Other Than Lucas Atkinson, Horry County Republicans Hold Off the Blue Wave

Posted Wednesday, November 4, 2026 9:00 am

David Hucks (via MyrtleBeachSC)

Nov 4, 2026 · @ https://x.com/myrtlebeachnews

All results are unofficial until certification on Nov. 12.

Tuesday was the night national Democrats had been waiting two years for. The party flipped both chambers of Congress, and NBC News projected at least 258 Democratic House seats, the party’s biggest total since 1993 [NBC News, 2026]. Closer to home, pediatrician Annie Andrews unseated appointed U.S. Sen. Darline Graham, becoming the first Democrat South Carolina has sent to the Senate since 1998. However, in Horry County, Republicans, particularly the Horry County Republicans, held strong against this tide.

The Resilience of Horry County Republicans

Then the wave reached Horry County, and for the most part it broke against the seawall, thanks to the efforts of the Horry County Republicans.

Unofficial returns show Republicans, particularly the Horry County Republicans, winning every contested County Council race and every contested school board race, and holding every Republican seat in the local State House delegation except one [The Post and Courier, 2026]. They even took a school board seat away from a Democrat. The one exception was state Rep. Lucas Atkinson. He switched to the GOP this year, and he lost his District 57 seat to a Democrat he had beaten two years earlier.

Here is how it happened, race by race, and why the margins behind those wins deserve more attention than the headline gives them.

The Lone Casualty: House District 57

lucas atkinson — Lucas Atkinson loses seat

District 57 covers parts of Horry, Marion and Williamsburg counties. Before Election Day it was already marked as a seat Democrats hoped to pick up. The reason was the incumbent’s history. Atkinson won the seat in 2024 with 58% of the vote as a Democrat, then changed parties before filing to run in 2026.

Preliminary results show Democrat Cynthia O. Ford with 8,101 votes, about 51.6%, against roughly 48.4% for Atkinson. The result ends Atkinson’s decade in the seat, which began in 2016. WMBF’s tally agrees: 8,101 votes for Ford and 7,595 for Atkinson.

This was a rematch, and that makes the result sharper. In the 2024 Democratic primary, Atkinson beat Ford 55.7% to 44.3%, a margin of about 600 votes [Ballotpedia, 2024]. Two years later, facing him across party lines instead of inside the same party, she finished about 500 votes ahead.

Our read: switching parties rarely comes free. A lawmaker who changes sides has to win over a new base while keeping enough of the old one. In a district where Democrats have long been competitive, that leaves almost no room for error. Put a statewide Democratic surge at the top of the ticket on top of that, and a lead of a few hundred votes becomes very hard to hold. The Post and Courier noted that Atkinson was the only member of Horry County’s legislative delegation to lose his seat.

If District 57 was the one crack in the wall, the rest of the county ballot shows how solid that wall still is.

County Council: Seven for Seven

Seven Horry County Council seats were on the ballot, and all seven incumbents kept their jobs [The Sun News, 2026]. Four faced no opponent: Chairman Johnny Gardner, Jenna Dukes in District 1, Michael Masciarelli in District 8 and Al Allen in District 11 [The Post and Courier, 2026].

The other three races featured a new name on local ballots, the Forward Party, which appeared in Horry County for the first time this year [The Sun News, 2026]. None of its candidates came close. WMBF’s unofficial count gives Bill Howard about 74.9% over Kristi Burch in District 2, Tyler Servant about 84.8% over Genesis Bordner in District 5, and Tom Anderson about 69.7% over Chris Hennigan in District 7 [WMBF News, 2026].

Hennigan’s showing of nearly 30% was the best third-party result on the county ballot. He also brought a decade of service on the county Planning Board [The Sun News, 2026]. That points to a lesson for the Forward Party: in Horry County, its ceiling may depend more on recruiting candidates with local résumés than on the party label.

The council stays entirely Republican.

The school board results went a step further. There, Republicans didn’t just hold their ground; they gained some.

School Board: The Last Democrat Falls

Seven of the 12 seats on the Horry County Board of Education were on the ballot, and only three were contested. Republicans won all three.

