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Democratic state superintendent nominee Lisa Ellis will run as a fusion candidate, representing both the Democratic and Alliance parties on the ballot in November, she announced Thursday.

Ellis, a Richland 2 educator and founder of grassroots teachers organization SC for Ed, said she linked up with the Alliance Party of South Carolina because she shares many of its core values, such as fairness and giving everyone an equal voice.

"The Alliance Party represents voices that are often brushed under the rug by politicians — voices like working families and students with special needs," she said Thursday outside the Rutledge Building in Columbia. "It is this alignment that excites me to be running as a fusion candidate with the Democratic Party and the Alliance Party. In education just as in politics, the needs of our most vulnerable tend to be left behind by the demands of the loudest voices. But I am no political bureaucrat. I believe that everyone should have a seat at the table."

The Alliance Party, one of nine certified political parties in South Carolina, presents itself as a "new political choice for an America that works for everyone."

South Carolina is, for the time being, one of only nine states that permits fusion voting — the practice of candidates representing multiple parties on the ballot — and one of just three states that gives fusion candidates individual ballot positions for each endorsing party.

As a result, Ellis' name will appear twice on the ballot — once as the Democratic nominee and once as the Alliance Party nominee — and her vote total will equal the sum of the votes she gets on each party's ballot line.

Voters may select her name on either party's ballot line but should not select it on both lines, or their votes will be disqualified.

The November election, which pits Ellis against Republican Ellen Weaver and Green Party nominee Patricia Mickel, will be the final time fusion voting is permitted in South Carolina.

A ban on the practice goes into effect at the beginning of next year, courtesy of a provision in the state's new election reform law that prohibits candidates from being nominated by more than one political party for a single office in the same election.

Roots of the Alliance Party

Ellis, a 46-year-old Blythewood High School teacher and student activities director, was recently endorsed by the South Carolina Education Association .

Campaign spokesperson Leesa Danzek said Ellis connected with the Alliance Party through a graduate school friend who is active with the party and suggested she reach out to one of its founders, former Democratic State Superintendent Jim Rex.

Ellis and Rex, who served as state schools chief from 2007 to 2011, spoke before the Democratic primary, and he suggested she consider running as a fusion candidate in the general election, she said.

Rex, the last Democrat elected to statewide office in South Carolina, and physician Oscar Lovelace founded the party, originally known as the American Party, in 2013.

It rebranded as the Alliance Party in 2019, after a merger with two other alternative political parties.

According to its website, the party is driven by the foundational values of unity, community, responsibility, accountability, fairness, integrity and civility. It has endorsed candidates in three races — 1st Congressional District (Joe Oddo), treasurer (Sarah Work) and House District 8 (Jackie Todd) — in addition to the state superintendent race, but Ellis is the only fusion candidate.

Rex, who spoke at Ellis' event Thursday, called her " the right person at the right time for this job and for this responsibility."

He said Ellis' campaign for state superintendent mirrors his own in that political pundits have written her off as a long shot because they can't imagine a non-Republican winning statewide office in South Carolina.

"During (the 2006) election, in significant numbers, South Carolina voters showed up and put our schools, our children and our future before their normal partisan party affiliation," Rex said of his underdog victory. "And I want to stress that what happened then can happen now. It can happen again."

Luke Byars, a senior advisor for Weaver's campaign, brushed off Ellis' endorsement by the Alliance Party, which he said wouldn't help her chance of winning in November.

"These fusion candidacies never work here in South Carolina," he said. "If Lisa Ellis believes fusing radical union ideas and liberal ideology will win votes, she is mistaken. This is not California."

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