COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina voters will pick a new attorney general on Tuesday, and the two people on the ballot took very different roads to get there: a career prosecutor backed by sheriffs and a solo trial lawyer running on a shoestring.
Republican David Stumbo has been solicitor for the 8th Judicial Circuit, which takes in Abbeville, Greenwood, Laurens and Newberry counties, since he was elected in November 2012, and he is now in his fourth term. His campaign says he has handled hundreds of criminal cases, including four death penalty trials, led the state Solicitors Association from 2017 to 2020 and started the circuit Veterans Treatment Court in 2015.
Stumbo already knows the office he is seeking. He worked in the attorney general office from 2002 to 2007, where he led the Internet Crimes Against Children task force as a special prosecutor, then prosecuted cases in the Lexington-based 11th Circuit before returning to the office in 2011 as supervising prosecutor over its statewide grand jury and criminal prosecution work. He won a three-way Republican primary this year that also included state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch and David Pascoe, the 1st Circuit solicitor. His campaign lists endorsements from 31 sheriffs, and as of mid-October he still had more than $300,000 on hand.
Democrat Richard Hricik is a Mount Pleasant attorney who practices alone, representing injured people in state and federal court. One of his best-known cases was a $2 million civil rights settlement over a deadly carbon monoxide leak at a public housing complex, won after a federal appeals court revived a suit a trial judge had tossed. He also teaches civil rights litigation part time at two law schools. Hricik had no primary opponent and has spent only about $8,000, far below what statewide campaigns usually cost.
The winner inherits one of the most closely watched cases in the state. Alex Murdaugh, charged in the 2021 killings of his wife and son at the family property in Colleton County, faces a retrial that starts April 5 in Sumter. Still, most criminal cases in South Carolina are handled by the 16 elected circuit solicitors rather than the attorney general office, which also covers consumer protection, securities, environmental cases and official legal opinions.
The two never met in a statewide televised debate, unlike the candidates for governor and U.S. Senate.
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