South Carolina has been a tough spot for the Romney campaign to get off the ground and it seemed fairly obvious why.  South Carolinians are known for being anti-Mormon and distrustful of Yankees in general.

Over the last couple of months, though, Governor Romeny has risen dramatically in the polls.  And it makes me smile to see bloggers and reporters scratching their heads over why this is so.  You see, I lived and worked in South Carolina for 9 months and I know exactly what happened.

The people I met in South Carolina were honest, church-going folks who lived the golden rule.  If their preacher preached against Mormons they mostly assumed he knew what he was talking about.  But it didn’t change the way they treated thier Mormon neighbors.  For the most part, it didn’t change the way that they thought about their Mormon neighbors.

Many of the people I met didn’t like Yankees.  They would talk harshly about “the Yankees up North” but they would always welcome any New Englanders who moved into town.  Some fought for years to keep the Confederate flag flying over the state capital even though it was offensive to black citizens.  Yet these same people had countless black friends and co-workers whom they respected and admired.

For these people, any bigoted beliefs they held were meant to apply to some distant group of people that they did not know.  Anyone they knew that did not fit these stereotypes was obviously an exception to the rule.

That’s the key.  As long as the people of South Carolina did not know Mitt Romney, he was just a Mormon Yankee.  And, as far as they were concerned, he could have the vote of all the Mormon Yankees living in South Carolina.  But then they got to know him.  They saw his family.  He became a neighbor; a friend.  Then they could judge him on his own merits rather than stick him into a pre-determined catergory.

In my 9 months as a South Carolina citizen, I never did meet anyone who was as bigoted as the average South Carolinian is reported to be.  Of course, that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.  I heard plenty of stories from people who knew them or were related to them.  And Mitt Romney will probably never win the support of those people.

But the majority of South Carolinians are simply waiting for him to convince them that he is not just a good guy but a good guy with the right qualifications to be president.