“I’m not carrying anything,” Ben Frasier told the audience when he took the podium at Galivants Ferry.

The candidate for Congressional District 1 even opened his jacket and spun around to prove he had no weapon on his person, too.

That doesn’t change Frasier’s stance on handguns, however, and which he proudly let approximately 400 attendees know.

“I’m 100 percent for the 2nd Amendment,” he told the active Democrats who attended this year’s 68th celebration of the biennial event.

While the Democratic Party has never employed any method to repeal that amendment, nor to restrict its basic use, Frasier attempted to use that topic with goals of separating himself from the party overall. “It’s great to be armed,” he said.

This will be Frasier’s 19th run for public office. He’s never won any election.

The closest he came was in 2006 when he faced two opponents in the Democratic primary for this same position. Frasier took 47.5 percent of the vote in that race, which led to a runoff election against Randy Maata two weeks later. Maata won the runoff, but lost to then-incumbent Henry Brown in the general election.

On what he acknowledged to be a rare appearance at this traditional celebration, and even though he’s run for office so many other times, Frasier continued his May 3 stump speech by specifying points of separation in his platform.

The points he listed, though, are not only separate from those of his primary election opponent, Robert Burton. To many, they could be quite different from the entire Democratic Party itself.

For example, Frasier openly stated opposition to organized labor. “I don’t want to be bogged down by unions,” he said, implying that labor unions were partly responsible for the high level of unemployment in South Carolina, and even though only 4.5 percent of workers in the state belong to a union. The national average is 12.3 percent.

The Democratic Party and its candidates are usually supported by an outstanding majority of all labor unions, however, and because of support for workers’ rights.

Frasier also stated support for use of public funds in private schools, the same goal of many Republicans in various races across the state, and even though such a program would depreciate public school funding.

Funding for schools in South Carolina is about to be knocked down to the amount provided in 1995, as well, due to current budget woes.

He stressed his stands on major issues to be notably different from other primary candidates, but this gesture only seemed to work against Frasier that evening in Galivants Ferry instead of gaining him any support.

After openly stating that his beliefs and goals had distinct differences from those of the Democratic Party in general, one attendee yelled out “that’s because you’re a Republican.”

In other elections, Frasier has been referred to as a Republican Party plant, only appearing on the slate with hopes to create division amongst Democratic voters and guarantee a GOP win.

Frasier didn’t respond to this renewed accusation, however. He simply left the podium. Neither he nor his one campaign supporter attending the Galivants Ferry Stump remained afterwards.

Return to main article to read about other speakers at the event.