James Burrows Edwards (June 24, 1927 – December 26, 2014) was an American politician and administrator from South Carolina. He was the first Republican to be elected governor of South Carolina since the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era in the 1870s. He later served as the U.S. Secretary of Energy under Ronald Reagan. Early life and career Edwards was born in Hawthorne, Florida, and was an officer in the U.S. Maritime Service during World War II. He continued his service in the U.S. Naval Reserve after the war. Edwards received a bachelor's degree in 1950 at the College of Charleston where he was a brother of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity. He received a D.M.D. in 1955 from the University of Louisville, and did a dental internship at the University of Pennsylvania. Returning to Charleston, Edwards established a dentistry practice in 1960 that specialized in oral surgery. He subsequently held a variety of positions associated with dentistry in the community. Political career In 1970, Edwards became chairman of the Republican Party of South Carolina's 1st congressional district. As a supporter of Republican gubernatorial nominee U.S. Representative Albert Watson of South Carolina's 2nd congressional district, Edwards claimed that Watson's Democratic opponent, John C. West, worked covertly in 1969 against the nomination of South Carolina's Clement Haynsworth to the United States Supreme Court. The Nixon nominee failed in the U.S. Senate, 55 to 45, on grounds of alleged bias against organized labor and a lack of supports for civil rights. Edwards predicted that as governor West would install "an ultra-liberal, minority-dominated state government," citing West's political ties to Hubert H. Humphrey and longtime NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins. Edwards first ran for office in 1971, in a special election to fill the vacancy in the Charleston-centered 1st congressional district caused by the death of longtime Democrat L. Mendel Rivers. Edwards narrowly lost to one of Rivers's staffers, Mendel Jackson Davis, but gained enough name recognition from his strong showing that he was elected to the South Carolina Senate as a Republican from white-majority Charleston County. Two years later, he entered the governor's race as a long-shot candidate. Edwards upset General William Westmoreland in the Republican primary and defeated Democratic Congressman William Jennings Bryan Dorn of South Carolina's 3rd congressional district in the general election. Dorn had become the Democratic nominee after the winner of the runoff election, Charles D. "Pug" Ravenel, was disqualified on