Mount Pleasant Magazine March/April 2016

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air conditioning,” Hartnett said.
Later, his first job was on the island, with J.C. Long’s
construction company, as was his first date with Bonnie
Kennerly, his future bride.
“Our first date was a luau on front beach,” recalled
Bonnie Hartnett. “We were chaperoned by Henry and
Esther Tecklenburg, parents of Charleston Mayor John
Tecklenburg. There was a fire and we roasted marshmal-
lows and I think they cooked a pig. You could do that
back then.”
Later on, the couple would go to the end of the island
where Wild Dunes is now
and shoot cans over the
marsh.
“That was where I
learned to shoot, when I
was dating Tommy here at
the end of the island,” Bon-
nie Hartnett remembered.
They were married
in 1965, and they deter-
mined to start their new
life together on the Isle of
Palms. They purchased their
first house on the island but
never moved in.
“We bought the house
a month before we got
married,” recalled Hart-
nett. “There was no living
together then – she lived
with her mom and dad and
I lived with mine – but
she was teaching school in
North Charleston and I was
working downtown. We got to thinking about it, and it
just wasn’t the practical thing to do, so we sold that house
before we ever moved into it.”
More than a decade later, in 1977, the couple bought
another house on the Isle of Palms, this time in Wild
Dunes. It was their summer home until 2011, when they
became permanent residents.
Public Service callS
By the time the Hartnetts bought their home on the
Isle of Palms, Tommy was already a leader in the South
Carolina Statehouse. He was a rising star in the Republi-
can Party as well, though his political career had begun on
the other side of the aisle.
In 1964, at the age of 22, Hartnett entered his first po-
litical contest, running in the Democratic primary for the
State House of Representatives. He won that race as well
as the general election and went on to be re-elected three
more times, serving a total of eight years. He might have
spent more time in Columbia, but, in 1972, the Demo-
cratic Party nominated George McGovern as its candidate
for president, and he was just too liberal for Hartnett.
“I fell out with the Democrats,” Hartnett ex-
plained. “My name was already on the ballot for the
June (Democratic) primary when I went to a meeting
and they were asking all the candidates who they were
planning on voting for for president. I couldn’t lie. I
said ‘I’m voting for Richard Nixon, and if me voting for
Nixon means I don’t get your vote for the Statehouse,
then keep your vote. I quit.’”
Local Republicans quickly recruited Hartnett to run
for the State Senate, and, when he and future Gov. James
B. Edwards won their seats, half of the Charleston-area
Senate delegation was on the Republican side of the aisle.
After two terms in the Senate, he was ready for a new
challenge. When U.S. Rep. Mendel Davis announced
that he would not seek re-election in 1980, Hartnett set
his sights on Washington, D.C., and the U.S. House of
Representatives.
The last time voters had sent a Republican to the
House from Charleston was during the post-Civil War Re-
The Hartnett children: Tom Jr. and Lee Anne.
Photo provided by Tommy Hartnett.