Patterson, Liz, 1939-2018

<p>Elizabeth Johnston Patterson (November 18, 1939 – November 10, 2018) was an American politician from South Carolina. A member of the Democratic Party, she was a three-term member of the United States House of Representatives from 1987 to 1993.</p>

<p>Elizabeth Johnston, known as "Liz", was born into a Democratic political family. Her father, Olin D. Johnston, was Governor of South Carolina from 1935 to 1939 and again from 1943 to 1945. He then served in the United States Senate from 1945 until his death in 1965.</p>

<p>Her family lived outside Washington, D.C. in Kensington, Maryland, where she grew up during those years. She returned to South Carolina for college, graduating from Columbia College and doing graduate work at the University of South Carolina.</p>

<p>Representative Elizabeth J. Patterson of South Carolina carved out a political career as a Democrat in a conservative-leaning district, portraying herself as a budget hawk and opponent of tax increases, though not at the expense of providing for working-class needs. The daughter of a powerful politician, Patterson’s long experience in public service, fiscal austerity, and ability to capitalize on the South Carolina GOP’s internal divisions gave her narrow majorities over her opponents. Ultimately, her “middle-of-the-road” approach lost its appeal in a conservative state.</p>

<p>Elizabeth Johnston was born on November 18, 1939, to Olin DeWitt Talmadge Johnston and Gladys Atkinson Johnston in Columbia, South Carolina. Her father, Olin Johnston, was a political fixture in South Carolina politics, serving in the state house of representatives before being elected governor in 1935. He served a total of six years as governor (1935–1939; 1943–1945), before resigning in his second term after he had won election to the U.S. Senate. Johnston served 20 years in the Senate and was the longtime chairman of the Post Office and Civil Service Committee. “We were always together,” Elizabeth Johnston recalled of her political family. “We went to conventions together, the Democratic Party conventions, postal conventions because my dad was chairman of that committee [Post Office and Civil Service].” She attended public schools in suburban Maryland but graduated from Spartanburg High School in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1957. In 1961 she received her bachelor’s degree at Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina. She subsequently studied political science at the University of South Carolina. On April 16, 1967, Elizabeth Johnston married Dwight Patterson, and they raised three children: Dwight, Olin, and Catherine. Elizabeth Patterson, worked as a recruiting officer for the Peace Corps and VISTA, as a Head Start coordinator for the South Carolina Office of Economic Opportunity, and as a staff assistant for South Carolina Representative James Robert Mann from 1969 to 1970 where she helped with administrative and constituent work. Patterson made her debut in elective politics when she won an open seat on the Spartanburg County council in 1975. She served in that capacity for two years, securing a reputation as a fiscal conservative who trimmed county expenses while opposing a tax increase. “I got a lot of flak when I ran for county council,” Patterson recalled. “It was sort of interesting, a woman running. And it was countywide, so I had a lot of funny experiences. You know, people talking about a woman running, and ‘Does she know what she’s doing? She should be home with her family,’ and that sort of thing.” In 1979 Patterson was elected to the South Carolina senate, where she served through 1986. She worked diligently on the finance committee to reduce and restructure the state budget. She also served on the governor’s task force on hunger and nutrition.</p>

<p>Patterson declared her candidacy for a South Carolina U.S. House seat in 1986, when four-term Republican Representative Carroll Ashmore Campbell Jr. declined renomination in order to run for governor. “Well, first of all it was open seat, and open seats make it easier,” Patterson noted when explaining why she first ran for Congress. “And it was that same old thing, federal government telling the states and local governments what they’ve got to do and then not giving us money. So when I saw it was an open seat, and I saw that nobody really was coming forth to run, I said, ‘You know, I bet I can do this.’” The district encompassed the Greenville and Spartanburg area, which had swung Republican in the 1960s. With the exception of the 1976 election, South Carolina had voted for the GOP presidential candidate since 1964, and the district had been a mainstay of conservatives. As a stronghold of evangelical and fundamentalist conservatives, the district increasingly was contested between religiously conservative Republicans and more “commerce-minded” Republicans and moderate to conservative Democrats. Patterson campaigned as a fiscal conservative with a social conscience. As a moderate, she supported abortion rights legislation citing that, “the government should not interfere with this most personal decision.” She advocated giving aid to the Nicaragua Contra rebels, opposed gun control, and also supported the death penalty. In the general election, Patterson faced Republican William D. Workman III, a former newspaper editor, the mayor of Greenville, and the son of a man who had once opposed Olin Johnston for the Senate. Workman had survived a heated GOP primary in which he’d been attacked by religious fundamentalist opponents as a tool of big business. Though polls favored Workman, Patterson skillfully exploited divisions in the GOP between her opponent and religious-right critics by painting him as a friend of corporations and the district’s bluebloods. When Workman charged that Patterson was a free-spending Democrat, she countered with television advertisements that declared, “I’m one of us”—in which she was portrayed as a homemaker and family values candidate. Patterson won by a plurality of about 5,400 votes out of more than 130,000 cast, a margin of 51 percent. She made headlines as the first woman elected to Congress in her own right from South Carolina. “There was a lot said about it, and the longer I stayed, of course,” Patterson observed, “the more people would mention things. ‘She’s going to be a rising star,’ and all that sort of thing, so we got good press coverage.”</p>