A Charleston lawyer is the first Democrat to officially enter the 2026 governor’s race, bringing the total field to six announced candidates.
Mullins McLeod, who was among the lawyers who helped negotiate an $88 million settlement for victims of the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, launched a bid for the Governor’s Mansion with a three-minute YouTube video Monday.
The 53-year-old attorney told the SC Daily Gazette, if elected, he would push back on the large incentive packages used to lure companies to the state. He did not name any specific deal he opposed.
And he joined in the chorus of Republican candidates calling for eliminating the state’s personal income tax — a major source of revenue for state spending. Income taxes are expected to provide more than $6.5 billion this fiscal year. Zeroing that out would slash 45% of the state’s general fund. At the same time, he wants to almost double teachers’ salaries.
“I believe there is a job that needs to be done and needs to be done now. That job is curing a cancer that has infiltrated our state government over the last 25 years,” McLeod said in the campaign video.
That cancer, according to McLeod, is “corruption” and state lawmakers bowing to corporations that have lobbied to “rig the system for their own financial gains.”
Though he doesn’t say it, the 25 years refers to how long Republicans have controlled both chambers in the Statehouse. After the 2000 elections, the party-switching of a single Democrat gave the GOP control of the Senate. The last Democrat in the Governor’s Mansion left office in January 2003.
In his campaign video, however, McLeod doesn’t call himself a Democrat or Republican. Nor does he mention either party.
“What I believe makes South Carolina great is the people that go to work everyday,” McLeod told the Daily Gazette. “And giving people’s hard-earned tax dollars to large, for-profit corporations — that’s just disrespectful.”
“Public money should only be used for the public good,” McLeod added.
The personal injury attorney will need to overcome headlines of his arrest three months ago.
In May, McLeod was charged with disorderly conduct in downtown Charleston near the Battery, according to reporting by The Post and Courier. Officers said McLeod was wearing nothing but underwear and shoes and “yelling at the top of his lungs.” McLeod’s lawyer told a judge the erratic behavior stemmed from a mental health episode and exhaustion, the newspaper reported.
McLeod acknowledged the arrest but declined to comment Monday on the pending case, other than to tell the Gazette, “I was not in my underwear.”
He will explain, just not yet: “Long before voters go to the polls, they will know what happened,” he said.
A copy of the police report was not immediately available. The police department required the SC Daily Gazette to submit a request for the report under the Freedom of Information Act.
Former state Rep. Bakari Sellers, who worked with McLeod on the Mother Emmanuel settlement, called McLeod a “forward-thinker and “one of the most accomplished trial lawyers in the state.”
The Bamberg County Democrat said McLeod will have to answer questions about the circumstances surrounding his arrest.
“It’s going to be a large hurdle,” Sellers said. “But we should try not to judge people at the moments when they are at the bottom. I’m willing to give him that grace.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Jermaine Johnson, D-Columbia, said he is still in the exploratory stage of a run for governor.
“I believe South Carolina deserves leaders who are steady, consistent, and committed to the work, not just in an election year, but every single day,” Johnson said in a statement. “Until my decision is made, I’ll continue doing what I’ve always done: putting in the work for the people who sent me to Columbia and for the future of our great state.”
Johnson added that his decision on whether or not to run “will not be based on anyone else’s intention to seek the seat.”
On the Republican side, five candidates are vying for the party’s nomination.
McLeod, the nephew of former state Rep. Walt McLeod, D-Little Mountain, and the late state Sen. Peden Brown McLeod, D-Walterboro, previously ran for governor in 2010. He dropped out of that race four months before the Democratic primary, endorsing former state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Camden.
Sheheen ultimately lost the governor’s race to Nikki Haley.
Now, McLeod is back.
His platform
In addition to criticizing the state’s economic development incentives, he wants to rein in county-level property tax breaks for major manufacturers. While property tax decisions are made by local officials and do not affect the state budget, McLeod said all of it should be examined.
He also called out a portion of the massive energy package passed by the Legislature in May.
The section of the bill, known as rate stabilization, allows public utility companies to raise electric rates on an annual basis using a truncated review by state regulators rather than the full-blown rate process.
