District 70

I have a unique connection to this district. I was born in Columbia and raised in Lugoff, graduating from Lugoff-Elgin High School. I graduated from the University of South Carolina and lived in Columbia before moving to Camden. While I was raised in Kershaw County, my family has lived in Lower Richland since the 1930s. My great-grandparents, Magnus and Pearlene Walker raised their five children in a small house off of Pineview Drive. The Walkers were charter members of Pine Bluff Baptist Church on Bluff Road. My cousin was the pastor at Pine Bluff Baptist until his recent retirement. My grandmother and her four brothers were all graduates of Lower Richland High School. My dad attended Annie Burnside Elementary, Caughman Road Middle School, and Hopkins Junior High School. Before he could enroll at Lower Richland, his mother remarried and they moved to Irmo. 

As a child, I visited family in Lower Richland and attended homecoming at Pine Bluff with my grandmother. The dirt road my family lived on has now been renamed “Branning Drive,” which was my great-uncle’s name and my great-grandmother’s maiden name. While I didn’t have the pleasure of being raised in Lower Richland, in many ways it feels like home. Lower Richland instilled the values of hard work, helping others, and loving your neighbor into my dad and he taught them to me.

Both Kershaw and Richland counties have given me so much and it would be an honor to give back to these communities in the South Carolina House of Representatives.