, they would vote for Strong Thurmond. But they were more on the generation, it's about the person more so than the party. But I get that a lot.

I'm also a business owner and sometimes when I have these conversations, people are like, wait a second, Democrat? And I do think that kind of points to some deficiencies in democratic messaging that people automatically assume that folks in the military don't lean that way. That's certainly in my experience has not been the case.

I hesitate to say down the middle, but you get a pretty serious reflection in society. So you have a diverse viewpoint there. I think you see polling from the previous election, the majority of military members voted for Biden. And certainly a bit of a misconception that the Republican party largely has a lock on military events has not been my experience there.

And that's probably something that the Democratic party has to do a better job is reminding folks that we are the big 10 party, we represent all people.

I think that's A really big reason of why I started this podcast in the first place is because I feel like we should be voting on the person and the policy that's the most important to us and we've lost that, become this really like tribal thing of you're either this or that and the other one is evil.

I think it's really important to have nuanced views of politics. You represent that. Based on your resume, you would seemingly be a very traditional Republican and yet You're running as a Democrat, but I will say like a South Carolina Democrat is more like a New York City or a California Republican.

I think the key word you said there is tribalism and I agree it's unfortunate how hard the lines have been defined and I'll say too a lot of that I think is the second pandemic that come out of COVID is a function of us for a number of years being more isolated and put into our social media bubbles.

Those, those algorithms, they just. Video's what we like and if you're just constantly being fed that hey, this is the right team, we do the right things, the other ones are bad, imprints on people and it makes it difficult to have conversations about roads and schools and things that are like affecting everybody and not so much like I, I am very deliberate that I'll tell folks I don't like talking about a lot of DC talking points.

Because that's not going to fix that stoplight that is ill timed and causing issues in the neighborhood for folks. So I try to create that space to where we can keep the issues and keep the conversations locally focused and have a broader conversation there.

You are running for a state senate seat. District 20, that was redistricted from Chapin to Charleston. What area in Charleston does that new district cover?

So Charleston County, we are gaining this year a new state senate seat, which is, doesn't happen very often. I think you have to actually go back to 1984 before, last time that we gained a seat, even back in 84, a little South Carolina history for you, is counties and the senators were laudicated by total populations and there was no districts within the county.

It was your population's this, therefore you have this many senators representing you. So since they made that change in 84, so 40 years ago, I don't believe Charleston County has gained a Senate seat since then, which is, again, pretty exciting time for us. Yeah. But this seat currently lives up in the Midlands.

And then this November, it comes down this way. Geographically, it's actually one of the districts. There's some gerrymandering involved because we limited South Carolina and that's an unfortunate reality we, we deal with. But geographically, a lot of the issues align. So for that part, I'm thankful. But the district is downtown Charleston, roughly.

10th Avenue up in Wagoner Terrace on the way down to, believe it or not, South Abroad. It goes on the way to Gibb Street. And it's not a straight line. There's some jigsawing going on there. And then West Ashley is where the majority of the voters are, just like the city of Charleston. But on the West Ashley portion, it goes all the way out to Bees Ferry and then on James Island it goes all the way down to Fort Johnson Road as well.

Easy, quick answer to that is downtown Charleston, West Ashley. And James Island was some caveats.

And whose district was that before it became its own district?

Right now, Dion Tedder has the majority of the downtown, and previously Marlee Kempson that has come into this new district. And then Sandy Sand represented the West Ashley and James Island portion of this district.

The majority of it is Sandy Sand's former state senate seat.

You have one person running against you, who is a libertarian. Have you seen any outlooks on the breakdown of the district yet?

I don't want to bore you with a bunch of numbers, but if you look anywhere between Princeton gerrymandering study, which is pretty good, and then Davis maps.

The Democratic lean varies from 19 percent to about 12 percent there, so it's got a pretty hard Democratic lean to the district. Most political consultants in South Carolina would tell you these days that moving the needle five points is a lot. Any handicapper is going to put this as a safe Democratic district.

I think the Republicans recognize that as well because they didn't even put up a challenge with this, which is unfortunate because I like the competition. I think that's where you get the best ideas flushed out in that debate. And it is unfortunate that we live in a state that politicians pick their own districts.

