Floyd Spence

Spence won a narrow victory, becoming the first freshman Republican congressman elected from South Carolina since 1896; he was the second Republican to be elected from the state since Reconstruction (Watson was the first, elected as an incumbent after his switch to the Republican Party).

Both he and Watson represented conservative whites, rather than the majority African-American Republicans in South Carolina who had supported the party of Abraham Lincoln.

Floyd Davidson Spence (April 9, 1928 – August 16, 2001) was an American attorney and a politician from the U.S. state of South Carolina.

The 2nd had a conservative bent; the area's old-line Democrats had begun splitting their tickets in national elections as early as the 1940s.

Watson's win was helped by the support of U.S.

Senator Strom Thurmond, the former governor who had run for president in 1948 as the nominee of the one-election only third party, the States Rights Party, popularly known as the Dixiecrats.

He graduated in 1952 from the University of South Carolina in Columbia with a degree in English.

Four years later, he completed his law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law.

After law school, Spence joined the Democratic Party.

He was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1956 as a Democrat from Lexington County.

Elected for three terms to the South Carolina House of Representatives from Lexington County as a Democrat, in 1962 Spence announced his decision to switch to the Republican Party, as he was unhappy with shifts in the national party.

He lost a contested seat that year for United States Representative from South Carolina's 2nd congressional district to Democrat Albert W. Watson, who had the support of powerful senator Strom Thurmond.

He was reelected in 1958 and 1960, but on April 14, 1962, Spence announced that he was switching to the Republican Party, having become uncomfortable with the national Democrats' increasingly liberal platform.

He also opposed a loyalty oath required by South Carolina Democrats.

He was the first Republican to serve in either house of the state legislature since Reconstruction–an example of the political realignment that had begun in South Carolina and in the entire South during the 20th century.

On the same day, he announced that he would seek the Republican nomination for the state's 2nd congressional district, based in Columbia.

He had been urged by several friends to run before his switch, especially after the death of the previous congressman, John J. Riley, but declined to do so.

Spence faced the Democratic nominee, fellow state representative Albert W. Watson of Columbia.

Watson won his party nomination with 52 percent of the vote over Frank C. Owens, the former mayor of Columbia and the choice of party regulars.

Watson defeated Spence with 53 percent of the general election vote, the closest congressional race in South Carolina in memory.

Watson shifted to the Republican Party in 1965 and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1970.

That year Spence won the congressional seat, and was re-elected for fourteen terms after this.

Watson had become a Republican in 1965, a year after Thurmond's own switch; he was giving up his congressional seat ran in 1970 for governor.

He was defeated by the Democratic lieutenant governor, John C. West.

That district was taken by Columbia resident and state human affairs commissioner Jim Clyburn, who became the first Democrat to represent Columbia since Watson's party switch in 1965.

In 1966, Spence was elected to the South Carolina Senate; he became the minority leader of a six-member caucus.

He was reelected to the senate in 1968.

In 1970, Spence ran for the 2nd congressional district seat again.

Spence was unopposed for reelection in the Nixon-Agnew landslide of 1972 and reelected fourteen times thereafter.

In 1974, Spence defeated challenger Matthew J. Perry, an African-American Democrat who had made his reputation in civil rights cases.

Aided by Ronald W. Reagan at the head of the Republican ticket, Spence was reelected in 1980 with 55 percent of the vote.

After cruising to reelection in 1982 and 1984, Spence found his margin reduced to seven percent in 1986.

That year Carroll Campbell became the second Republican to win the South Carolina governorship since Reconstruction.

Shortly after graduating from high school, he enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve, from which he retired in 1988 as a captain.

Spence faced another tough campaign in 1988, but did not face major-party opposition again until 1998.

For his first eleven terms, Spence represented a relatively compact district in the central portion of the state.

Redistricting after the 1990 census resulted in shifting most of Spence's African-American constituents to the 6th District, which was reconfigured as a black-majority district.

He became ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee in 1993 and chairman in 1995.

Spence died in office from cerebral thrombosis in Washington, D.C., in 2001.

Born in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, Spence spent most of his life in nearby Lexington County.