Rep. Rob Harris, R-Wellford, pictured at the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C., on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, won a third term after narrowly defeating his primary opponent in a recount. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — A Republican legislator in the Upstate officially defeated his GOP challenger by the narrowest of margins in South Carolina’s primaries.
Rep. Rob Harris, a member of the House’s hardline Freedom Caucus, won by just 34 votes out of 3,556 cast, according to recount results posted Saturday by the State Election Commission.
The contest to represent a chunk of Spartanburg County was the only contest among statewide, congressional and state House primaries that required a recount. Under state law, a recount is automatic if less than 1% separates candidates’ tallies. He lost one vote in the recount. On primary night, the unofficial tally had him 35 votes ahead.
Harris’ win leaves the number of incumbents ousted last Tuesday at two: one from each party.
Of the three state House races that will be decided in the June 23 primary runoffs, one could unseat another incumbent: GOP Rep. Don Chapman faces Sherry Hodges, an executive member of the Anderson County Republican Party. Chapman led the three-way primary by 132 votes.
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Harris narrowly defeated Lyman Town Councilman Adam Crisp despite spending far more, according to campaign finance reports.
The 61-year-old emergency room nurse spent more than $16,000 through May 20, compared with just over $2,000 by Crisp’s campaign, according to pre-primary reports filed with the state Ethics Commission.
But Harris said Crisp was backed by other organizations that outspent him, including on TV ads opposing him.
“I’m probably the most conservative representative in the Legislature, and they probably don’t like that,” Harris told the SC Daily Gazette on Monday.
One of Harris’ sons, Abe Harris, challenged Rep. Travis Moore for another House seat representing Spartanburg County but lost by more than 33 percentage points, according to Election Commission results.
This is the second time Crisp has tried to oust Harris.
The 40-year-old vice president of a security company lost by almost 17 percentage points in the 2024 GOP primary.
Crisp, of Lyman, said the narrowing gap shows that people are unhappy with Harris’ work over his two terms at the Statehouse. In 2022, Harris ousted House Education Chairwoman Rita Allison of Lyman.
“He makes questionable decisions that don’t reflect the values of the community,” Crisp told the SC Daily Gazette.
Harris disagreed. He said he makes an effort to regularly meet with people living in his district to hear their concerns.
“The folks in my district are very conservative, and I will represent them as well as I have,” he said.
Crisp declined to say whether he would have joined the House’s majority Republican Caucus or, like Harris, the Freedom Caucus, if he had won the election.
But he criticized Harris’ unwillingness to compromise with the majority GOP caucus to pass laws and bring funding back to his district. The Freedom Caucus split from the majority caucus following the 2022 elections, and the public feuding has grown since.
Crisp contends Harris’ hardline stance on abortion has alienated voters.
Harris, a father of 10, has repeatedly proposed banning abortions from fertilization and punishing women who get an abortion, which he would put legally on par with murder. “Murdering anyone should be illegal for everyone,” he said at a subcommittee hearing in January.
His bill never got a second hearing.
Crisp said he supports the state’s existing six-week ban on abortion. Removing exceptions for rape, incest and fatal fetal anomalies or adding criminal penalties for mothers, as Harris has proposed, is “just unbelievable,” Crisp said.
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“I don’t understand that mentality,” Crisp said.
Crisp criticized Harris as the only Republican “no” vote on a bill that would have required all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments and the only representative from either party to vote against the so-called Parental Rights Act, which GOP supporters touted as giving parents more control over their children’s education and medical care.
Harris said those criticisms were misleading: He voted against the Ten Commandments bill because he considered it unconstitutional, and he voted against the Parental Rights Act because he felt the parental controls didn’t go far enough, he said.
Both bills died with the end of session after getting nowhere in the Senate.
Harris said the voters of Spartanburg County want him to scrutinize bills.
“If Rob Harris is voting ‘no’ on a bill, you’d better look twice at it,” he said.
Crisp wasn’t sure whether he would run again in two years. He would need to consult with his wife and five daughters before trying again, he said. If he doesn’t run, he said he hopes to see someone else challenge Harris in 2028.
Harris said if he’s re-elected to a third term, he will “fight as hard as I ever have for small government, free market principles and getting government to leave us alone.”
He will face Democratic challenger Virginia McLean in the safely red district in November.
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Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
