Day 5: South Carolina Republican Party Tour, presentations from Lindsey Greene GOTV Director and Carol Fowler

 Another jam packed day on the Road to the White House! 

We started the day out with a tour and meeting of the South Carolina Republican Party Head Quarters. Hope Walker Rossi who is the first female Executive Director of the state party was incredibly kind as were all of the other staff that we meant who were also all women. Regardless of party it was nice to see so many women in politics at the state party. It was super interesting hearing about the differences between how the Republican Party operates after spending so much time with the Democrat party. 

After our tour we went to our usual internship placements and at the SCDP we had a whole day of programming ahead. First we heard from Lindsey Green who is the Get Out The Vote Director for the party and was in charge of getting people to the polls for the primary. I really liked seeing the thought that goes into getting voters to the polls and it was especially interesting hearing about the van tour that they did where they traveled to 40 events in the month of January. It was also cool because we got to see the data on how what they did for GOTV directly impacted voter turnout, specifically a 13% early vote increase among Black voters.

Next we heard from Carol Fowler who is a really important figure in South Carolina Democratic politics. She is the longtime 2nd Vice-Chair for the party but was previously the first woman chair of the state party. It was cool to get insight into how the SCDP has changed over the years. I really liked her election year breakdown from 1968 to 2008 where she detailed how much the state party primary has changed in the time that she has been there. 

Our final stop of the night was completely unexpected. We went to a podcast filming at a local brewery with special guest Vivek Ramaswamy.