“I believe that’s corruption,” McLeod said.
McLeod, in his published platform, also said he will push for term limits, seek to make the cost of child care 100% tax deductible, and propose taxes for companies that use automation to reduce their workforce needs.
And there’s at least one business incentive he wants to add: He believes companies should get a tax credit for paying off their employees’ student loans.
As for teachers, he believes the state should pay them between $85,000 and $100,000.
Currently, teachers’ average salary statewide is about $62,000, though their actual pay depends on their years of experience and level of college degree.
Legislators kept pay at the Southeastern average by putting $112 million into increasing teachers’ salaries this school year. That raised teachers’ minimum pay by $1,500 across the so-called salary schedule and brought the floor for first-year teachers to $48,500 (up from $35,000 in 2020).
Raising that salary floor to $50,000 — as Gov. Henry McMaster recommended in his budget proposal — would have cost $200 million.
McLeod didn’t give specifics for his proposal, but it could require several billion dollars.
Parts of his platform align with the state’s dominating party. Beyond slashing income taxes, he wants to decrease the size of government, increase law enforcement, protect the Second Amendment — “No one will be coming after our Right to Bear Arms. Period,” his campaign website reads — and keep transgender girls off female teams.
“Girls Compete Against Girls. Boys Compete Against Boys,” the website reads. “Bring common sense back to athletics.”
He could cross that one off. State law already requires students to compete on athletic teams corresponding to their biological sex at birth. Gov. Henry McMaster signed the Save Women’s Sports Act in 2022. The bill passed both chambers along party lines.
UPDATE:
SC Democrats call on Charleston lawyer to suspend campaign for governor following arrest video
Mullins McLeod shouts insults and expletives during a 30-minute rant captured on police dashcam
BY: JESSICA HOLDMAN - AUGUST 13, 2025 6:47 PM
The chair of South Carolina’s Democratic Party is calling on Mullins McLeod to discontinue his campaign for governor and focus on his mental health after his nearly 35-minute, profanity-laden rant in the back of a police cruiser became public.
“It is clear that Mr. McLeod is navigating profound challenges and should focus on his mental and emotional well-being instead of a campaign for governor,” state Democratic Party Chairwoman Christale Spain said in a statement Wednesday.
Her plea came hours after The Post and Courier first reported on the dashcam video and two days after McLeod became the first Democrat to enter the 2026 governor’s race.
It appears McLeod is not heeding Spain’s advice, with his campaign manager telling the SC Daily Gazette he won’t back away.
“Everything is straight ahead,” said Democratic strategist Cary Cranford. He declined to address McLeod’s mental health.
McLeod did not respond to messages Wednesday left by the SC Daily Gazette. Nor did his criminal defense attorney.
The dashcam video comes from McLeod’s arrest in May on disorderly conduct charges. In it, the 53-year-old personal injury attorney jumps incoherently from one grievance to the next — shouting expletives and accusations for the entire ride against a variety of state and federal lawmakers and using a racial slur. He repeatedly threatens people he doesn’t like — saying he’ll kick their teeth in or let someone else do it — and occasionally yells out “McLeod for governor!”
The high-profile lawyer’s arrest, which made headlines in May, did not stop the Democrat from launching his bid Monday for the Governor’s Mansion. In his three-minute campaign video posted to YouTube, he criticizes “corruption” at the Statehouse. Asked Monday about his arrest, he disputed the police report but declined to go into details. However, he pledged to fully explain what happened before voters go to the polls.
Dash camera footage released from Charleston Police showed what happened after he was placed in the back seat of the cruiser. The department released the video, first to The Post and Courier and then to the SC Daily Gazette, in response to public records requests.
The video starts with McLeod rambling about class-action lawsuits and little money going to victims. When an officer asks for his name, he says all that matters is that he’s “one of the most just humans to ever walk this soil.” When the officer calls him John Doe, McLeod says he’d rather go by Superman.
