There's another special election happening Tuesday, and health care is on the ballot

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published 19 June 2017

The focus might be turned to Georgia's high-stakes, high-spending special election, but that's not the only special House election Tuesday. South Carolina's 5th congressional district will also go to the polls Tuesday to decide who will fill the seat left vacant by Mick Mulvaney, who left to become Trump's budget director.

Democrat Archie Parnell, a former Justice Department attorney and a business manager with Goldman Sachs, is hoping for an upset amid President Trump's plummeting poll numbers. However, Republican Ralph Norman, a real estate developer and a longtime member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, seems confident he'll prevail in the historically conservative district. Norman has even made a point to bring up Trump in recent weeks, which McClatchy described as further evidence "the conservative base remains strongly and defensively in the president's corner."

The ongoing national health-care debate looms large in the South Carolina contest. Norman has expressed his support for the wildly unpopular version of the American Health Care Act that passed the House, and if he's elected he'll join the Republican majority in backing Trump's agenda. Parnell has proposed keeping and fixing the Affordable Care Act, though the Charleston-based Post and Courier reported "only one provider remains on the insurance exchange" in the state. If elected, Parnell has pledged to push back on the AHCA and Trump's budget plan.