Something very significant happened in Charleston, South Carolina, yesterday when 146 years of unbroken Democrat control over the city finally came to an end. This may have been simply a battle of a bad incumbent against a good candidate, but it may presage something more.

Charleston is one of America’s oldest cities, resulting from a 1663 land grant King Charles II gave to some of his friends. Its vast harbor allowed it to benefit from the 18th-century explosion in international trade that allowed it to export rice and indigo and import virtually everything, from products to people. At one time, it was arguably the wealthiest port city in America. Because most people think of it only as the place in which the Civil War started, when cadets from the Citadel fired on Fort Sumter, few know that it was a pivotal city in the fight to liberate America from England during the American Revolution.

Speaking of that Revolution, Charleston just had another one, and we can only hope it will be as pivotal. Since 1877, when Reconstruction ended, Democrats have controlled Charleston’s government. Their goal, consistently, has been to subordinate blacks. Once, they did it through Jim Crow.

More recently, they’ve done it through leftist policies that, while framed in the language of love, have demoralized the black community in Charleston as surely as Democrat policies have done to black communities across America: They’ve encouraged the break-up of the black family, the breakdown of faith within the black community, and the erosion of consequences for criminals who tend to prey on the black community.

Image: William Cogswell (cropped). YouTube screen grab.

The toxic “love” Democrats have for blacks matters in Charleston, a city in which blacks constitute almost 22% of the population. Indeed, South Carolina, generally, has a sizable black population, with blacks making up almost 28% of the state’s residents.

Meanwhile, Charleston has seen explosive growth, having more than doubled in size since 1980, with the city growing by 20% between 1990 and 2000, by 24% between 2000 and 2010, and by 25% between 2010 and 2020. For a city dependent on the tourist trade because it’s a historic gem, unconstrained growth can kill the goose laying the golden eggs.

All of this brings us to the run-off election held yesterday to determine who will be Charleston’s mayor. The incumbent, who was running for reelection, is John Tecklenburg, a Democrat, who’s been in office since 2016.

Not living in Charleston myself, I can’t comment much on his governance during that time, but I can say that people I know accuse him of simultaneously blocking necessary development while allowing destructive development that affects people’s quality of life. In addition, he got into trouble in 2018 when, while he was acting as the conservator for an elderly woman, he used her money to make unsecured loans to himself and his wife (which he repaid) without seeking prior court approval.

Tecklenburg, as a Democrat in good standing, also strongly supports the whole DEI, LGBTQ, CRT, and SEL madness that’s polluting Charleston’s schools. That’s why he made attacking Moms for Liberty one of the central planks of his campaign.

But perhaps Moms for Liberty got the last laugh. In a stunning upset, Tecklenburg lost to William Cogswell, a local businessman, a former state legislator, and…a Republican, the first Republican to be elected as Charleston mayor since 1877:

William Cogswell won in a nail-biter runoff election on Nov. 21, delivering a stunning defeat to incumbent Mayor John Tecklenburg after a hard-fought campaign.

Cogswell declared victory shortly after 8:45 p.m. By 9:10 p.m., Tecklenburg had called him to concede, promising to help with the transition. About five minutes later, Tecklenburg was giving his concession speech — his first appearance of the night at his Election Night watch party.

With all precincts reporting, Cogswell had about 51 percent of the vote compared to 49 percent for Tecklenburg, the city’s mayor who had been seeking his third and final term in office.

I’ve heard Cogswell give his stump speech, and he comes across very well: He’s a coherent speaker, radiates competence, and has a track record of being a real estate developer who can get things done working within the parameters of maintaining Charleston’s all-important historical flavor. Moreover, given his past experience as a state legislator, he’s stated that he can keep state money flowing to South Carolina’s largest city.

What happened in Charleston may have come about because citizens were tired of an incumbent Democrat who wasn’t meeting the city’s development needs and, finally, got the opportunity to vote for an obviously competent Republican candidate. But there may be more going on here.

Here are two theories: One, although the victory was a squeaker (Cogswell won by only 569 votes), it represents a population tired of the incompetence that inevitably characterizes Democrat governance because Democrats have bad ideas. Two, we may be seeing here the effects of conservatives from across America heading to the South, which is seen by many as the last bastion of American normalcy. These new residents may be restoring conservative norms to southern urban areas that were drifting fast into the dark side of modern Democrat politics.