Horry County, South Carolina has grown so fast that the median household can no longer afford the median home. Dylan Thompson has lived there his whole life, and he's running for county council because he thinks the people making decisions about that growth should actually be accountable to the people living through it. He's a former pastor running under the Forward Party, focused on flooding, housing, and development policy, and making the case that those issues don't have to break along party lines; they're the same things his neighbors on both sides of the aisle are worried about.
Thanks for tuning into this Bottom Up Short. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and I've met thousands of Strong Towns members now. After hearing their stories, I'm inspired to say to others, I've got to tell you about so-and-so. That's what a Bottom Up Short is all about: quick introductions to the regular people doing really exciting things, even when they initially felt much like you do—that such amazing things must be the domain of extraordinary folks who've never had a moment of anxiousness or self-doubt. If you like what you hear, please let us know.
Today, my guest is Dylan Thompson. Dylan is running for a county council seat in District 11 in his community in Horry County, South Carolina. As a county candidate, he is working to represent the residents in a very rural area. Dylan, welcome to Bottom Up Shorts.
How about you just dive right in and tell us about not only the campaign that you're running, but the way in which you've anchored your vision for your community and your pitch to your community in Strong Towns visions and values.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm a lifelong Horry County resident—the H is silent, so a lot of people forget that—but I love this area. It is a beautiful area just outside of the Myrtle Beach metropolitan area. We've got beautiful coasts and beaches, amazing rural spaces and green spaces, as well as wetlands. It is an incredibly ecologically diverse area, and we're also one of the fastest growing areas in the country right now.
South Carolina is the fastest growing state by population right now, according to a lot of different metrics, and Horry County is consistently either second or third in the state for growth. The Myrtle Beach metropolitan area encompasses cities like Conway, where I live, or Aynor, where I'm trying to represent. All of those areas are just growing really, really rapidly.
This is something a lot of folks around here know about and are aware of. When I started thinking about all this growth a couple of years ago, I ended up accidentally stumbling onto Strong Towns organically on social media, because a lot of my search history was turning into growth numbers for the area and such. Kudos to your marketing team—it's all working.
I became really fascinated with the Strong Towns ethos of building communities that grow well and grow responsibly, that work for the people who live here. Now I am trying to channel what I've been able to learn into action by running for our county council, which helps make the decisions about all the growth that we're experiencing.
How does that connect with some of the other work that you're doing in your community? Especially living in a more rural area, you've got a place to keep up and a family to take care of. What does that work look like for you?
There are several different areas where this all kind of intersects and overlaps. For several years, I was actually a pastor at a church in the area, and that gave me the opportunity to really get to know people on a personal level and know the ins and outs of their daily lives and the things that they were facing.
It all kind of came to a head back in 2018. We had a major hurricane called Hurricane Florence hit our area, and Conway, where I live, was underwater for about two weeks. We were actually cut off from the rest of the state because the two roadways out of our county are bridges over rivers, and those rivers flooded and covered the bridges, so we were an island for a while.
While I was working for this church, we helped with a lot of disaster relief with FEMA and mudding out homes, and I began to see firsthand the way that policy actually impacts people's lives. When homes are being built and when roads are being built, especially in an area that has a ton of wetlands like ours, that has rippling effects for the way that water in flooding events gets displaced. That's certainly something I began thinking about years ago when I encountered it on a personal level.
Now, having kids and raising them here, I'm watching the cost of housing in this area skyrocket. One of the reasons we are a fast-growing area is that our housing market historically has been incredibly affordable, and the cost of living has been historically very affordable compared to other parts of the country. Now, due in part to a lot of this growth, we are seeing that change very, very quickly. We're seeing housing costs go up by about 50% in the last five years, and right now the average median income per household in Horry County can't actually afford the median house in Horry County. These are all problems that, when I think about the kind of place and community I want to leave to my kids, have to be addressed.
You've touched on something just in the way that your campaign materials are put together—that it's about people, not politics. I feel like that really captures something of what we're trying to do with the whole local conversations effort and all of the many layers of taking approaches that say we need to prioritize people at the ground level. What is their experience? Where is it that they notice that their struggles are becoming real? Then asking together: what can we do to make the opportunity better for people to take the next smallest step to address that struggle?
Can you touch on the ways in which people have been responding to the recognition that you've offered—that this is about people and this can't just be about politics—without going into partisan territory? What are some of the responses that you're seeing, and why was that so important for you to put it right front and center?
I'm running under the Forward Party, mostly because I want to run on the issues and not on a larger party platform. When we talk about local governance—cities, towns, counties—those issues are not typically what we think of when we think of politics. When we think of politics, we tend to get swept up in the national dialog between red and blue and left and right. County level politics, like I'm engaging in now, is less exciting and less tweetable than that. It's zoning ordinances, it's housing policy, it's property tax policy.
The whole point I'm trying to make with this race is that these sorts of issues should not be partisan. The issues that affect quality of life at a communal and local level should not be partisan. You should not write somebody off simply because of the letter beside their name on the ballot. Instead, what we should do is examine the policies and the character of a candidate who genuinely has the community's best interests at heart.
I think politicians should go a step further and seek to actually mend a lot of the division that we're seeing nationally by offering solutions that people from all the different spectrums of our current political system can latch onto and agree with. That's what I'm trying to do. I've seen a lot of really good response. I've seen people who are longtime Republicans and longtime Democrats latch on to the idea that it's going to take all of us to ensure that we create a community that works for all of us.
