LANCASTER, S.C. -- South Carolina's 5th Congressional District has all the usual campaign season trappings: signs dot many front yards and the airwaves are jammed with political ads. Yet the special election to fill the House seat vacated when Mick Mulvaney became White House budget director has largely unfolded without the intense partisan fever of contests elsewhere, like Georgia's hotly disputed congressional race.
Voters on Tuesday will choose between Ralph Norman, a Republican backing President Donald Trump's administration, and Archie Parnell, a Democrat who says he is best aligned to represent the voters of a district that was a Democratic stronghold for more than a century until Mulvaney, a Republican, rode into office on a tea party wave in 2010.
Norman has the backing of big-name conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who both have campaigned with him.
A Washington-based conservative group, the Club for Growth, also infused Norman's GOP runoff campaign with TV ads, and he's run plenty of his own.
National Democratic Chairman Tom Perez has stumped with Parnell, as have a handful of congressional Democrats.
But the race has drawn none of the national attention of Georgia's contest. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has only dropped $275,000 into the race, compared with a $5 million investment in the special election in Georgia's 6th District, which has been in GOP hands since Newt Gingrich's 1978 victory.
A Section on 06/18/2017