My belief is that it should be an independent committee drawing districts and we'll have more competitive races. And hopefully as a result of that, get people that are better in tune with the needs of the public. But. This is, I'll say, certainly one where I think they look to trying to put as many Democrats into one district as possible to make some other areas more competitive.

You're speaking my language, Ed. From a representation standpoint of what the state legislature looks like, I don't believe we currently live in a democracy in the state of South Carolina, from the state Supreme Court all the way through the legislature, but. I have a couple questions about this. Do you have a helmet for the many days that you're gonna have to bang your head against the wall?

I know, right? It'll be frustrating. The numbers don't look good for, again, Democrats have to, we have to do a better job with our messaging to expand it and also be realized that we are fighting gerrymandering. The other side is very intentional in how they draw these districts, but we're only one seat away from losing the filibuster.

And if that happens, it's not good. And you alluded, like what comes out of the legislature, especially with the cultural stuff is way out of line with what the general public in South Carolina is for. One perfect example, 83 percent of Republicans in the state support universal background checks for gun purchases.

And we need to be the military guy, always lean into that gun debates. I feel like I have some good insight to offer for that. But at the same time, the legislators move in the opposite direction and make it easier for folks that intend to do harm to acquire weapons without any screening whatsoever. So that's a good example, hey, this is where the Republicans are on this issue, but the folks up in the legislature are beholden to special interest groups and they move in the opposite direction.

Not the first time we've seen that, but that is a real thing that's happening as we speak. And if you talk to folks, like I was at a meeting last week with the House Rep Stravinakis, He's, he's been up there since 2006 and he benches this very publicly. He's noticing that kind of cultural war shift and particularly with that Freedom Caucus nonsense coming down to South Carolina and those guys just waste so much of our time and airspace on things that just so far removed from people's kitchen tables.

I think to your point, it's marketing one liners that they're able to use to scare the crap out of people and get them fired up about an issue that Has no direct effect on them and really, frankly, doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Because politicians can only win if they have voters that are passionate or enraged.

One thing that I feel like you have a really unique perspective on is the evacuation of Kabul. And it feels like that news cycle was eons ago. You were a pilot on one of the last flights out of Kabul.

Going back when I left college, I joined active duty Air Force and served as a C 17 pilot, but also do.

An exchange toward the army that I very much enjoyed, part of the 101st from Band of Brothers and Steven Private Ryan as part of that unit for a number of years and really enjoyed that work as well. But after my active duty time came to an end, I joined the Air Force Reserves here in Charleston, which the whole reserve concept has changed in the post 9 11 world and it's worth touching on that for a second.

Prior to the 9 11, a lot of reservists didn't have the level of training to be able to jump right into the fight on a moment's notice type things. So with all the Funding that came with when the War of Terror started, our whole structure changed. And as a reservist now, you basically have to be ready for that.

If the, and Kabul is a great example that when something crazy happens in the world and active duty needs a lot more help, be ready to jump right into the fight. So in August, it was a 2021. We saw that the Taliban was having a very active summer and taking over the population center. And there's no denying that this is going to be a very ugly, ugly ending, but I got a call that night and it was as you can expect.

There wasn't a ton of details this year, but it was like, Hey, we need all available bodies come to base. We're going to build crews. So got in the bags, gave my wife an update of all the passwords of all the different accounts and everything like that. In case something happened and was out the door. So anyway, was on base for a day or two, got our crew built.

The air evacuation effort wasn't just getting people out of Kabul. That was one piece of it. But we also had to get medical teams in place, move supplies, build tent cities. and different locations everywhere from Germany to several of our partner nations in the Middle East. So there's a massive logistical effort happening.

I think we actually, for our Kabul run, we got launched out of Germany and on a good day, you could take a C 17 out of Germany and drop into Kabul, picks people up, get some gas and get back in roughly about 18 hours or so, which is a pretty long day. If we had the right crew, pop them in, we could fly up to 24 hours.

That was our max duty limit. And anyway, for the Kabul run, that ended up being a 33 hour day. So we broke a lot of rules. And it was one of those scenarios where there's just no other choice. You don't want to be in that situation. Also, the other thing is that the system was totally overloaded with people trying to move around.