That's fantastic, and I think it definitely speaks to the importance of localism and really meaningfully making every effort that we can—not just some limited nod to improving a bench or a park or something like that, but actually saying the whole system can be reoriented back towards the local level.
Was there a key moment where you thought, yesterday I wasn't going to run, today I am going to run? What was it that led you to decide it's time to do something that many people have thought about but are often hampered from actually taking that step to announce you're going to run for office?
That's a great question. I would say it was a series of moments rather than one definitive moment.
I think one of the big turning points for me was, after the 2024 election, just seeing the reaction from both perspectives online—the discourse and the way people became incredibly angered around politics. I began to feel like sitting around and just watching the news, or reading articles, or engaging in Twitter arguments, is not ever actually going to move the needle as far as quality of life goes for my neighbors, my friends, and my family here.
What I want to do is leave a legacy for my children that they can look back on and know that their dad did something positive with his life and tried his best to serve others in a way that uplifts everyone around us. That was certainly a pivotal moment for me—realizing I want to do something with my life, not just be a part of this cultural moment.
The second big catalyst for me was actually getting connected with the local Forward Party and the men and women that make that up, and seeing that there were other candidates that also wanted to run who were also frustrated with the same things I was frustrated with. I felt like, oh, I'm going to have people in my corner, I'm going to have a team behind me, I'm not going to be doing this alone. Especially when you're not running on a major party line, it can certainly feel isolating. Finding a community of like-minded individuals who were willing to come alongside me in this gave me the encouragement to step out and do it.
I love that, because I feature a lot of our local conversation leaders who are not themselves running for office and not intending to use the local conversation to endorse any candidates, but simultaneously, just by getting involved, they begin to be very connected with people who are considering a run—or maybe they themselves realize they need to put their hat into the ring.
I really appreciate what you're sharing of that driving concern for the well-being of your community, and then that recognition: I'm not alone in this, and I'm not too late. I'm not alone, and I can definitely make a difference.
Do you have any tips or suggestions for other people who would be considering something similar, acknowledging that we're always still learning and there's more we can share?
There's certainly far more than you can ever learn. This run has taught me that I know so little about politics, especially in local governance. But despite that, I would still encourage anyone who's considering it to just really give it some thought, and also run.
I think our communities, our country, our political system in America works well when regular people are involved. You do not have to have a background in politics to have a say in what you believe your community should look like over the next 20 or 30 years. If you are a parent, if you are a worker, if you own a home in your community, you have just as much of a right and a voice as to what your community looks like moving forward as the elected officials.
I'm wholeheartedly a believer that our political system works best when normal people are the ones running it, so that would be my encouragement. If you are seeing similar issues in your community, just do it—just run—because if nothing else, even if you don't win, it's going to create opportunities for great conversation around the issues, and hopefully spark an interest in local politics, because this stuff really does matter. Oftentimes, it matters more than the national politics we focus on.
What are some of the ways that people have been helpful to you in this process?
I've had so many amazing folks come out and donate. We're not taking PAC money with my campaign, so friends, family, and neighbors donating $25 or $50 here and there, donating their time to invite people to campaign events and knock on doors.
I've had people set up meetings with local advocates who advocate for better flood policy, or with housing groups made up of real estate agents who are concerned about that. I've just seen a lot of really great unity around neighbors willing to be neighbors and help somebody out who has their best interests at heart.
I love that, because to me, there's so much that's actionable there. Even if you're listening and you think you won't run in the near term or don't have any intentions of running for council, there are a lot of other things you can do to help individuals who are prepared to take that step and emerge within a community with a base of support and that recognition: we can make this happen together.
The question I always love to close with is: what is it that gives you hope in your community?
Look, I firmly believe that, despite what you might read on Twitter—or X, I apologize—or see on the news or on Facebook, at the end of the day most of us are a lot more alike than we are different.
Every single person I've talked to throughout the course of this campaign is a normal person who is concerned about the same exact things I'm concerned about. They want to know how their children will be able to buy a home. They want to know how they're going to put food on their table next month. They're concerned about what happens if their job goes away.
The thing that gives me hope is remembering that at the end of the day we are all human, facing the problems of being human in this day and age. We are not as divided as I think media would typically want us to believe, and a lot of really positive change can be made when we come together as neighbors and as people who believe the best about each other first, and then unify around that as our shared ideal to progress as a culture and a community.
That's awesome. I've got to put that on a bumper sticker and just live that out each day. I really appreciate that, Dylan. How do people stay in touch with you?
The best way to stay in touch with me right now is either through my Facebook page—Dylan Thompson for Horry County—or at my website, ThompsonforHorry.com. You can sign up for email lists and all sorts of stuff there.
We'll link that in the show notes. Dylan, I really appreciate having you on today. To others who are considering looking at their own community's needs: there are so many resources within the Strong Towns ecosystem that are available for you, and I think they will help give you the language that Dylan has expressed so well—what it is to really address those local needs and to move people together towards a better future for us and for generations to come. I'm encouraged by what I've heard. Thanks so much for taking the time. Really good to have you on Bottom Up Shorts today.
Go forth and take a look at openings in your community. Take an opportunity to take stock of some of the candidates and ask yourself, is there something I could do to support them? We know that the electoral process is an important part of helping to build stronger communities. With that, take care and take care of your places.
Thank you. It's great to be on it.
This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.