Once the door closes, he seemingly tells himself, “I can’t connect these dots yet, but if this is going where I think it could be heading, I think I just figured out the president of the United States is my cousin. So, trust me at this point, nothing is crazier either than you and me either being related or you being not guilty. That’s just the way may brain has been trained.”
Then the shouting starts.
The video was taken after officers responded to The Battery at the tip of Charleston’s peninsula about 9:30 p.m. May 14 and found McLeod wearing just underwear and shoes and “yelling at the top of his lungs,” according to the police report, obtained by the Gazette.
The video shows him obviously shirtless. During the ride, officers turn up the radio to a Taylor Swift song, seemingly to try to drown out his ranting. It ends with him reluctantly getting out of the cruiser. Whether he’s wearing boxers or shorts is unclear. His shoes appear to be loafers or slippers.
“I’m not getting out of this car. I’m not doing it,” he says when they arrive at the jail. When the officer asks why he says “because it’s time to go to bed. I’ll sleep right here.”
During the ride, McLeod used partial or full names of a long list of South Carolina officials for what he deems “corrupt” behavior. At one point, he used a vulgarity to describe a Black man.
One of his repeated targets is state Attorney General Alan Wilson, who he references by his full name. The state’s top prosecutor is among five Republicans who have launched a 2026 bid for governor.
“Allen f****** Wilson, I’m daring you right now,” McLeod shouts on the video before calling the attorney general out for not doing “the people’s work.”
McLeod then launches into a tirade against “Nancy” — presumably U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, another governor hopeful. He repeatedly calls her a “b****” and says she’s using the playbook of the late Lee Atwater, a Republican strategist notorious for dirty campaign tactics.
“Tell the world right now, what you did in the halls of Congress was the greatest sin ever committed in the history of this nation,” McLeod continues.
He doesn’t say exactly what he’s talking about. But in February, Mace accused her ex-fiancé and three other men of an array of sexual crimes, including raping and videotaping women without their knowledge, during a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. The men have repeatedly denied Mace’s accusations. One sued her. Mace sued another. No criminal charges have been filed.
Neither Mace nor Wilson’s campaigns responded Wednesday to messages from the SC Daily Gazette.
Other politicians McLeod mentions include Gov. Henry McMaster, former Gov. Nikki Haley and President Donald Trump. McLeod calls Trump a “racist a**,” refers to Haley as a “b****” and appears to call on McMaster to sell the state plane.
He raves about Elon Musk and the Tesla billionaire’s space travel attempts: “I don’t ever want a billion dollars,” he said. “If I had a billion dollars, my stupid a** would try to do something like going to the moon.”
McLeod also rails against Republican donor Wallace Cheves and his efforts to build a casino on property bordering the town of Santee, telling him repeatedly to pack his bags.
Sometimes he praises people. He seems to call former President Barack Obama a smooth talker and endorse former Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer for the U.S. Senate. (Bauer suspended his challenge to U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham last week.)
And he refers to his “friend Bakari,” former Democratic state Rep. Bakari Sellers, who he worked alongside to negotiate an $88 million settlement for victims of the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. He describes Sellers as someone who can “kick (people) in the gums.”
“The only reason I didn’t let Bakari do the people’s work is because I like a little heavy lifting,” McLeod said.
Asked about the video Wednesday, Sellers said McLeod “needs to explain it” for the sake of his personal and professional relationships.
“I don’t know if there is an explanation,” Sellers told the Gazette. “But that’s on him.”
In a bond hearing following his arrest, McLeod’s lawyer told a judge the erratic behavior stemmed from a mental health episode and exhaustion, The Post and Courier reported.
In her statement, Spain said the party offers McLeod compassion and prays he finds the mental health support he needs.
This is McLeod’s second bid for governor.
In the dashcam video, he referenced his previous run in 2010, saying a friend called him “a class act … maybe the classiest act to ever grace [unintelligible].” But he followed that up by noting the campaign didn’t last long, saying “I got my a** checked in a hurry.”
He dropped out of that race four months before the Democratic primary, endorsing former state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Camden.
Jessica Holdman writes about the economy, workforce and higher education. Before joining the SC Daily Gazette, she was a business reporter for The Post and Courier.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
