Day 8: Fox and Friends, USC, and Primary Watch Party (02/24/2024)

It's primary day!!! We spent the morning at Lizard's Thicket for a Fox and Friends event. Lindsey Graham had made and appearance earlier that morning, unfortunately we missed him. But we did run into our very own Chief Financial Officer of Florida, Jimmy Patronis, who happened to be in town to meet with the SC State Treasurer. Dr. JSM asked if he had some time to speak with us and he talked about his role and why he was visiting with the Treasurer. Part of his job includes risk management and in Florida that means keeping a very close eye on hurricanes, so naturally as we were all heading out for the day I took my oppurtunity to ask one burning question: "Do you know Jim Cantore?" AND HE DOES! Which through a very quick series of events lead to myself and few of the other interns getting a chance to FaceTime with him for a couple minutes. We thanked them both and headed out to the Columbia Market, not before i called my mom to tell her who I had just spoken to (and she was just as excited as I was!).

At the Columbia Market we had a chance to walk around and explore the local vendors -- some of us picked up some things to take home, including myself. While we were out there Laura, Abby and I ran into Jimmy Patronis again and this time he had the SC State Treasurer, Curtis Loftis, with him -- what a coincidence! We knew Dr. JSM would want to meet him so we asked if we could call her to meet us and of course she headed right over. We chatted with them both for a bit and they were really wonderful and Loftis was very interested in the work we were doing and what we had learned so far on our trip. Eventually it was time to head out, as we had a lot more to do that day.

Next up was a visit to a polling station at a local park/community center to witness what the primaries truly look like locally during the day, and I'll admit it was a bit quiet. There were a few people coming in and out of the poll we chose to go to and a couple camera crews. A few of my fellow interns went with Dr. JSM to speak with them while the rest of us spent some time outside on the playground -- after all you're never too old for a jungle gym. While we were sitting there, a couple people noticed a small commotion near the entrance and Laura went to investigate. Turns out Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green was up there waving signs with a few Trump campaigners. We all had a chance to meet her (though not everyone took it -- which I completely understood) and while I will be the first to admit I am no fan of hers, it was cool too see such a large political figure at a small local polling station for the primaries. 

After we did a little walking around the University of South Carolina and grabbed lunch at their dining hall until it was time to head back to the SCDP headquarters for our last day of internship work and a watch party for the primaries. We spent the afternoon working on more data entry for the party and making some calls. I had been dying to sit down with Jay Parmley who we met earlier that week and I finally got the chance to speak with him for a little while. Laura and I listened intently while he told us about his career path and gave us some great advice on how to deal with the challenges we have been facing as college students and as young people entering the political world. I was touched that he would take an hour out of his day just to talk to us two for a bit and at the end of the conversation we got his card and shared a group hug -- needless to say he was my favorite person we met on this trip and saying our goodbyes as he left for the day was hard. That evening Matt Greene stuck around to get the live stream of the primary results going as they rolled in and we had a pizza party dinner courtesy of the SCDP -- don't worry we expressed our gratitude over and over. They did so much for us on this trip and we are all so incredibly grateful! As the results began to shape up in the way most of us had predicted, with Trump in the lead (though don't count out Haley all together, she did better than a lot of us expected), we cleaned up, said our goodbyes to Matt and headed back to the hotel for our last sleep in SC before departing.