• SC-04: South Carolina Rep. William Timmons' newest ad accuses his primary opponent of being too hardline on abortion, a line of attack that GOP candidates almost never use against one another. Timmons, though, is betting that even Republican primary voters in the conservative Greenville area have limits on what they're willing to tolerate.
The spot shows footage of state Rep. Adam Morgan, who is challenging Timmons for renomination on June 11, raising his hand in support of what a female narrator describes as "legislation that would send rape and incest victims to jail for up to two years who ended their pregnancy."
"Adam," she continues, "being pro-life doesn’t mean you hurt women by jailing the victims of rape and incest. Your vote was shameful." Timmons himself closes out the commercial by saying he approves his message "because I am pro-life."
The Greenville News' Savannah Moss recently explained the context for the 2022 vote in question. At the time, the state House was debating a bill that would ban abortion unless the mother's life was at risk or the pregnancy was the result of a sexual assault.
But Republican Rep. Josiah Magnuson thought these restrictions still did not go far enough, so he proposed an amendment that would punish a woman who "intentionally commits abortion" with a misdemeanor with a maximum prison sentence of two years.
Morgan, who chairs the far-right Freedom Caucus that Magnuson is also a member of, voted for his ally's plan, but most lawmakers did not. The amendment failed 91 to 9, though the legislature went on to ban abortion in most cases after just six weeks.
Morgan defended himself at a candidate forum earlier this month by claiming that his vote was meant to close an alleged "loophole" by going after women "who performed abortions on themselves." He also snarked that the three-term congressman didn't understand the true purpose of the vote because he suffered from "reading comprehension issues."
Timmons stood his ground both on the amendment and his reading abilities. The incumbent shared his new ad on social media Monday, writing that Morgan had backed a measure that "was widely rejected by the national and state pro-life movement as not only harmful to women, but to the noble effort to protect the unborn."
Timmons, who has Donald Trump's endorsement, is facing off against Morgan in an increasingly ugly battle. During a debate last week, the congressman brought up a website his campaign had created to attack Morgan for missing votes in the legislature, prompting Morgan to respond by drawing attention to rumors that Timmons used the powers of his office to conceal an extra-marital affair.
"The fact that we’re at a place in our politics where somebody has to go and create a website about attacking their opponent and attacking their integrity," Morgan complained. "I have to say, you don’t want this election to be about integrity."
When the rumors first surfaced two years ago, Timmons denied he'd done anything illegal. He did not, however, address whether he'd been unfaithful to his wife, who filed for divorce several months later, with the estranged wife of a developer named Ron Rallis.
Rallis publicly accused Timmons of moral and legal wrongdoing at the time and has since kept up a public crusade against the incumbent. The developer sat in the audience at a late April candidate forum as another attendee asked Timmons about the scandal. The congressman, after what the Post & Courier described as "a moment that left the room in awkward silence and Timmons at a loss for words," avoided giving a direct answer.