FLORENCE, SC (WBTW) – The Florence County Democratic Party hosted the Florence County Democratic Convention Tuesday evening.
A packed room left many standing while candidates for Governor spoke to the audience about the change they want to make.
Candidates Marguerite Willis and Phil Noble were in attendance, while candidate James Smith’s wife, Kirkland Smith, spoke on her husband’s behalf.
“James has been a leader in the House for women’s issues, the environment, schools, healthcare, and civil rights,” Smith said about her husband.
Willis was introduced to the audience by her husband and former Florence Mayor, Frank Willis. Willis said she will focus on healthcare and education.
“Obviously our teachers need more pay, they need less paperwork and they need inspiration,” she said. “I want to extend the school day so that working mothers and folks have daycare.”
She said there are ways to make healthcare more efficient for everyone.
“That’s where the major portion of our state budget is spent, and obviously we can expand Medicaid, but I think we also ought to look for waste that’s in that system and redeploy it in other ways.
Willis spoke strongly to the audience about equal pay among men and women in the workforce.
“Know this,” she said. “That I will take my warrior self to the Governor’s mansion and I will not rest until the women of this state have equal pay for equal work and the same goes for the men.”
Noble said he also wants to see a change in education, beginning with pre-kindergarteners.
“We have to reinvent public education in this state from pre-k, even before that, to post grad,” he said. “I think we ought to begin by doubling the pay of our teachers and that’s a way to attract some of the best teachers in America, to come to South Carolina.’
Noble said he wants to “fix the system” in Columbia.
“I think we can do better by taking on the corrupt and broken, dysfunctional, plantation political system we’ve got,” he told the audience.
The primaries are on June 12 and general election is on Nov. 6.
