Keep Newberry in the State Senate

State Senator Ronnie Cromer represents South Carolina’s 18th District, which includes all of Newberry County, as well as parts of Lexington and Union counties. Since 1967, counties have not been guaranteed a resident senator. The fact that we have one today is something of a political and statistical anomaly since Lexington County voters make up about 70 percent of the voting population in District 18. My point is that having a resident senator in Newberry County is not something we should take for granted this election year.

Ronnie Cromer has been in the S.C. Senate since 2003, when he won a special election to replace Andre Bauer. Steadily, for 17 years now, he has gained seniority and status in the S.C. General Assembly. He currently ranks 12th in seniority among our state’s 46 senators, and only five rank higher than him on the powerful Senate Finance Committee. As voters, we have made an investment in Senator Cromer that has paid off in terms of political influence and an understanding of what makes the S.C. General Assembly work. For our sake – and for the good of our state, I would argue – he needs to stay right where he is.

Of course, the influence and understanding that our elected officials possess only benefit us if we have access to them and they are responsive to our needs. With some elected officials, these qualities can erode over time. Loyalties can become displaced; careerism can overtake representation. Not so with Senator Cromer. No one rivals him with regards to being in touch. Never have I waited as long as 24 hours for a return call from him, and never has he lagged in responsiveness to any request concerning our county.

One example of this is the Samsung manufacturing plant in Newberry. When we heard that the Korean giant was looking to build its first appliance manufacturing plant in North America, and that South Carolina might be in the running, our first contact was to Senator Cromer. We had just lost 250 jobs with Caterpillar shutting down and had a huge industrial building on the verge of being empty. Immediately, he arranged for us to have a meeting with Secretary of Commerce Bobby Hitt and, well, the rest is literally history. With half a billion dollars of investment and 1,000 new jobs created, the new Samsung plant is the single biggest economic development project in Newberry County’s history. And the potential for much more is vast.

Now, I am a Democrat, nominally speaking. (The truth is, I do not remember anything I would classify as a partisan vote in all my years of service on Newberry County Council.) But, I would urge all Newberry County citizens to understand that having Ronnie Cromer as our resident senator is not a partisan issue. As with most of us who serve in elective office at the state and local levels, Ronnie Cromer does not have a partisan litmus test when it comes to pitching in to make a difference for his home county. For some reason, more and more people think it is imperative that they wear the uniform, so to speak, of one political party or the other. But I have always seen Senator Cromer as one who wears the uniform of the team where he is from, and that is Newberry County.