Please join us for lunch!
For our meeting Monday, April 7th, 2025, we welcome
Governor McMaster.
Governor Henry Dargan McMaster, a longtime public servant of South Carolina, was born May 27, 1947, in Columbia, South Carolina. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of South Carolina in 1969. In 1973, he graduated from the University of South Carolina School of Law. He also served in the U.S. Army Reserves, receiving an honorable discharge in 1975. Upon graduation from law school, he was a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond in Washington, D.C., and he joined the law firm of Tompkins and McMaster in 1974. Governor McMaster practiced law for over 40 years, as a federal and state prosecutor and in private practice in both state and federal courts. Governor McMaster was the first U.S. attorney appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. He chaired the state Republican Party from 1993 to 2002.
He was elected attorney general of South Carolina in 2002 and reelected in 2006. As attorney general, Governor McMaster made prosecution of criminal domestic violence a priority and led a crackdown on child internet predators. He extended the South Carolina grand jury’s jurisdiction to environmental and gang crimes and broadened its authority to include securities crimes.
Following service on the South Carolina Ports Authority Board of Directors, he was elected lieutenant governor in 2014. As lieutenant governor, he led efforts to protect our state’s growing senior citizen population with social, economic, and health support services, which earned national recognition from AARP.
McMaster was sworn in as governor in January 2017. He was elected to a full term as governor in November 2018 and re-elected in November 2022.
As governor, he has led a strong and vibrant South Carolina economy, announcing more than 94,000 new jobs and over $46 billion in new capital investment in the state.
Under his leadership, the state has made transformative investments in the classroom by expanding full day four-year-old kindergarten, raising K-12 teacher pay, and more than doubling the number of school resource officer in public schools. Colleges and universities are becoming more accessible and affordable due to the governor’s tuition freeze and by his doubling of funding for needs-based financial aid for in-state students.
He has cut taxes on our state’s small businesses by $317 million and has returned over $1 billion dollars to the taxpayers. The governor has kept his commitment to our state’s military veterans, first responders, law enforcement, firefighters, and peace officers – through pay increases, retention bonuses, and tax exemptions on retirement income. The governor’s limited, measured, and temporary COVID-19 actions – coupled with freezing all new state government spending during the pandemic – allowed South Carolina’s economy not only to survive, but to actually thrive and generate record surpluses.
Governor McMaster and his wife, Peggy, have two adult children and four grandchildren.