When the government fell, all the air traffic controllers left as well. So we were flying in and out of the country with No air traffic control whatsoever, which is, that's another element of danger. And, uh, if you look at a matrix of all the things that you have for an evacuation, this is probably one of the worst spots in the world.

It's the middle of a city. There's people with guns. There's only one runway. You got people from all, you know, different nations trying to get in and out of there. We had some goofballs in Congress trying to hire private jets to get in the country. What are you doing? Get out of our way. I think this is the evacuation.

This ain't a photo op for you, man. Take him back home.

And you're literally like looking out your dashboard window. Like you have no idea what else is out there.

We still had our radios where we could talk jet to jet. And so there's some aircrafts coming back and forth on the radio trying to keep track of one another.

And this is another crazy thing. We don't know how many people we flew out of there. We've got an estimate, but again, just given the, what was going on there, people were coming over the fence and we would just pull up in a stack and drop our back door and there'd be a block of roughly about 400 people that have been living on the ramp for several days with very limited food and water.

Again, it's hot. Everything they've got and they took out of their house a few nights prior. Just one suitcase type thing. It was pretty heartbreaking stuff. So anyway, we load it up and our load master downstairs, he does all the weight and center and balance calculations. And initially, this guy's got a problem.

He's, we're too heavy and we're about to kick some people off the jet. So we have a standard number that we use for passengers that includes the average weight of a person and plus some baggage. We determined based on our rough look at our passengers, about half of the people and more were kids. So we went back and ran the math again and says, you can barely make it.

So I was like, let's go with that. Obviously I'm speaking to you today. We did get out of there. Um, but we were caring for 400 refugees on a very hot jet. I've never had a mission like that before, but the Kabul evacuation was certainly one of the record books.

When you said you had to write all your passwords down and give them all to your wife and make sure she was caught up on all of what you do within your family, that puts such a human perspective on it because every single day there are members of our military that have to do that because we're sending them into danger and I think we lose that a lot and I think our politicians lose that a lot particularly in D.C. is that is a piece from the human side that I think is a great reminder. about what our military is going to do. And the second thing, you're in this situation with 16 other military members on the ground in Afghanistan. You have all these people that are depending on you to get them out. It's literally life and death.

You guys aren't sitting there talking about what your political stripes are. That level of having to work together and trusting each other, that really is another element that I think gets lost in the political debate and the rhetoric. And probably every single one of you had different beliefs on abortion or transgender care, all of these things that we in the U.S. get caught up and fight over, and yet here's probably one of the most important jobs in our country in that moment, and none of that stuff matters.

That's another national thing I am worried about is we are seeing, I feel like a stronger effort to politicize the military. Senator. Tupperville last year was holding up our general officer promotions because he didn't like the DOD's policy on abortion, which hasn't changed in, I don't know, like 40 years, he's willing to sabotage our leadership and trying to get the DOD to bend to his will.

I think that is an incredibly negative thing for this country and politicians do need to leave us out of it and not eject all this other, because we have enough stuff on our plate as it is to worry about and try to overcome when we haven't, we've been operating for a decade off of continuing resolution for the DOD, which is absurd in my opinion.

And I think many of us don't actually understand the entire Afghanistan war, or even the other two that it often gets confused with. I just watched this movie called Game Changer that's about the rise of Sarah Palin and her relationship with John McCain. And there's a scene where they're prepping her for interviews and she doesn't know the difference between Desert Storm, the Iraqi war, and the Afghanistan war.

But it made me think about not that many people. We don't really know the basics of those three different wars. We aren't able to look at the end of Afghanistan and have a really educated, thoughtful opinion on it.

There's good and there's bad to all of that, particularly with the end of Afghanistan. I don't think that book's been written yet.

What we've accomplished there, what was not accomplished, where things went off the rails. Because, hey, let's face it, at the end of the day, our objectives change with time. And I think that was also part of it. It was so nebulous of what are we doing here? How do we define success in this 20 year effort? I always knew what I was doing from a tactical standpoint.

