Rankin and Shealy Square Off at Laurens County Republican Forum: House District 14 Race Draws Sharp Contrasts

Video from the forum can be found at the bottom of this article.

The Laurens County Republican Party hosted its 2026 Candidate Forum on the evening of May 21 at the Laurens County Museum, 116 South Public Square in Laurens, drawing a packed room of voters ahead of the June 9 Republican primary. The evening’s most closely watched matchup was the House District 14 race between incumbent Rep. Luke Rankin and challenger Rick Shealy. The two men offered starkly different visions of what a state representative owes the people of Laurens County, and the contrast was not lost on an attentive audience.

The Opening Remarks

Rick Shealy’s introduction told a story. He is an eighth-generation South Carolinian who built a business from scratch in his twenties, growing it to more than 70 employees before selling it. He returned to the land in Cross Hill, cleared more than 200 acres of forest, stumped it, fenced it, planted it, and built it into a working livestock farm. He placed that land in a permanent conservation easement protecting it from development forever. His roots are not campaign material. They are visible from the road.

“I am not a career politician,” Shealy told the audience. “I’m a businessman and a farmer, and I have deep roots in this community.”

Shealy pledged to donate his entire legislative salary to the Upstate Pregnancy Center if elected. He has signed a term limits pledge committing to no more than three two-year terms, and made clear his intent to serve as a full-time legislator, not someone treating the seat as a part-time obligation or a steppingstone.

Rankin, who has served in the South Carolina House since 2025 after four years on Laurens County Council, opened with remarks that introduced the pattern he would return to throughout the evening. His introductory comments included standard Republican talking points such as banning DEI, banning men from women’s restrooms, immigration enforcement, and the congressional redistricting fight he is headlining in Columbia. He also expressed support for Donald Trump despite having campaigned against him in the last primary election.

He delivered each point with the ease of a legislator who has covered the same ground before. What was notably absent, however, was any acknowledgment of the specific challenges facing Laurens County itself, or a direct commitment to the people sitting in front of him that night.

History Question: A Study in Contrast

When the forum moderator asked its opening warm-up question, inviting candidates to name a South Carolina patriot from the area’s extraordinary Revolutionary War history and explain why preserving that history matters for the next generation, the contrast between the two men was immediate and telling.

Rankin could not name a single patriot. He pivoted instead to his pride in helping the Laurens County Museum secure small grants during his time on county council to prepare for the 250th anniversary celebrations. He did not name a patriot.

Shealy named several. He cited Francis Marion, Andrew Pickens, and Nathanael Greene, noting that Greene led 1,000 Continental regulars across what is now his own family’s farmland on the march to the Battle at Star Fort at Ninety-Six, a sunken road from that march still visible on the property today. Then he named the patriot he admires most: his own ancestor, a major in the militia at the Battle of Kings Mountain, who family legend holds was among the five who fired the shots that killed British Colonel Patrick Ferguson, the only British officer in the engagement and the man who had charged through the American ranks.

Redistricting and the Greenville Question

From there, Rankin continued to work from what many in the audience recognized as the South Carolina House Republican message calendar. When the redistricting question arose, he offered a comment that drew a quiet reaction. An audience member submitted a question asking why it would be good for Laurens County to be grouped with what the questioner described as a nearly purple Greenville County in the new congressional map. Rankin suggested the shift would not represent much of a change. “I think a lot of people in Laurens County actually kind of associate themselves with Greenville,” he said. “We shop up that way, so I don’t think it’d be a lot of, you know, a big change in that respect.”

For a room full of Laurens County small business owners, merchants, and people who have invested their livelihoods in local commerce, the comment drew a visible reaction from the audience. In South Carolina, nearly 70 percent of all businesses employ fewer than five people, making small business the backbone of communities like Laurens County. Laurens County’s locally owned restaurants, retailers, hardware stores, and service businesses compete daily against the gravitational pull of Greenville’s commercial corridors. A state representative’s casual acknowledgment that residents routinely drive past those businesses to spend money elsewhere is not a defense of a congressional map. Laurens County voters will draw their own conclusions about what that says about his priorities.

Local Business Owners Respond

The day after the forum, the Laurens County Buzz spoke with several members of the local business community about Rankin’s comment.

Diane Smith, owner of Designs by D in downtown Laurens, was direct. “Regardless of your political affiliation, our representatives should concentrate on shopping local and supporting local small businesses, because it is about staying local, shopping local,” Smith said. “That’s what makes our county survive. That’s what makes our county what it is. We’ve got that hometown feel. We need to support each other. We need to elect representatives that are going to support us, so we can support our customers.”

Rachel Hughes, owner of New South Candles, Gifts, Tanning and More in Laurens, was equally pointed. “As a representative of Laurens County, he should be focused on supporting his constituents not bragging about shopping in Greenville,” Hughes said.

Brad Abercrombie, director of Main Street Laurens, spoke to the organization’s core mission. “Main Street Laurens exists to support the businesses that give this community its character and economic vitality,” Abercrombie said. “Shopping local is one of the most direct ways residents can invest in their own community, and that message is at the heart of everything we do.”

Notably absent from Rankin’s answer was any reference to a map the South Carolina Senate had proposed just that afternoon that would keep Laurens County in District 3 rather than moving it into the 4th with Greenville. For the legislator who has positioned himself as the point person driving the redistricting effort in the House, the omission left questions about how closely he was tracking a process he claims to be leading.

