The Budget Passed. The Gummy Bears Didn’t. Fourteen Bills Later, No One Has Closed a Primary
- Alpha Strategies
- Mar 15
- 7 min read
ALPHA STRATEGIES | LEGISLATIVE SESSION UPDATE | WEEK 9
Week of March 9, 2026 | South Carolina General Assembly, 126th Session
Let's start with the number that should stop you cold.
Fourteen.
That is how many bills have been filed this session -- this single legislative session -- seeking to require party registration to vote in a South Carolina partisan primary. Fourteen.
Five of them dropped in a single week. Five. In one week.
To be fair, some of those fourteen bills have the same sponsors. Some of them are nearly identical. The House Judiciary Committee has all twelve of the House versions sitting in a pile somewhere, none of them scheduled for a hearing. But that is almost beside the point.
The point is that somewhere in the General Assembly, lawmakers looked at a situation where nine bills had already been filed on the same subject and thought: you know what this needs? More bills.
We will come back to that. Because there is a lot of actual news from Week 9.
The House passed a $15.4 billion budget after sixteen hours of floor debate spread across two days. It also sent an income tax overhaul to the governor's desk. The Senate spent most of the week wrestling with consumable hemp regulation, specifically whether your neighbor's THC gummy bears should be regulated like beer, banned outright, or something in between. (The Senate landed on: something in between. Mostly.) Governor McMaster vetoed the NIL transparency bill. The South Carolina Student Physical Privacy Act cleared the Senate Education Committee.
In the week coming up, the House goes dark on furlough while the Senate keeps working. Here is what happened, what it means, and what is next.
The $15.4 Billion Budget: The House Worked. Now It's the Senate's Turn.
Budget week is the legislative equivalent of moving day. Everyone knew it was coming. Nobody is fully prepared. It takes longer than expected. And when it's over, the hard part is actually just beginning.
The House passed H. 5126, the FY 2026-27 General Appropriations Act, in a vote of 101 to 18. The no votes came primarily from members of the House Freedom Caucus, who felt the $15.4 billion price tag was too rich. That spending figure, for context, would be the largest state budget in South Carolina history.
The floor debate ran sixteen hours and covered director salaries, the private school voucher program, bathroom use at public colleges, and at least one attempt by Freedom Caucus members to slash Clemson University's funding because the university's president was insufficiently mournful about the death of Charlie Kirk. That proviso did not survive. A separate proviso targeting Tri-County Technical College over a transgender bathroom incident also failed.
Immediately after passing the budget, the House passed two tax bills. The first, H. 4216, the South Carolina Income Tax Reform Act, restructures state income taxes into two brackets: 1.99% for earners under $30,000 and 5.21% for everyone above that. It eliminates standard and itemized deductions and sets up a path toward eventually zeroing out the income tax entirely, contingent on revenue growth. Republicans called it a historic tax cut. Democrats called it a tax increase on working people.
H. 4216 is now on Governor McMaster's desk.
The second tax bill, H. 3368, which excludes overtime pay and certain bonus pay from individual gross income, conforms South Carolina's tax code to the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The Capital Reserve Fund joint resolution, H. 5127, also cleared the House. Total proposed capital spending: $369.7 million.
The Hemp Debate: Regulation Won. Barely. And It Isn't Finished.
While the House was doing sixteen hours of budget math, the Senate was doing something that looked simpler from the outside and turned out to be considerably more complicated.
H. 3924, the consumable hemp regulation bill, has been in the Senate pipeline for months, heavily rewritten since it cleared the House last year. The Senate version would prohibit anyone under 21 from buying hemp-derived THC products, ban edibles like gummies entirely, allow THC beverages to be sold through the state's existing alcohol distribution system with strict potency limits, and ban on-premise consumption at bars and restaurants.
Simple enough in concept. Except that when it hit the Senate floor this week, a faction wanted to skip regulation entirely and just ban the products outright. That amendment failed, narrowly, 18 to 22. So the Senate kept debating regulation. And kept debating. And by Thursday had not finished.
The Closed Primary Files: Fourteen Bills. One Session. Zero Hearings.
Alright. We promised to come back to this, and here we are.
In Week 8, three closed primary bills dropped in a single day bringing the running total to nine. Alpha Strategies called the persistence remarkable. That was last week. In Week 9, five more arrived.
• H. 5355 (Rep. Magnuson, Edgerton, McCravy, D. Mitchell, Kilmartin et al.): Require Party Registration to Vote in Partisan Primary Election or Advisory Referendum. House Judiciary.
• H. 5356 (Rep. Terribile, White, Huff, Kilmartin, Magnuson, Morgan et al.): SC Voter Integrity Party Primaries Act. House Judiciary.
• H. 5358 (Rep. Kilmartin, Beach, Edgerton, Harris, Frank, Pace et al.): Require Party Registration to Vote in Partisan Primary Election or Advisory Referendum. House Judiciary.
