Katon Dawson in the fourth round by two votes. It's anyone's game as of now, but Blackwell's endorsement of Steele is certainly a set-back for Dawson's abrupt rise On the sixth and final ballot Steele bested South Carolina Republican party Chairman Katon Dawson 91 to 77.In picking Steele, who had previously served as the chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, the state's lieutenant governor, and the GOP nominee in the Maryland Senate race in 2006, the party regulars seem to be acknowledging the need for new -- and different -- faces at the top of its food chain.
After five ballots, the race came down to Steele and Dawson. Republican party strategists in attendance at the meeting openly fretted about the possibility of electing Dawson, who had acknowledged his membership in a whites-only club, and the signal it would send to a country that had just elected Barack Obama as the nation's first black president.