What Rankin also did not address is the price tag attached to the redistricting effort he is championing. Implementing the new congressional map is estimated to cost between $6 and $7 million statewide, a significant portion of which would be pushed down to individual counties to absorb. For a county like Laurens, where every budget dollar is already spoken for, that is not a footnote. It is a line item that county taxpayers would be asked to fund. There are also serious concerns about the impact on overseas voters, including active duty military members and their families, who could face disenfranchisement during the transition to new district boundaries under an accelerated election timeline. In a county with deep military roots and strong appreciation for those currently serving, the omission of any acknowledgment of that risk was noticed.

The Tax Debate

The sharpest exchange of the evening came on taxes. The forum moderator cited the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which found that the income tax reform bill Rankin championed, House Bill 4216, would raise taxes on 26.7 percent of South Carolina working families, including lower- and middle-income filers who lose write-offs under the new structure.

Rankin arrived with the House Republican response ready. He called the concerns misinformation, framed the bill as a move toward a fair flat tax, minimized any tax increases as amounting to only $20 to $30 a year for those affected, and pointed to revised paycheck withholding tables as proof that workers would see more money in each paycheck. He called the bill “awesome” and said South Carolina would eventually reach zero income tax.

Shealy arrived with documentation. He held up a report from the Palmetto Watch group and walked the room through a concrete example: a person earning $30,000 a year currently owes zero in state income tax. Under the new plan, that same person pays $100. “There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors,” Shealy said plainly. He reminded the audience that South Carolina still carries the second-highest tax burden in the Southeast and delivered the line that drew the strongest response of the night: “If you can’t give everybody a tax break, don’t give it to anybody.”

Teacher Pay: The Other Side of the Story

Rankin also spent time touting teacher pay as one of his signature legislative achievements, telling the audience that starting teacher salaries have risen from $35,000 to $50,500 over the past decade. He called it “incredible.”

The picture at the local level is more complicated. Laurens County School District 55 CFO Leann London has confirmed that this upcoming school year’s salary mandates have been funded by the state budget, a meaningful departure from the historical pattern in which South Carolina school districts were routinely handed unfunded mandates on teacher pay. That is a legitimate development worth acknowledging.

What remains unresolved is the broader structural picture. State Aid to Classrooms, the largest K-12 allocation for school districts, remains locked at the same funding level in both the House and Senate versions of the FY 2026-2027 budget, with a conference committee now tasked with working out final differences. The committee includes Senate Finance Committee Chairman Harvey Peeler, Sen. Tom Davis, Sen. Brad Hutto, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bruce Bannister, Rep. Davey Hiott, and Rep. Jackie Hayes. Both chambers have included a $150 million increase to raise the starting teacher salary from $48,500 to $50,500 and a $2,000 increase across all steps of the state minimum salary schedule, along with revisions to the State Aid to Classrooms formula based on recommendations from the Office of Revenue and Fiscal Affairs.

For Laurens County School District 55, where a recent board meeting put the share of students from families in poverty at 80 percent, how those final numbers land in conference committee matters. The funded mandate this year is welcome news. Whether the formula changes provide lasting relief for a district that has had to cut expenditures, freeze pay, and weigh millage increases in recent budget cycles is a question still to be answered.

Agriculture: Experience vs. Committee Membership

On agriculture, the contrast between the two candidates was as clear as it was on taxes. Shealy farms. He grows livestock on land he cleared with his own hands. He has watched developers put offers in his mailbox and chosen a conservation easement over a sale price. When he addressed the question of protecting Laurens County farmland and the pressure facing farm families as development spreads, he spoke from that lived experience, calling for meaningful impact fees and smart zoning while acknowledging what everyone in the audience who works the land already understands: the pressure to sell will not stop, and no policy fully removes it.

Rankin noted that he serves on the House Agriculture Committee, which he said has given him the opportunity to learn about what farmers are facing. He cited legislation banning the sale of lab-grown meat in South Carolina as a key agricultural protection. He also announced he has helped secure $1 million in state funding for the Laurens County Agricultural Center, but this is pending final conference committee approval in June and by no means guaranteed.

Closing Statements

The closing remarks from each candidate crystallized what the entire evening had suggested.

Shealy was focused and specific. He told the audience that the problem in Columbia is that legislators go there and stop pushing back. “That’s what I intend to do,” he said, “conservative leadership in Columbia, as someone who will push back, not be a yes man down there. Somebody who represents District 14, not someone who has a higher political calling in mind that they want to pursue. I will work for you. I will work for you every day.”

Every word of it was aimed at the people in that room, in that county, about that seat.

Rankin’s closing traveled considerably beyond Laurens County and implied a focus on national issues. He spoke of what he views as a Divine calling to run for political office. “Our mission here is to fight for South Carolina, to fight for our country, to fight for our kids,” he said, “because this is the last bastion of freedom in the entire world.” He closed by asking for the audience’s vote to continue a mission he described in the broadest possible terms.

Whether that vision connects with Laurens County voters is a question the June 9 primary will answer.

The South Carolina Republican primary is June 9. Early voting runs May 26 through June 5.

Here is the video of the main Q&A with the candidates:

Here is the video of the candidates responding to audience submitted questions: