COASTAL OBSERVER

For the first time since winning the Republican primary in 2016, state Rep. Lee Hewitt won’t be running unopposed in House District 108.  Kathy Redwine thinks that’s how it should be.

As candidate filing opens March 16, Redwine never thought she would be running for the legislature at 53 years old, she said.

“I hear wonderful things about Lee. I just think it’s important that people have a choice in their representations,” she said. “We want our community to be the very best that it can be, but I also think that there are situations, like women’s rights, that we probably disagree a little bit.”

Redwine recently launched her Democratic campaign for the District 108. Running as a Democrat means she’s unlikely to face contest in the primary election this summer. District 108 represents residents in areas just below Garden City and stretches past Awendaw to Cat Island, excluding Bulls Island.

Hewitt was unopposed when he ran for the Republican nomination in 2016 and hasn’t had a challenger from either party since.

Of the 124 members of the state House, a third of those seats were also unopposed in the 2024 general election, Redwine said.

Women hold 21 seats in the state House.

Redwine said she wants to win, but isn’t afraid of losing the election.

“As a state on the whole, I feel like we have probably gotten somewhat complacent in just thinking it is what it is and if you challenge then it might be a waste of time,” she said. “I don’t see it as a waste of time if there’s an opportunity to help create awareness. I mean, what’s the worst thing that happens?”

This campaign marks Redwine’s first run for office and has raised just shy of $5,000.

“Just the fact that people are willing to take a chance on me means the world,” she said.

The Connecticut native is a licensed certified counselor who works with adults and children as young as 3 years old.

Redwine participated in the Youth in Government simulation program for three years as a high school student. Students started off as state House representatives and learned how to write bills to get them passed.

Redwine, who lived along the water, wrote her first bill about the illegality of boating while intoxicated, which wasn’t addressed in the law at the time.

At 26, she was a campaign spokesperson for MTV’s Rock the Vote program that encouraged young people to vote.

“I found politics very interesting. But I wasn’t really thinking I would go into that because I was also very interested in psychology,” she said.

She attended Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., for her undergraduate degree. Soon after graduation she relocated to Charlotte where she worked for a runaway homeless shelter for seven years.

“That is where I just knew that this was what I was meant to do,” Redwine said.

She went on to manage Kurt Busch, a NASCAR driver, to save money to attend graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Redwine moved to Pawleys Island in 2012 with her husband, Chad, and her two children, Grant and Kalin.

Since she has practiced in the area since 2013, Redwine said she has noticed a lack in mental health and geriatric services in the district. Specifically, Tidelands Waccamaw Community Hospital and Georgetown Memorial Hospital do not have psychiatrists.

That hasn’t changed in more than 10 years, she added.

Redwine’s key issue is mental health. Money and infrastructure are the main challenges to increasing access to mental health and geriatric services, she said.

“There needs to be a way that we are expanding our mental health services and resources in our district,” she said.

Redwine believes many of the main issues she’s running on, such as conservation and supporting working families, are non-partisan. 

Listening to constituents is a key to success for an elected official, which she does for a living, she noted.