Carolina South Carolina at a Glance State Profile - Gov. Hodges (D) - Sen. Thurmond (R) - Sen. Hollings (D) Presidential Politics Congressional Districting - 01 - Sanford (R) - 02 - Spence (R) - 03 - Graham (R) - 04 - DeMint (R) - 05 - Spratt Jr. (D) - 06 - Clyburn (D) Almanac 2000 Home States & Districts Elected Officials For district profiles and additional information on the elected officials of South Carolina, please use the pull-down menu above.

Some of the fiercest battles of the Revolutionary War were fought in South Carolina's Up Country, on hilly lands just being settled by Scots-Irish farmers moving up from the Low Country or down the Virginia Piedmont valley. This was a country of violent passions and unclear lines; Carolinians have long argued over which side of the North and South Carolina boundary Andrew Jackson was born in 1767. Ever since, the fighting spirit and Calvinist faith of Up Country Carolinians have never wavered. This ''Olde English District'' remains intensely religious and pro-military. But it is no longer impoverished. For many years, the dominant industry here was textiles, traditionally the first factory enterprise of industrializing countries, with low pay and poor working conditions. But in the 1980s and 1990s the number of textile jobs declined, and small-business prosperity more recently has been barreling out the interstates from Greenville-Spartanburg and Columbia and Charlotte, to transform counties once dependent on tobacco fields and textile mills.

The 5th Congressional District consists of all or part of 13 counties, mostly in the Up Country. It includes none of the state's three large metropolitan centers, but much of their growing fringe. In the east, the 5th includes Darlington, site of the Southern 500 stock car race every Labor Day, and verges on lowland tobacco country, including Marlboro and Chesterfield counties. In the west, it includes Fort Mill and Rock Hill in York County, just south of Charlotte, ready for fast development now that a land settlement with the Catawba Indians has been reached. Politically, this homeland of Andrew Jackson is ancestrally Democratic. But in the 1990s Republicans have become competitive here.

The congressman from the 5th District is John Spratt, one of the leading Democrats in the House, first elected in 1982. He comes from a prominent York County family and has degrees from Davidson, Yale Law and Oxford; he first got involved in politics in Charles Ravenel's unsuccessful 1974 campaign for governor. In 1982 the 5th District incumbent announced his retirement a week before the filing deadline; Spratt put a campaign together fast and won 38% in the primary, 55% in the runoff against a high-spending candidate, and 68% in the general. For 10 years he was re-elected easily; then in 1994 and 1996 he had tough races, winning by 52%-48% and 54%-45%, carrying the rural counties and running even in York County. It is a measure of the strength of the Republican tide of the mid-1990s that a Democrat with so many political assets could be so hard pressed. But the Democrats came back in South Carolina, winning the governorship and holding Hollings's senate seat, and Spratt won 58%-40%.

Spratt's two specialties are military issues and the budget; he is ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee and third-ranking Democrat on Armed Services. In the 1980s, he worked with then-Chairman Les Aspin and, in his thick Carolina accent and with impressive knowledge of details, stitched together compromises on the MX missile, binary nerve gas weapons, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the Savannah River Site and other nuclear plants--keeping military projects flowing through the House, many of whose members were constantly looking to cut military spending. In the 1990s he has worked on the details of defense budgets, concentrating on maintaining troop levels and equipment in good condition. He has conceded for some time that the ABM Treaty will have to be abandoned some day, but has been cautious about rapid development and deployment of missile defense. His amendment on the subject prevailed in February 1995 by 218-212, the first significant defeat of a Contract with America promise in the Republican House. In August 1998, a month after the Rumsfeld Commission report on missile defense, he joined Curt Weldon and other Republicans in support of a one-sentence bill declaring ''the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense.'' This passed the House, but Senate Democrats (except for Hollings and three others) filibustered against any missile defense measure in September 1998. In late May 1999 the House passed a bill that would make the construction of a national missile defense a top priority.

Spratt supported the 1990 budget deal and tax increase, and in 1991 got a seat on the Budget Committee. His moderate voting record made him a natural point of contact between the parties, but Democrats did not see him as their leader: in their November 1992 caucus he was beaten for Budget chairman by the more liberal Martin Sabo by 149-112. He rotated off the committee in 1992, then ran for the ranking Democrat position on Budget again in December 1996, proclaiming his ''determination'' to balance the budget. Democrats, now in the minority, were more ready for his leadership; he was nominated by Appropriations ranking Democrat David Obey and beat the more liberal Louise Slaughter by 106-83; he actually had fewer votes than four years before.