Hey, here's the daily mission. You're going to go here, pick up this and move it. Always do that. But the overall goal was never clearly defined. And I think largely more than anything, that end state goal needs to be defined on the elected civilian side because the military is an instrument. But we never got that.

And that's a hard lesson in life. Then I saw first hand on the ground and it is something I take into my politics is like, Hey, getting out there, being a part of the community, like hearing what people say and stop trying to make decisions like from an isolated kind of ivory tower type thing. And I work in a lot of different neighborhoods in Charleston.

I do deals down on Broad street. I do deals up in North Charleston. My personal side, that's a pretty economically challenged areas and just having that relationship and neighborhood connection there that helps guide me with better decisions and also like tee up the right projects that are actually truly a need there, not something that some study said that was needed.

And I guess that's a great segue into the three big issues of your campaign, infrastructure, housing and education. For the last 10 years, we've really had the wind at our back as far as attracting and getting manufacturing jobs. The next step really is to attract companies with the gray and white collar jobs.

From an infrastructure and education and housing standpoint, how do you take that next step?

Yeah, and actually I'll go back to one of the things you mentioned in the manufacturing side of the house. There's a lot of locals here that have missed out on, on that opportunity. And that kind of goes to my third main point is education, right?

We have been a little bit slow to adapt how we're training high school students to be prepared for the jobs that we have, not the jobs that we think we have, and particularly with manufacturing. And so what's happening there is Volvo, Boeing, They're having to go out of market big time and go to Ohio and other manufacturing places that are in decline.

And find their labor there and bring them and then that puts a strain on our existing infrastructure because clearly the building rate does not keep it up with demand so we've got to make sure that, hey, the folks that have lived here long term and the folks, the high school students we're putting out are ready and, and prepared for these jobs.

We're producing too many lawyers. And not enough folks that are ready for the trades and those jobs are incredibly high demand. Anyway, that's part of looking for towards future growth and kind of making tweaks in the system. And I got to also recognize Trident Tech in this is they have under Mary's leadership, Mary Thornley over there.

They have done a great job, and they are hungry for a lot more opportunities to partner with different high schools. So I want us to focus on that more. And even like the big guys, and the Bois Vos, and they'll even tell you that, do it here locally, like it's just an easier process. But I do think a lot of our growth has been disjointed, disconnected.

And there's a number of reasons why, and one of the issues we have is I think within Detroit County, it's 33 different municipalities, right? You have 33 different taxing authorities and then different zoning departments. So I do think there's an appetite for some consolidation there. It's a lot easier with less players to guide that growth and make sure that we're pursuing like a smart regional growth strategy.

This is going into my second point. Our housing policy is not working in the sense that this is not a unique Charleston problem, this is a nationwide problem. is we're only truly building one or two housing products, right? And that's your single family houses and apartments. That's primarily what's getting built.

And when you talk to the housing experts, what they'll advocate for is the missing middle. And that's like duplexes, that's ADUs, that's townhomes. We've got to, one, at the state level, but also encourage it at the municipal levels too. And so we have to go back and look at our zoning and permitting process and figure out, hey, what are the barriers here to creating more housing options?

Because when you have more housing options, you're touching the supply problem there. Cause if you can put a duplex, now you have four times the housing capacity on that land. And that's not to say, and I'm advocating that we come into long established like single family neighborhoods and start doing that kind of stuff.

Cause I know there's people out there that lose their mind when they hear that and don't fully understand. But we have to build that dense housing near mass transit nodes. And I'm also serving on the board of director for CARTA, so I'm a huge fan of buses and mass transit. There's so many cool parallels between.

How we organize our bus systems versus how the military operates planes overseas. And everything, especially with the low country rapid transit coming here in a couple years, shovels in the ground in two years and hopefully complete that line by 2029. We've got to make sure that where those stations are being built.

that we have vertical DITS housing. This is hopefully, in my opinion, phase one of Low Country Transportation. Hopefully, we'll have more. But right now, where I think it is positioned to do is it terminates at MUSC Downtown. So, that's a major job center. But a lot of your staff, anywhere from like nurses to janitors to people that are in residency, Those wages don't support living anywhere around in the U.S. So, what we have to do is, how do we get this person from their place of residence to where they work and let's try to see if we can do that without a car. Let's see if we can get them that option and I'm also not saying don't take people's cars away. If you want to drive, you can drive, but give them an option that's more efficient and fits in their life.

