South Carolina Town Tests Candidates
DILLON, S.C.--Republican candidates have talked a lot about job creation ahead of Saturday's South Carolina primary, a welcome theme in a state whose 9.9% unemployment rate ranks among the nation's highest.</br></br>Yet none of the GOP hopefuls--nor any prominent Democrats, whose presidential primary is the same day--have spent much time courting votes in South Carolina's most job-starved region, including this town on the I-95 corridor.</br></br>Unemployment is 13.3% in Dillon, and 17.3%--the highest in the state--in Marion County due south. If you took out the 17 counties along I-95, the state's unemployment rate would be consistent with the rest of the nation's, as would indicators for everything from per capita income to the incidence of diabetes, according to an analysis by state Sen. John Matthews, whose district includes parts of five of the counties.</br></br>With a quarter of the state's 4.6 million people, the region's population is 43% African-American, compared with 28% statewide, according to the Research Triangle Institute think tank in Raleigh, N.C., and is one of South Carolina's few Democratic strongholds.</br></br>Dillon, hometown of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, is typical of the towns in the region. Part of the onetime Cotton Belt running 200 miles along the state's coastal plain, Dillon was left out of the manufacturing, technology and tourism booms that benefited other parts of South Carolina. Half a dozen major employers, such as Mohawk Industries and Unifi Inc., have closed plants in recent years. An industrial park off Interstate 95 at the Ben Bernanke Interchange is for now just 2,000 green acres of farmland.