Thomas Porcher Stoney was the fifty-third mayor of Charleston,South Carolina,serving between 1923 and 1931.
Stoney was born at Medway Plantation on December 16,1889,in rural Berkeley County,South Carolina to Samuel Stoney and Eliza Croft Stoney.[1]
Stoney graduated from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1911 and began a private law practice in Charleston,South Carolina. In 1915,he was elected solicitor (prosecutor) for the Ninth Judicial Circuit,the youngest solicitor elected at that time.[2] He remained in that office until 1923 when he was elected mayor of Charleston.
Stoney encouraged Clelia Peronneau Mathewes McGowan to become one of the first women City Alderman in Charleston.[3] He was re-elected in 1927 and completed that term. One of his major accomplishments as mayor was the creation of a municipal airport. His administration also oversaw the construction of recreational facilities;such as a golf course,a playground named for William Moultrie,and Johnson Hagood Stadium (then a municipal facility,but today the football stadium for The Citadel Bulldogs football team).
He ran for a United States Senate seat,but lost in the Democratic primary to James F. Byrnes in 1936 by a margin of about 10-to-1.[4] During his life he swung across the political spectrum. He was a solid democrat in his early political life,but grew disaffected with the New Deal. In 1936 he gave a speech about the New Deal and said,"[A]ll of this spending is like giving a drunk some drinks to sober him up."[5]
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