May 5, 2008
Issues of where a Republican candidate for state Senate lives and for how long erupted into a legal scuffle Wednesday with the filing of a Democratic Party lawsuit that seeks to remove him from the November ballot.
The state Democratic Party says Republican William McKown, who is seeking the District 28 state Senate seat held by Sen. Dick Elliott, used two false addresses to file his candidacy this spring, making him ineligible to run.
McKown said Thursday that he lives at one address, and that he intended the other as a nearby campaign office, but that both were valid because they were listed in good faith. The Democrats' lawsuit, he said, is an effort to suppress his right to run.
Complicating the issue, the building claimed by McKown as his residence in North Myrtle Beach has a different street number on it than either the Democrats' lawsuit or McKown's lease there.
McKown had served on the Surfside Beach Town Council from 2004 until January, before he resigned to take a position on a state aeronautics board. McKown said he had already considered moving to the northern part of the county, and some Republican leaders in North Myrtle Beach who knew him from his 2006 bid for the Secretary of State's office urged him to run against Elliott.
McKown agreed and put his house in Surfside Beach up for sale in February, he said Thursday. He said he had bought a four-bedroom condo in North Beach Plantation more than a year earlier, but that development wasn't slated to be finished until months after the filing deadline.
Because the state requires candidates to be residents of their districts when they file, McKown said he took a lease March 5 on a condo across 48th Avenue South from the as-yet-unbuilt North Beach Plantation site. He said he then changed his address on his driver's license, and it carried over to his voter's registration.
Democrats said in their lawsuit that the 521 48th Avenue address he gave has never been permitted or given an official assignment by the city of North Myrtle Beach.
McKown's lease shows an address of 520 48th Avenue, and he said he may have given the number 521 to driver's license officials by accident. The building where he said he now lives actually has the street number 502, however, and McKown said he does not know why the two are different.
No building on 48th Avenue South bears either the number 520 or 521.
Ultimately, however, McKown maintains that he has been living in the building since before his registration, fulfilling the law's requirement that he be a resident of the district he files in.
"There's no conspiracy deal here," McKown said. "If I'm sleeping up here, and my toothbrush is up here - what constitutes residency, then?"
The second address listed in the Democrats' lawsuit is 2504 S. Ocean Blvd in North Myrtle Beach, filed on his statement of candidacy with the Republican Party. McKown said that he initially intended that address for a campaign office, and filled it in on the "Address" line of the Republican Party's form - which he said makes no mention of residency.
"I could have put a P.O. Box there, and you know you can't live in a P.O. Box," McKown said.
When he found out that no other Republicans filed in District 28, he said he put off signing the lease on the Ocean Boulevard address, leaving it vacant.
Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler had little comment on McKown's explanations, saying that the courts would decide.
"If Mr. McKown can't figure out where he lives, he certainly shouldn't be a state Senator," Fowler said in a news release about the lawsuit. "He apparently lives outside the district, but he thought no one would notice if he made up an address within the district as his legal residence. The voters of Horry County deserve an honest Senator, not someone who is willing to disregard the law in order to get elected."
McKown, however, said the effort is simply an attempt to drive the only Republican out of the primary.
"The question should be why the Democratic Party is trying to stifle or stop the free process of running for office."