The race to watch was District 7. Republican Sonya Sasser unseated Democratic incumbent Janet Graham with 51.83% of the vote, or 5,348 of 10,319 ballots [The Sun News, 2026]. Sasser was the only challenger in the county to defeat an incumbent. With Graham’s loss, the board will have no Democratic members.

In the other contested races, Republican David Koch held District 1 with about 69.7% over Democrat Louis Palm, and Republican Tracy Winters won District 3 with 61.3% over Democrat Diane Middleton [WMBF News, 2026]. Melanie Wellons ran unopposed for board chair and will succeed David Cox. Two other Republicans also joined the board without opposition: Meredith Kennedy in District 2 and Jason Morgan in District 10.

The irony is plain. On the same night Democrats won a U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina, they lost their last seat on Horry County’s school board.

The State House results follow the same pattern, but the numbers inside them tell a more complicated story.

The State House Delegation: Wins With Asterisks

Apart from District 57, every Republican in the Horry County-area House delegation won reelection [MyHorryNews, 2026]. According to MyHorryNews, the winning margins were:

Tim McGinnis: 63% (District 56)
Jeff Johnson: 65% (District 58)
Carla Schuessler: 59% (District 61)
Heather Ammons Crawford: 63% (District 68)
William Bailey: 67% (District 104)
Kevin Hardee: 67% (District 105)
Val Guest: 67% (District 106)
Case Brittain: 60% (District 107)

Democrats Carl Anderson and Jackie Hayes were unopposed.

Every one of those Republican wins was comfortable. What’s new is that Democrats bothered to run against them. Several of these incumbents hadn’t faced a general-election opponent in years. Bailey drew his first general-election challenger after going unopposed from 2018 through 2024. Hardee had his first since 2012. McGinnis, Brittain, Crawford, Guest and Schuessler were all unopposed in 2024. This cycle, Democrats ran candidates across the delegation, and most of them finished in the mid-30s.

Where a past contested race gives a point of comparison, Republican margins slipped. Crawford won 72% in 2022 and 63% this year. Guest went from 72% to 67%. Schuessler fell from 69% to 59%. Johnson, who won 69% in 2016, took 65% this time.

Beneath the Surface: Horry Moved Left Anyway

This is the part a “held off the wave” headline can hide. Horry County held, but it did not stand still.

In 2024, Donald Trump carried Horry County 69% to 30% [MyHorryNews, 2024]. On Tuesday, with about 95% of the vote counted, Darline Graham carried the county 60.1% to 38.5%. A Republican margin of roughly 39 points shrank to about 22, a swing of around 17 points in two years. Statewide, Andrews won 51.1% to 46.7% [NBC News, 2026].

Graham had the endorsements of President Trump and of Rep. Russell Fry, who represents the Grand Strand [WMBF News, 2026]. Fry won his own reelection comfortably, with nearly 57% against Democrat John Gregory Vincent [The Post and Courier, 2026]. That is solid, but well below the county’s 2024 presidential margin. In the governor’s race, Republican Alan Wilson beat Democrat Jermaine Johnson statewide in a race that turned out tighter than polling had suggested.

Our analysis: Horry County’s Republican advantage is deep enough to absorb a 17-point swing and still win almost everything on the ballot. That is a sign of strength. It is also a warning. Down-ballot Republicans with long track records had enough cushion to absorb the drop. In District 57, where the cushion was thin and the incumbent’s party label was new, there wasn’t enough.

What’s Next

Certification. South Carolina certifies the 2026 general election results on Thursday, Nov. 12 [The Sun News, 2026]. Until then, every number in this story is unofficial.
District 57. Ford takes the seat, and Horry County’s State House delegation loses one Republican [MyHorryNews, 2026]. Any lawmaker considering a party switch will be studying this result.
Washington. Fry goes back to a House that Democrats will control after flipping both chambers [NBC News, 2026]. A Grand Strand Republican in the minority will have less power to deliver for the district.
Local government. County Council and the school board will both be entirely Republican, so neither body has partisan opposition. Scrutiny of their decisions will have to come from voters, primary challengers and the press.
2028. Democrats who ran in long-uncontested seats now have baseline numbers. The next cycle will show whether they can build on mid-30s results, or whether 2026 was a one-time wave.