Happy November, everybody.
Tuesday is Election Day. I know a lot of you have probably already voted early. If that's you, thank you. If you haven't, you can still vote Tuesday, and I've included what you need to know below.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to reflect on local politics as a guest on a church podcast here in the Upstate (you can listen to the episode here). One of the hosts opened with a word association game. When you hear "politics," what comes to mind? Some of the answers are probably the same reasons you'd rather not deal with politics at all, even locally: tired people, junk mail, money, and 72 text messages a day by the end of the season.
A lot of that is about national politics, and it's no accident that national politics is what we hear about. Right now it's easier to learn about an earthquake on the other side of the world than about what happened at your sewer district meeting. The national story has whole newsrooms and a small army of influencers behind it. Almost nobody makes a living covering a county council agenda.
But most of the government you touch on any given day is state and local. Why is that intersection built the way it is? Why is a subdivision going in on that piece of land? Why is one house on a septic tank while the one down the road is on sewer? The state sets the rules, and the county, the school district and the special districts fill them in. Taylors isn't a city, so for us that means County Council, the school board, our state legislators and districts like Taylors Fire and Sewer.
National politics also runs on fear. If your job is to win the next election, the surest way to get people to the polls is to tell them this is the most important election of their lifetime. Some of that concern is real. But if you make all of it your identity, it's like anchoring yourself to a wave. It goes out, the next one comes in, and you go wherever it takes you.
Local politics is slower and more concrete. Honestly, it's a little boring. I've come to think that's a good thing. A zoning case or a school decision doesn't sort people into the usual teams. It gives you something to work out with the people who live near you.
It also asks more empathy of you. Take a stand of trees coming down for a new subdivision. Online, the owner usually gets painted as greedy. But often it's a family farm two generations on. The grandparents have passed, the property tax bill comes every year, and a developer is offering more than the land will ever earn. What would you do? I've grown a lot more sympathetic to those families over the years. They're our neighbors, and you can't work that out in a comment thread.
I learned some of this the hard way. In 2024 I ran for County Council and lost. These days I see the people I ran against at Christmas parties, and we show each other pictures of our kids. We had different ideas about how to get things done. We still live in the same place.
On the podcast I said that more normal people who are vaguely interested in politics beats a handful of furious people every time. I still think that's right. Vaguely interested is a low bar, and that's the point.
So if you're voting Tuesday, read all the way to the bottom of the ballot. The races near the end, and the questions after them, are often the ones closest to your daily life. Then, sometime after Tuesday, try one small thing. Look up who represents you on County Council, or sit through one meeting. Get to know the people making these decisions before you need them.
Do you know who will decide what gets built at the end of your street?
Some resources:
