Showing Up
When we elect a legislator, we expect them to show up and do their job. Our current representative in the South Carolina House of Representatives, Robert Reese, doesn’t show up to work.
In his first year as our state legislator, Reese was one of the worst offenders when it comes to skipping votes. He missed 124 votes or 20% of all votes taken by the House in 2025.
If you were absent from your job for 20% of the year, would your boss keep you around?
Some of the votes that Robert Reese skipped includes legislation that:
- Assists SLED in catching child predators (S. 29),
- Ensures children receive healthy meals during school (H. 4339)
- Increases support for mental health treatment (H. 4025; 29A),
- Increases state funding for sickle cell anemia treatment (H. 4025; 13A), and
- Increases funding for drug prevention programs for teens (H. 4025; 35A), among many others.
However, there was one vote where Robert Reese was determined to make his voice heard: an $18,000 pay raise for himself (H. 4025; 145sub)
As your representative, I’m committed to showing up and fighting for you. I can promise you that when there is legislation that will help or hurt our community, I’ll be there to use my voice and my vote.
Protecting Public Education
Strong, well-funded public schools are the backbone of our communities. No child’s future should be determined by their zip code. Public education should be the great equalizer in our society and give every child an opportunity to thrive.
Our teachers should not be struggling. While South Carolina has made continuous improvement in raising teacher pay, more should be done. No one who wants to be a teacher should feel like they’re taking a pay cut to follow their passion.
If elected I will fight to improve our schools by providing free school meals to every child, expanding universal Pre-K, improving school safety, and increasing state investment.
As your representative, I will fight to ensure that South Carolina’s public schools are the envy of the nation and will always stand up against efforts to privatize and defund public education.
Expanding Healthcare
South Carolina is only one of 10 states in the country that has yet to expand Medicaid. For too long, Republicans in the State House have refused to increase healthcare access and lower costs for all South Carolinians. Currently, money that has been allocated to our state is flowing to states like New York and California while our neighbors struggle to afford their medication and doctor’s visits.
As your representative, I will fight to expand Medicaid in South Carolina and will support efforts to lower the costs of healthcare and save lives.
Supporting First Responders
I’ve seen our state ignore the struggles of law enforcement, firefighters, and EMS workers. Just this year, the South Carolina House of Representatives voted to increase insurance premiums on these public servants. This increase would have resulted in an effective pay cut of nearly $450 per year. Our representative, Robert Reese, voted for this increase.
As your representative, I will fight to increase pay for our first responders—not cut it. No police officer, firefighter, or EMS worker should ever struggle to support themselves and their families. We certainly shouldn’t expect the people that keep us safe everyday to work a second job to stay afloat. That’s why I’m in favor of state support to local and county governments to ensure that our full-time first responders never make less than $50,000 a year.
Making Our Communities Safer
Too many stories on the local news are about young men taking a life or losing their own lives to gun violence. I have lost multiple family members to gun violence, and believe we have a moral obligation to solve it.
It’s past time that we pass universal background checks and close the gun-show loophole.
We must ensure that law enforcement has the resources they need to get illegal guns off the street and out-of-the-hands of youth. We also must enact tougher penalties to stop the revolving jailhouse door and keep criminals with gun convictions off the streets. As a gun owner, I also understand the need to protect the Second Amendment and will never vote for legislation that infringes on the rights of law-abiding citizens.
It’s critical that we support programs in our community that focus on ending the school-to-prison pipeline and give at-risk youth an alternative out of that vicious cycle.
Together, we can make our community safer.
Protecting Our Environment
I’m a proud hunter and conservationist. As South Carolina grows, we must ensure that our growth does not come at the cost of our environment. I support increasing our energy production through solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, natural gas, and nuclear energy while also protecting our environment. We can and must do both.
Fixing Our Infrastructure
Our roads are a disaster, especially in our community. In South Carolina, we have unsafe roads, unstable bridges, and outdated (or nonexistent) public transportation. As your representative, I will fight to fix our crumbling infrastructure and make our roads a safer place to travel.
