 "Photo: Jeremy Aaron / THE DAILY GAMECOCK")
Gubernational Democratic candidate Dwight Drake paid a visit to USC and gave a speech to the campus’s Young Democrats Wednesday night.
He firmly emphasized the two concepts that he felt were most problematic in South Carolina: education and jobs. Upon being elected, Drake plans on working exclusively to find enough jobs so that by the time the current students in college graduate, they will be able to find employment.
South Carolina has the highest unemployment rate in the Southeast and the fifth highest in the nation. Drake said the governor’s job is to recruit and market all types of industries, businesses and jobs to come to the state. However, according to Drake, the absence of leadership over the years has led to the decline of that pursuit, whereas other states in the South and further west are preparing for economic changes in the years to come.
“By 2014 the expansion of the Panama Canal will be complete, and that will change the businesses throughout the East Coast,” he said.
Drake also said the governor of Arkansas was recently in Cuba to discuss trading for rice farms when the embargo for that country expires.
“Other states nearby are preparing for these changes, but South Carolina is not, due to petty bickering with the current administration,” Drake said.
He was referring to all the recent controversies surrounding the Sanford administration and the governor himself. Drake intends to significantly improve the job market for everyone, especially for women and minorities. Since South Carolina is ranked 49th in regards to education, Drake spent half of the time talking about that issue.
He said superintendents of education throughout the country have agreed on a common set of standards, but only two states did not sign along with it: Alaska and South Carolina.
“Some people have said that standards are too high,” he said, but he is all for it.
Drake says that our performance rate must be improved. He also addressed how students tend to forget what they have learned over the long summer breaks.
“Obviously when you’re not doing something for a while, when you do it again, you won’t be as good as you were,” he said.
One of the Young Democrats asked him what should be done to resolve that and he said shorter summer breaks should be designed while having longer breaks throughout the school year. However, that will take time because the teachers claim that they use the long summers to get a break because they are “all burned out.”
Someone also asked him about controversial issues on a national level, such as abortion and gay marriage. Drake said he believes that it should be a woman’s choice to decide what to do in that situation, not the government’s.
“After all, we men have no idea what goes through a woman’s mind while going through all of that,” Drake said.
In regards to gay marriage, he has ambivalence toward it. He says that he essentially sees marriage as a bond between a man and a woman, but he is strongly against the discrimination of anyone regardless of their sexual orientation.
A student even asked him what he thought about how Obama was handling health care.
“He’s doing a great job. He is pushing towards bipartisanship, which isn’t easy, but I think he can make it pass,” Drake said.
Enjoying the atmosphere, he said with a laugh that usually he’s in a small room just calling random people and asking them for money, so he is happy to come out and talk to students.
“It’s good to see so many Democrats out here and to have them ask me so many questions,” he said. The students were happy to have him as well. After he finished, the club’s president, Connie Benesh, gave him a “Yes We Did” T-shirt.
“We’re always very excited for candidates to come speak to college Democrats,” Benesh said, a fourth-year broadcast journalism student.
Benesh thinks that it’s crucial that young people get involved at such an early age so that they can become more knowledgable about politics.
Drake knows that it will not be easy for a Democrat to win in South Carolina, but he said that his campaign has a plan mapped out that he’s highly confident about.
“We’ve developed a winning strategy and so far it’s going on track,” he said.
2 comments
My vote is still for Vincent Sheheen though.