COLUMBIA, S.C. – Jermaine Johnson, the Democratic nominee for Governor of South Carolina, today announced that Sam Skardon will join him on the ticket as the candidate for Lieutenant Governor.
Skardon, a Charleston area small business and clean energy lender, former congressional aide to Congressman John Lewis, and past chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party, will campaign alongside Johnson on a shared vision for a new South Carolina, one built on opportunity, homegrown leadership, and a clean break from Washington politics.
Why Sam Skardon
“I wanted a partner who has spent his career doing the work, not just talking about it,” said Jermaine Johnson. “Sam Skardon has spent the last seven years putting capital directly into the hands of South Carolina small business owners and clean energy projects that our state’s big banks would not touch. He has sat across the table from the line cook trying to open their own restaurant and the family trying to bring solar power to their community, and he found a way to say yes. That is the kind of leadership South Carolina needs in this moment, and I am honored to have him by my side.”
For the past two years, Skardon has worked at the Clean Energy Fund of the Carolinas, a mission driven nonprofit lender financing solar, battery storage, and electric vehicle infrastructure projects across North and South Carolina. Before that, he spent several years at a nonprofit community lender financing small businesses, with a focus on women, minority, and veteran owned businesses, and affordable housing developments statewide. As a nonprofit lender without shareholders to answer to, Skardon’s organizations have been able to offer fair, market rate terms to entrepreneurs and homeowners that a traditional bank would turn away, using capital, not government handouts, to build wealth in communities that have historically been locked out of it.
Skardon has financed the small businesses that rarely make it onto a bank’s balance sheet: daycare operators, coffee shop owners, and hairdressers building out their first salons. He has also served as a Commissioner of the Charleston Housing Authority and on the Charleston Women and Minority Business Empowerment Commission, extending that same work into affordable housing and small business development across the Charleston area.
“My work has never been complicated,” said Skardon. “It is about getting capital into the hands of more people so they can build wealth in our economy too. That is not a radical idea, but an American idea, and it is one South Carolina has not lived up to for the families and small business owners who need it most. I am running for Lieutenant Governor because I want to build an economy that works for the whole state, alongside a Governor who shares that vision.”
A South Carolina Story
Skardon was raised in Mount Pleasant and attended South Carolina public schools from kindergarten through high school, where he played baseball before continuing his education at Emory University in Atlanta. As a student, he was a field organizer for the 2008 Obama campaign, first in South Carolina’s presidential primary and later in Georgia’s general election.
After college, Skardon joined the staff of Congressman John Lewis, arriving shortly after the Affordable Care Act became law and spending much of his time helping defend it. Because he was the staff’s youngest member and a student of history, Skardon became the aide most often asked to meet with the students, constituents, and visitors who came to Congressman Lewis’s office to learn about the civil rights movement firsthand, hearing the Congressman tell that story more than a thousand times over four years and, on occasion, telling it himself. Skardon went on to earn his MBA at Georgetown University before returning home to South Carolina to begin his career in community development finance.
Skardon’s public service in South Carolina includes a run for State Senate in 2020, when he came within two points of flipping a Republican held seat, and two years as Chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party, where he led the county’s organizing operation through the 2024 election cycle.
Skardon’s family has deep roots in South Carolina and in public service. His father spent 30 years running the Palmetto Project, a statewide nonprofit that introduced the “I Voted” sticker to South Carolina in the 1990s and today is the largest enroller of South Carolinians in healthcare.gov coverage, helping tens of thousands of families access Medicaid, Medicare, and marketplace health plans. Skardon also comes from a family with a long tradition of military service, including two grandfathers who served in World War II and a great uncle who survived the Bataan Death March before returning home to teach for decades at Clemson University.
Skardon lives in Charleston with his wife, Leslie Skardon, who was elected to Charleston City Council last fall, and their twin four year old sons, Lewis and Lawson, named for Congressman John Lewis and the Reverend Jim Lawson, the architect of the nonviolent civil disobedience training that shaped much of the civil rights movement.
Building a New South Carolina
“There are two kinds of people in the South,” Skardon said. “There are people who love the South, and there are people who love it so much they want to change it. I love South Carolina enough to want to change it, because I’ve always seen the untapped potential here, and that is what this campaign is about.”
Johnson and Skardon will campaign together across South Carolina in the coming weeks on a platform focused on affordability, public education, healthcare access, and building a South Carolina economy that works for small business owners and working families, not just those with the deepest pockets or the closest ties to Washington and Columbia. The campaign’s message throughout has been simple: no DC in SC, and a new South Carolina built by South Carolinians, for South Carolinians.
Johnson and Skardon will hold public events in Columbia and Charleston today to introduce the ticket to voters, with additional campaign stops to follow in the coming weeks.
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Thomas Hyslip lives in Tega Cay with his wife and daughter. After 27 years in the U.S. Army and Federal Law Enforcement, he retired to pursue his passion for teaching. Tom is now an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of South Florida. In 2 short years he has won 10 awards from the South Carolina Press Association, including first place in column writing, education beat reporting and best podcast.
