19 IslandVibesIOP.com LIFESTYLE The Hartnett children: Lee Anne and Tom Jr. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ADVERTISING YOUR BUSINESS IN ISLAND VIBES, EMAIL PUBLISHER@ISLANDVIBESIOP.COM OR 843-530-0403. THE ONLY PUBLICATION EXCLUSIVELY FOCUSED ON ISLE OF PALMS WITH REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION THROUGH THE STATE WELCOME CENTERS AND MAILED TO ISLAND HOMES. SPREADING ABOUT ISLE OF PALMS Good Vibes SOUTH CAROLINA WELCOME CENTERS “It was very quiet – all local people. It was not any place where people came from afar to vacation with their families because there weren’t any big houses here and no air conditioning,” Hartnett said. Later, his first job was on the island, with J.C. Long’s construction company, as was his first date with Bonnie Kennerly, his future bride. “Our first date was a luau on Front Beach,” recalled Bonnie Hartnett. “We were chaperoned by Henry and Esther Tecklenburg, parents of Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg. There was a fire and we roasted marshmallows and I think they cooked a pig. You could do that back then.” Later on, the couple would go to the end of the island where Wild Dunes is now and shoot cans over the marsh. “That was where I learned to shoot, when I was dating Tommy here at the end of the island,” Bonnie Hartnett remembered. They were married in 1965, and they decided to start their new life together on the Isle of Palms. They purchased their first house on the island but never moved in. “We bought the house a month before we got married,” recalled Hartnett. “There was no living together then – she lived with her mom and dad and I lived with mine – but she was teaching school in North Charleston and I was working downtown. We got to thinking about it, and it just wasn’t the practical thing to do, so we sold that house before we ever moved into it.” More than a decade later, in 1977, the couple bought another house on the Isle of Palms, this time in Wild Dunes. It was their summer home until 2011, when they became permanent residents. Public Service Calls By the time the Hartnetts bought their home on the Isle of Palms, Tommy was already a leader in the South Carolina Statehouse. He was a rising star in the Republican Party as well, though his political career had begun on the other side of the aisle. In 1964, at the age of 22, Hartnett entered his first political contest, running in the Democratic primary for the State House of Representatives. He won that race as well as the general election and went on to be re-elected three more times, serving a total of eight years. He might have spent more time in Columbia, but, in 1972, the Democratic Party nominated George McGovern as its candidate for president, and he was just too liberal for Hartnett. “I fell out with the Democrats,” Hartnett explained. “My name was already on the ballot for the June (Democratic) primary when I went to a meeting and they were asking all the candidates who they were planning on voting for president. I couldn’t lie. I said ‘I’m voting for Richard Nixon, and if me voting for Nixon means I don’t get your vote for the Statehouse, then keep your vote. I quit.’” Local Republicans quickly recruited Hartnett to run for the State Senate, and, when he and future Gov. James B. Edwards won their seats, half of the Charleston-area Senate delegation was on the Republican side of the aisle. After two terms in the Senate, he was ready for a new challenge. When U.S. Rep. Mendel Davis announced that he would not seek re-election in 1980, Hartnett set his sights on Washington, D.C., and the U.S. House of Representatives. The last time voters had sent a Republican to the House from Charleston was during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era in 1876, when African American Joseph Rainey was re-elected to his fourth term. Reconstruction ended the following year when federal troops were withdrawn from the South and Rainey was defeated in the election of 1878. TO BE CONTINUED (PART II): Mr. Hartnett Goes to Washington In the Oval Office: President Ronald Reagan, far right, with, counterclockwise: U.S. Reps. Tommy Hartnett and Floyd Spence; David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget; Lyn Nofziger, assistant to the president for political affairs; U.S. Reps. Trent Lott and Carroll Campbell; and Vice President George Bush.
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