(Disclosure: I don’t live in Charleston, South Carolina, but I live near Charleston, South Carolina. My friends are part of the Charleston chapter of Moms for Liberty, and I am a paying member of that chapter, so I know some of the players here and have a front-row seat for what’s happening.)

Although most people think of Charleston, South Carolina, as a charming historic city (it is one of the world’s top vacation destinations), it was also one of the pivotal players in the American Revolution. Now, to the extent that we’re seeing a second American Revolution playing out, one that centers around the left’s desire to control and destroy our children, South Carolina is again playing a role. I wrote before about the school board battle and Moms for Liberty. This time, the war involves the mayoral battle and…Moms for Liberty.

Moms for Liberty, as you know, has a very simple mission: Saving America by empowering, educating, and unifying parents to stand up for their rights at all levels of government. This means protecting children from radical political and social agendas and ideologies. This terrifies the left.

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

In Charleston, which is an increasingly purple city, leftists have decided to use an attack on Moms for Liberty as a wedge issue to keep the city’s Democrat mayor, John Tecklenburg, in office. Indeed, attacking Moms for Liberty is central to Tecklenberg’s campaign. I’ve already written here about the way the left has attacked the Charleston Moms for Liberty chapter for fighting porn in the schools—and, weirdly, framed that fight as a racial issue.  

Tecklenburg has leveraged that argument to claim that he is the only thing standing as a bulwark between the “extremism” of Moms for Liberty and the purity of Charleston education:

It’s Tecklenburg’s right to attack a group that is fighting to keep pornography out of public schools, although I would hope that Charleston parents dislike that. I’m also sure it’s just a coincidence that Charleston students are lagging academically as the city government fights to keep homosexual porn in the schools.

However, things get dicey when organizations affiliated with you announce that your opponent is an “extremist” because he agrees with Moms for Liberty’s opposition to porn in public education.

The extremism claim doesn’t come directly from Tecklenburg’s campaign. Instead, it comes from an organization called “Coalition for a Better Charleston, LLC,” which didn’t exist before October 10, 2023, and is set to vanish on December 30, 2023. It put out a commercial I cannot find on YouTube—and Coalition for a Better Charleston has no presence on the internet. However, someone captured the recording off a TV, hence the poor video quality:

Poor video quality or not, the message is clear: Moms for Liberty is an “extremist” organization (no explanation, of course, as to what that “extremism” is), and William Cogswell is its “handpicked” candidate and is, therefore, an “extremist” by association.

Cogswell, a former state legislator and a respected businessman, wasn’t going to take this attack lying down. He convened a press conference to deny the extremism and expose the dark money behind the ad:

The press conference is illuminating for a couple of reasons: First, it reveals, as I noted above, that the left is terrified of Moms for Liberty. Second, it says that one of the people behind the ad once worked for Donald Trump.

That last fact, more than anything, tells you what you need to know about politics in America: It’s not Democrat versus Republican or even leftist versus conservative. It’s the D.C. establishment against the American people. I doubt Trump knew that his attorney would play both sides of the aisle, but you, the voters, need to know it.

Washington, D.C., is a Uniparty group composed of people with the same goals, regardless of their political labels. Some will swing a little left or a little right, depending on circumstances, but basically, they’re all leftists. That’s their allegiance, and those are their values.