I would be one of those drivers. If I live right next to an LCRT station, I could jump on that bus and free Wi Fi, knock out a couple emails on the way and then arrive. I think that's just a better use of my day right there. But anyway, back to the MUSC scenario. What I envision is along the line, creating those opportunities for like medical workers to live and they walk out of their apartment or their townhome, they get to the station, and then we can bring them on to the peninsula.

Less cars, less strain on our infrastructure, so. That's one of the big things that I'm in favor of is making sure that we marry up housing policy with mass transit policy and it's certainly not a new concept at all, but I think there's some really good conversations that are happening out there, but that's the thing, why I don't want to spend my time.

Especially in this role of selling is guys, if you're frustrated like I am about how long commutes are getting and how our infrastructure is not keeping up, let's do something different and let's do something bold. We've had decades of band aid solutions and we're not getting anywhere with it. Bringing to life this brand new mass transit, I definitely put that in the category of something bold.

Okay. The house seems pretty likely to expand this 6, 000 per people expenditure. To all families, meaning that if you have a child that goes to public school or private school, this bill, this new bill would allow you to, any person that makes any amount of money, to take that 6, 000 out of the public domain of education and apply it to the school of your choice.

It was originally done for families making 60, 000 or less. To utilize toward the school of their choice, and now they're trying to expand it. It's in front of the state Supreme Court because the South Carolina Constitution prohibits using public money to benefit private educational institutions. How do you feel about this legislation and what do you think this is gonna do to our public school system?

Quite frankly, I think it's terrible and the top line there is this is an effort to defund our schools, which is very unfortunate. You can trace the history of vouchers back to the 60s when we weren't desegregating schools. And there's a number of very negative things that will happen if this does come to pass.

So what if it will be? Uh, of our schools and hopefully the Supreme Court will see that this is in violation of our state constitution and obviously at the federal level of separation of church and state. What this would do, this would give your taxpayer dollars and somebody can take it to a religious institution that does not fall in the same oversight that our public schools do and use it as they see fit.

The other. The big thing that's going to happen if this does pass is it's also going to leave kids that are already in a tough economic spot further behind. So studies that other states have done in like Indiana, these religious schools, private schools, when they know everyone's got a 6, 000 voucher, and I'm not making this stuff up because it's all been studied, they're going to up their prices, right?

And also like. Where's 6, 000 voucher going to get you anyway right now? It ain't going to get you in Port au Prince. So what happens is obviously that family now they say, okay, now our private school decision is now subsidized. So they can pay that extra 30, 50%, whatever. That low income student can do that, right?

So then we're taken as we're separating again by economic classes in our schools. And we've been down that road. We know how terrible that is for us as a society and creates another division between races and our community. So I'm vehemently opposed to. The vouchers, and one thing I'll say going back to my 33 hour day of total incentive leadership.

Hey, I'm your filibuster guy. I don't want to, but I'll stand up there and talk for 30, 30 hours if I have to on a subject to things like vouchers are just not a well thought out program. It's well thought out for those that is trying to benefit, prefer, and society as a whole, South Carolina society as a whole.

It will be a massive detriment and I think will make us, you know, less competitive as we're trying to attract those businesses and, but more than anything, we decided as a nation a long time ago, separation between church and state, and I'll say it right now, my oldest, my four year old, he's going to a Christian day school, and that is mine and my wife's decision to make, and we are not expecting the state of South Carolina to subsidize that decision.

So even as somebody who has a child right now in a Christian school, I don't want the state money being pumped into that school because that's the wrong thing to do. It violates that boundary.

I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. You're such an interesting human. Such a fascinating career and I think you would be a great addition to our state senate.

I'm looking forward to watching your race.

The big part of what I'm trying to do is take it back to those more nuanced conversations. And also it's like a party, we got to do a better job. If you want crazy stuff, go over there. You want someone who's going to keep the train on track, it's like, I'm your guy.

That's all the stew for today, talk to you next week.