Charleston County voters have picked Democrat Tamara Cunningham Curry to be their next probate judge, replacing Republican Irv Condon, who had held the office since 1994. A later results snapshot showed Curry with nearly 55 percent of the vote to Condon's 45 percent, with nearly 97 percent of precincts reporting.
The win closes out a three-decade run for Condon and hands the office to someone who spent years working right alongside him. According to a Yahoo News report on the race, Curry served as a Charleston County associate probate judge from 1998 to 2022, working directly with Condon for 24 of those years before launching her own bid to lead the court.
Their shared history ran deeper than a shared office. The same report notes that Curry became the first African American president of the National College of Probate Judges in 2017, and that Condon supported her in that role — a detail that underscores just how intertwined their careers had become before they ended up on opposite sides of a ballot.
A Scandal Shadowed Condon's Final Campaign
Condon's bid for another term came after months of scrutiny over his use of a county-issued procurement card. In May 2024, Charleston County Council ordered him to repay $11,342 for charges deemed unauthorized, according to the Post and Courier. It took Condon 16 months to pay the money back; the newspaper reported that a check and accompanying letter were finally delivered to the county late on Aug. 15.
An earlier audit laid out the scope of the problem in granular detail. The newspaper's review of the procurement-card audit found 136 transactions that violated the rules governing the cards, part of a broader review of 739 transactions spanning October 2021 through March 8, 2024, in which more than 18 percent were flagged as violations. The audit identified $15,126.79 in questionable spending, with the majority going toward supermarket and restaurant purchases that had not been pre-authorized.
In the wake of the findings, county officials tightened the reins on the court's spending. The Post and Courier reported that after the audit, County Council restricted Probate Court staff's procurement-card access, cutting the office down from multiple cards to just one.
Curry's Career Beyond the Bench
Curry told voters during the campaign that she would step away from her own business, Palmetto Arbitration and Mediation Group, if elected, per the Yahoo News account of the race. The job she was seeking carries real weight: a separate candidate profile from the Post and Courier put the probate judge's salary at $194,001, with a state pension attached.
Whoever holds the gavel oversees a docket that touches ordinary life in ways many residents never anticipate. Per the Yahoo News report, Charleston County Probate Court handles marriage licenses, the settling of estates and estate disputes, guardianships for incapacitated people, wrongful-death settlements, and special courts addressing veterans, mental health and drug abuse. Charleston County government describes that same jurisdiction as covering marriage licenses, estates, guardianships and conservatorships, settlements for minors and wrongful deaths, and involuntary commitments of people who are mentally ill or chemically dependent.
A Slow Count on Election Night
Results trickled in gradually after polls closed. Charleston County has 107 polling locations, and election officials typically upload new batches of verified results every 10 to 20 minutes, according to a Count on 2 explainer of how South Carolina tallies its votes. That same report noted that in the state's 2024 general election, the Associated Press issued its first results just 19 minutes after polls closed, reaching 50 percent reporting by 8:50 p.m. and 90 percent by 11:14 p.m. — a pace against which this year's slower count for the probate race stood out.
