In the 2014 U.S. Senate race in South Carolina, most of the focus seems to be on Senator Tim Scott's campaign to not only be the first black senator to serve South Carolina in the Senate, but the first elected black senator in the state. In December 2012, Governor Nikki Haley appointed Scott to replace retiring Senator Jim DeMint. He is running to win the final two years of DeMint's term.
However, with all the focus on one candidate, the media is ignoring the minor party candidates in the race.
Among those candidates is Jill Bossi, a businesswoman who recently worked as the vice president and chief procurement officer of the American Red Cross.
Bossi was recently endorsed by the Centrist Project Voice, a political action committee founded by the Centrist Project. The organization says it is the first PAC to support candidates who are willing to put partisanship aside in order to focus on the issues most critical to the nation.
"I recognized just how badly the country was moving in terms of hyper-partisanship and the kinds of national narrative that wasn't going on," Bossi said in an interview for IVN. "We're not talking about the true problems."
"[Lawmakers] are just bickering and battering with one another, and we are not getting anywhere. I recognized just how tragic the situation was for the country. So, that led me to look at, 'How can we solve this?'"
One of the key issues that she is running on is term limits. She believes the issue is a real game changer that can force members of Congress to find solutions to current national issues and focus less on getting elected.
"Until the people absolutely demand that term limits are put in place, lawmakers are not going to voluntarily stand up," Bossi said. "They don’t believe that they are the problem... and that’s part of the problem."
Bossi believes that she would offer more moderate leadership than the other candidates in the race. She is critical of lawmakers commonly referred to as "career politicians," and believes that a change in leadership is needed to end the "us versus them" mentality in the Senate:
"If there are three or four or five like-minded, centrist-leaning senators elected as independents, who are not beholden to either major party, then those independents can, in essence, control the debate in the Senate."
According to the latest poll from Rasmussen Report, Scott has a 22-point advantage over Democratic challenger Joyce Dickerson, and only 6 percent of voters are considering candidates outside the major parties. Going into November, the race seems like a foregone conclusion.
"The reality, which is unfortunate, is the fact that the Democrats and the Republicans have taken over the political dialogue in the U.S., and anyone who is not apart of that club struggles to be heard," Bossi remarked.
Yet despite this, she made it clear that she wasn't going to give up and is even planning on expanding her focus.
"I will stay very involved in term limits and continue to pressure those," she said. "I will try to become more involved in getting more women into politics, because women are not entering into the political realm and we need more women."