After 20 Years, S.C. Sen. Mike Gambrell Still Focused on Constituent Services
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
S.C. Sen. Mike Gambrell approaches his twentieth year in Columbia with the bemused candor of a man who stumbled into politics via a predecessor’s midnight pitch.
“No, sir, I cannot” believe the span of it, Gambrell told The Anderson Observer recently, leaning into the memory of that pivotal call from Ronnie Townsend in 2006. “He called me up one night and said, ‘Hey, we’re having a news conference tomorrow.’ I said, ‘Well, what y’all doing?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m retired.’ And I laughed. I said, ‘Well, what have I got to do to talk you out of it?’ He said, ‘Well, what have I got to do to talk you into it?’ So obviously, he won the argument.”
What followed was a decade in the boisterous House of Representatives—124 members strong, where bills “sail through” with the velocity of a summer storm—followed by Gambrell’s ascent to the Senate, now entering its tenth year. There, amid just 46 colleagues, the pace slackens into what he calls a “slower, quieter process,” earning the chamber its reputation as a “deliberative body.”
“We’ll stand up and go at each other, and then after it’s over, we’ll go get a cheeseburger,” said Gambrell, evoking a collegiality that persists beyond the floor fights. “It’s always amazed me… stuff just sails through the House. And it gets to the Senate where there’s 46 (of us) and it stops. You would think it would be just the opposite, but it’s not.” This rhythm, he insists, amplifies a legislator’s voice, allowing for the kind of measured judgment that lets one “lay your head on the pillow at night” unburdened.
People have been “awful good” to him, Gambrell repeats—a refrain underscoring his emphasis on constituent services, the granular labor of advocacy that defines his tenure in Anderson County’s District 4. Gambrell frames it as essential: not flashy legislation, but the daily toil of aiding residents with state agencies, infrastructure woes, and personal hurdles.
“We’ve just tried to do what’s right,” he said. “You know, you can’t please everybody, but at least if we can’t, we try to explain why.” His priorities, he hints, circle back to these roots—bolstering education, roads, and economic lifelines for upstate communities—while navigating Columbia’s evolving currents, where the House has grown more fractious than the Senate’s steady keel.
In Gambrell’s accounting, success lies in that post-session cheeseburger and the clear conscience it accompanies: a politics of proximity, where twenty years distill into the quiet conviction that good nights follow good work.
Gambrell talked about his priorities for the year ahead in this interview with The Anderson Observer.
