Stakes high in South Carolina's 5th congressional district race

COLUMBIA — South Carolina Republicans want to continue their dominance in a special congressional election this week as a Democratic newcomer hopes for an upset in the state's first major race since the election of President Donald Trump.

A pair of wealthy businessmen have spent weeks hawking different perspectives of the president's policies to voters across the 11 northern and central South Carolina counties that make up the state's 5th congressional district.

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Democrat Archie Parnell, a former attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice and business manager with Goldman Sachs, made his best pitch Thursday to members of the Military Order of the Purple Heart at the Logan's Roadhouse in Sumter, as he held out documentation of his father's own wounding on a Pacific island during World War II. The Sumter native has pitched himself as a moderate running in a once solidly Democratic district.

"I'd like to think of myself as a new kind of Democrat," Parnell said during an interview. "I will be someone who thinks for myself."

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