He started off with a good relationship with Budget Chairman John Kasich; as he noted in February 1997, when Kasich announced his engagement, ''If John Kasich can find someone to marry him, then surely we can find some way to balance the budget.'' He played a major role in putting together the May 1997 agreement to reach a balanced budget, holding together Democrats who disliked the concessions to wealthy tax payers and staying in touch with Republicans who wanted more spending cuts. In the process, he got support from Bill Archer and Al Gore against a proposed Medicaid funding cut which would have hurt South Carolina, and came up with an alternative Republican Governor David Beasley praised. Spratt continued to work with the White House, House Republicans and House Democrats in establishing the specific details of the balanced budget package, which finally were agreed on in August 1997. ''My party was no longer calling the shots, but I was in the middle of the biggest game going on,'' he said. Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and 51 other Democrats and 32 Republicans voted against this, but it passed by a wide margin. Spratt gave much credit to the 1990 budget deal and noted that Newt Gingrich and most of the current Republican leadership voted against it. In June 1998, unsatisfied with the House Republicans' budget, Spratt introduced a Democratic budget with $30 billion in tax cuts and $30 billion for new Clinton spending programs.

On other issues, Spratt has a moderate record, somewhat to the left of the middle of the House. He voted for the line-item veto in 1995, though he thought its particular form was unconstitutional; the Supreme Court agreed. He co-sponsored the Democratic welfare alternative with Georgia's Nathan Deal in March 1995, which came close to passing; but it was overtaken by the welfare reform act Clinton signed in August 1996, for which Spratt voted. He has been co-chair of the Textile Caucus, and pressed in various ways to get the Clinton Administration to enforce rules against illegal textile imports. He criticized the FDA's attempts to regulate tobacco as unjustified by law, and sponsored a bill to prohibit FDA regulation. He sponsored the V-chip legislation adopted in 1996. He has worked to keep Shaw Air Force Base near Sumter off the base-closing list, and he settled a 15-year controversy just before a 1992 deadline which would have triggered a lawsuit by Catawba Indians against 62,000 landowners. With Edward Markey he opposed building a civilian nuclear plant for tritium production; South Carolina wants the work at the Savannah River Site, and Spratt argued that a civilian plant would undermine U.S. anti-nuclear proliferation efforts.

In 1994 and 1996 Spratt was opposed by Republican Larry Bigham, who denounced government mandates and pledged, ''I will work to get government out of our lives, out of our schools, out of our homes, out of our businesses'' and argued that ''a vote for John Spratt is a vote for Bill Clinton.'' As opinion continued to move away from Republicans, Spratt received a rousing reception at a Democratic forum in Rock Hill in January 1998 for balancing the budget. In 1998 Spratt was opposed by a 29-year-old food company owner and York County town official who pledged to serve only three terms. This gave Spratt an opportunity to argue that no term-limited member could accomplish the things he had. This was one of the three districts where the House Republicans' campaign committee ran their most virulent anti-Clinton ads in the last week of the campaign--ads that received national publicity all out of proportion to the actual buy. Here they seem to have made little difference. Spratt won 58%-40%, carrying every county but York, which newcomers flooding over the state line from Charlotte have made more Republican; York County has been the fourth fastest-growing in the state since 1990, behind only Beaufort (Hilton Head), Lexington (Columbia suburbs) and Horry (Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand). Speaking of his own victory and those of other South Carolina Democrats, Spratt said, ''You could feel the river rising. This exceeds my wildest expectations.'' This highly competent and productive member seems once again to have a safe seat.

Cook's Call:
Probably Safe. This is one of those Republican trending districts that Democrats will have an excruciatingly difficult time holding on to once the popular Democrat retires. Until then, Spratt, who survived the 1994 anti-Democratic tidal wave that swept through the South as well as aggressive Republican challengers over the past two cycles, will be very tough to beat.

The People:

• Pop. 1990: 581,174
• 62.7% rural; 12.3% age 65+;
• 68.3% White, 30.8% Black, 0.4% Asian, 0.5% Amer. Indian, 0.5% Hispanic origin; 0.1% Other.
• Households: 57.7% married couple families; 29.3% married couple fams. w. children; 31.9% college educ.; median household income: $25,215; per capita income: $11,009; median gross rent: $216; median house value: $53,300.

1996 Presidential Vote Dole (R) 83,273 (47%) Clinton (D) 82,203 (46%) Perot (I) 11,827 (7%)

1992 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 86,118 (45%) Clinton (D) 81,192 (42%) Perot (I) 23,462 (12%)