SUMTER, S.C. — A jovial James Mardis sits near the doorway of his wife’s floral shop to enjoy a cool breeze that brought relief from a muggy morning as he explains House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn’s popularity.
Rosa’s House of Flowers — named for Mardis’ wife Rosa — is near the entrance to Morris College, ringed by a working-class neighborhood of modest homes mixed with overgrown yards and abandoned dreams.
The flower shop sits in a community that is “predominantly Black, Hispanic and unemployed,” Mardis says. “Yes, a lot of people are unemployed, but we can’t blame (Clyburn) for that.”
Doing so wouldn’t work in Sumter, where native-son Clyburn enjoys support, in part, for bringing federal money to the city for three community centers and an intermodal transportation depot that bears his name. He’s also responsible for nearly $3 million in “earmarks” over three years to improve environmental health and safety programs at Morris.
“Anytime you mention Jim Clyburn here you get smiles on people’s faces,” says Mardis, a retired state employee and Louisiana transplant. Anything that Clyburn does to help Morris College, he adds, benefits the community around it and beyond.
Clyburn, first elected to Congress in 1992, serves a district created to ensure Black representation from South Carolina. The sprawling 6th district is the state’s only Black-majority district, encompassing all or parts of 15 mostly rural counties and stretching from Columbia to Charleston.
With a population of more than 600,000 people, the district is one of the poorest in the state where it’s estimated that one out of every five people live below the poverty line. The district is cut in half by the so-called “Corridor of Shame” along Interstate 95 where access to health care for some is limited and schools are underfunded and many are in disrepair.
