COLUMBIA, S.C. — Gov. Wes Moore dipped his toes into the waters of presidential campaigning for the first time Friday, telling a crowd of some of the country’s most important Democratic primary voters that their party needs to feel a greater sense of urgency that’s inspired, at least in part, by the Republican they’re fighting against.
“We can, and we must, condemn Donald Trump’s reckless actions. But we would be foolish not to learn from his impatience,” Moore told a room full of South Carolina Democratic leaders. “If he can do so much bad in such a small amount of time, why can’t we do such good? Now is the time for us to be impatient too. Let’s not just talk about an alternative. Let’s not study an alternative. Let’s deliver the alternative.”
Jetting between two premier political events in an early-primary state that helped propel Joe Biden to the White House in 2020, Moore met hundreds of state officials, operatives, activists and voters — a move aimed at energizing the party’s base in a difficult moment but also one that observers say is important if Moore decides to run for president.
A keynote speech he delivered during the state Democrats’ famed Blue Palmetto Dinner repeatedly turned to the theme of urgency in a way that looked to motivate his party and dismiss the 2028 speculation.
“Anybody who is talking about 2028 doesn’t understand the urgency of 2025,” Moore said.
It was a theme that, carefully and indirectly, also echoed his recent defense for vetoing a bill to study reparations in Maryland. His rejection of the two-year commission as the country’s only Black governor shocked and disappointed many Black lawmakers in his state and some in South Carolina.
“Gone are the days when we are the party of bureaucracy. Gone are the days when we are the party of multi-year studies on things that we already know. Gone are the days when we are the party of panels. Gone are the days when we are the party college debate club rules. We must be the party of action,” he said, reiterating his veto message that he wants to act soon to address Maryland’s history of inequities.
Afterward, Moore skipped across town with U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn to the congressman’s “World Famous Fish Fry,” where devoted Democrats and the general public alike converge for deep-fried food, dancing and the kind of retail politicking that politicians dream of.
The event is a can’t-miss opportunity for presidential contenders in the heat of campaign years. Fresh off a bruising 2024 election and nearly three years away from the next primaries, though, Moore and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz were the only often-discussed potential future candidates to visit this weekend.
The relentlessly friendly Maryland Democrat was in his element — putting on a Clyburn campaign T-shirt and couldn’t walk more than a few feet without being stopped for photos from excited admirers. Standing behind the stage before going on stage for the second time in an hour, he and his wife, Dawn Moore, held each other in a close embrace as they watched Walz finish before they went up for the closing rallying cry together.
“The baton is in our hands, and we have the ancestors who are looking at us and saying, ‘What are you going to do now that you have the baton in your hands?’” he said to a crowd of largely Black South Carolinians in a state where Black voters are a majority of the primary electorate.
Moore has said he’s not running for president in 2028. But his visit to one of the most consequential early primary states comes as his party looks to regain its footing with a new message and no shortage of ambitious potential messengers.
As he’s insisted he’s not a candidate, Moore’s national media appearances in the last month in particular have invited speculation — from Joy Behar telling him on The View that he may need to run, to Charlamagne tha God referring to him in a radio interview as a presidential contender.
In South Carolina, Moore met the kinds of people who could be critical to his success if he runs.
Strategists and others involved in the state’s political scene said in interviews that making personal connections with voters here — who, like those in other early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire, are highly engaged in what’s happening in politics — is the most important step.
From the glad-handing at Clyburn’s fish fry to attending Sunday church service, from speaking at local colleges to popping into barbershops, the hands-on and memorable moments of engagement can’t be over-valued, they said.
“What Gov. Wes Moore realizes is even if you don’t have an agenda and are asking people for a vote … it might matter in four years. It might matter in eight years, and you just don’t know,” said Hyma Moore, a Democratic strategist who helped direct Biden’s campaign in several southern states, including South Carolina, in 2020.
Moore, who has family roots in South Carolina and campaigned here as a surrogate for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris last year, could have an advantage, some say, as he follows what many describe as a golden rule — visit early and often.
“I hope we’ll see more of him,” said Valerie Moore, who chairs the Democratic Party in Richland County where Moore was Friday. “We have a large Black constituency. They are our base, and having a competent leader and somebody who achieves something that is not common has been a real high point.”
Hyma Moore said the governor’s status puts him in a unique position.
“He doesn’t have to think about 2028 when it comes to South Carolina. He is the only Black governor so he’s going to go and say, ‘You can’t think about 2028. You have to think about 2025,” Hyma Moore said in an interview days before the governor delivered that exact message. “He’s trying to figure out a way to reactivate the party and the base. And the Black community is obviously so important to the Democratic Party. He’s looking at this as an opportunity to reenergize people right now.”
That attempt to turn the tide comes after a particularly challenging few weeks of news cycles dominated by the party’s failings last year. Two new books revealed some of Biden’s inner circle and top surrogates had concerns about his health and mental acuity before and after he stopped campaigning for a second term. Some have said Biden should never have decided to make that run.
Walz, who became Harris’ running mate when Biden dropped out, said Friday night at the fish fry that the party needs to be honest with itself about how “we blew it.”
Moore, who has stood by his past ardent support for Biden, said in his dinner speech that Democrats have to stand together to no longer be “the party of ‘no’ and ‘slow.’”
He outlined broad areas like he has done many times in the past, saying the party wants a growing middle class, safety, health care, quality schools and — in a return to his 2022 campaign slogan — “work, wages and wealth.”
Swapping his suit jacket and polished speech for the Clyburn shirt and a pep-rally-style delivery an hour later, his voice boomed at the fish fry as he talked of mobilizing, pushing and “fighting back.”
At both stops, he invoked his grandfather. Rev. James Joshua Thomas, who he said was born in Charleston but, in Moore’s frequent telling, fled to Jamaica as a child, where his family was originally from, because of threats from the Ku Klux Klan. He later returned to the United States.
Thomas was “driven by impatience … the impatience of a man who was born in the Palmetto State,” Moore said, hitting on his theme.
“Maybe he was the most patriotic American man I have ever met,” Moore told the dinner crowd. “He loved his country not because he was ignorant of his country’s complicated past. In fact, it’s the opposite … He loved this country because of what it represented, a hope for a better future.”
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