• H. 5359 (Rep. McCravy, Long, Edgerton, Magnuson): Require Party Registration to Vote in Primary; Candidate Ballot Eligibility Based on Party Participation. House Judiciary.
• H. 5361 (Rep. Edgerton, Magnuson, Pace, Frank, Morgan, Burns, Kilmartin et al.): Require Party Registration to Vote in Partisan Primary Election or Advisory Referendum. House Judiciary.
The full session ledger now stands at fourteen bills. Two in the Senate, twelve in the House. Multiple sponsors appear on multiple bills. None of them have had a committee hearing. All of them are in Judiciary.
South Carolina has had an open primary for decades, and the debate over whether to close it is real and serious. The arguments in favor are principled: party members should choose their party’s nominees, and crossover voting can distort primary elections. The arguments against are equally principled: in a one-party state, a closed primary can remove large swaths of voters from meaningful participation in their own elections.
H. 4756, the South Carolina Student Physical Privacy Act
This one moved. The Senate Education Full Committee gave H. 4756, the South Carolina Student Physical Privacy Act, a favorable report as amended on March 11. It now heads to the Senate floor.
H. 4763 and S. 175, the Helping Alleviate Lawful Obstruction Act
Both versions of the Helping Alleviate Lawful Obstruction Act -- H. 4763, which cleared the House 95-18 last week, and its Senate companion S. 175 -- came before the Senate Judiciary Full Committee on March 10. Neither was voted out. Both were carried over.
Other Introductions Worth Flagging from Week 9
• H. 5353, the Firearm Safety Education Program Act (Rep. Haddon et al., Education and Public Works): would establish a firearm safety education program through the Department of Education. Bipartisan sponsorship.
• H. 5362 and H. 5363, the DOT Reform Act and the Fix Our Roads Accountability Act (Rep. White, Frank, Cromer, Kilmartin, Edgerton et al., Ways and Means): H. 5362 would dissolve the DOT Commission entirely and transfer its responsibilities to a Secretary of Transportation, with regional transportation districts replacing the current structure. H. 5363 requires the Secretary to establish a statewide pavement preservation program. These bills arrive as S. 831, the Senate's DOT modernization bill, is actively on the Senate floor.
• H. 5357 and H. 5364 (Rep. J.L. Johnson, Ways and Means): H. 5357 would require inmate compensation at no less than the federal minimum wage. H. 5364 would allow an income tax deduction for all South Carolina state retirement income with broad instinctive support.
H. 4902, the NIL Revenue-Sharing Transparency Bill: McMaster Draws a Line
Governor McMaster vetoed H. 4902, the name, image and likeness bill that would have shielded revenue-sharing contracts between South Carolina's public colleges and their student-athletes from public disclosure.
McMaster said he could accept the individual exemption keeping individual athletes' contract amounts private. What he could not accept was the group exemption, which would prevent the public from knowing how much revenue-sharing money went to USC's football program versus its women's basketball team, for example.
The Legislature now faces a decision: override or accept the veto. The House passed
H. 4902, 30-13 on the original vote just barely over the two-thirds threshold required for an override. Whether the Senate has the votes to sustain or override is the open question.
What Is Coming: Week 10 and Beyond
The House is on furlough. This is a planned break, the first of two. House committees will not meet. The House floor goes quiet. If you have business that requires House action, the furlough is a window to have the conversations you need to have before the chamber reconvenes.
The Senate keeps working. Key items on the radar for the week of March 16:
• H. 3924: hemp regulation debate resumes on the Senate floor. The Senate did not finish it last week. Expect it to dominate.
• Senate Finance budget subcommittees: six hearings are scheduled covering Natural Resources and Economic Development, Health and Human Services, Constitutional, Higher Education, K-12 Education, and Transportation.
• H. 4756, the South Carolina Student Physical Privacy Act: cleared the Senate Education Full Committee with a favorable report as amended. The Senate floor is next.
• H. 4763 and S. 175, the Helping Alleviate Lawful Obstruction Act: both versions remain in Senate Judiciary after being carried over. The committee has to choose one vehicle before either can move to the floor.
• H. 4902, NIL veto: the Legislature needs to decide whether to override Governor McMaster.
The Bottom Line
Week 9 was, in its way, a perfect summary of a South Carolina session in motion. The House spent sixteen hours debating a historic budget while simultaneously debating whether the Clemson president was sufficiently grief-stricken. The Senate debated whether a THC gummy bear is more like a beer or a controlled substance. Fourteen separate bills now exist on the same subject, none of them scheduled for a hearing. The governor vetoed a transparency bill and signed off on a generational income tax overhaul.
That is what Alpha Strategies does.
We track the session week by week not just what happened, but what it means, what is coming, and where the leverage points are. We are in the conversations that shape what ends up on the floor, in the budget, and on the governor's desk.
If you are not sure where your issues stand or what is coming next, this is the moment to ask.
Furlough week is when strategy happens.
Alpha Strategies tracks South Carolina’s legislative process week by week to help organizations understand not just what happened, but what it means and what is coming next.
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