Day 7: Charleston, SC! (02/23/2024)

We spent our Saturday on a day trip to Charleston! First up was visiting the College of Charleston for a lecture from Professors Gibbs Knotts and Jordan Ragusa. We have been reading their book for class and finally got to meet with them personally to discuss the content and ask questions about their research. They discussed their data collection processes and how they analyzed it to draw the conclusions we have read about. This was another statistics heavy lecture which I loved hearing about. Most surprising thing I learned was that Missouri tends to be the most representative for both the Republican and Democratic Party. They both also signed my hard copy of the book! 

Following their lecture we also heard from Micheal Mulé, the SC State Director for the DeSantis Campaign. He talked a lot about how the Republican primary went this year so far from an insider perspective and what their campaign strategy looked like. He also gave some opinions on what it will look like going forward and some predictions about how the primary night will go in SC (which I will be keeping a close eye on!). 

We stopped at the dining hall for lunch and then we had a few free hours to roam beautiful downtown Charleston. Laura, Abby, and I had an amazing time! I finally got to try a local coffee shop called Mudhouse -- the iced caramel latte I had was delightful! We stopped in a few stores including a local bookshop called Buxton Books where I got a new novel and a couple little pins and stickers (including one for a friend back home!) and a T-Shirt with the store name. I picked one up for a local bookstore while I was in NYC this past winter as well and I think this may become a new tradition on my trips. Along our route we also found Charleston's City Hall and it was stunning! And might I say the bathroom acoustics were incredible. We had gotten a little far into dowtown so we headed back to head to our next stop.

Back at the vans we discussed what the rest of the evening would look like and headed off to the next event: Nikki Haley's final GOTV event before the primaries the next day! Held at Ft. Sumter the view was great and the crowd was LOUD. We heard her stump speech again (the third time this trip) but she added in some new notes this time we hadn't heard before. After the rally the group was getting restless and hungry so we headed off to dinner at a local restaurant on the water, then it was a long drive back to the hotel before our final day in SC.