Industry veteran financial advisor Wes Climer, who has been registered with LPL Financial since 2023, was elected on Tuesday to the House of Representatives for South Carolina’s fifth district.
A South Carolina state senator as well as a financial advisor, Climer, a Republican, defeated his opponent Mallory Dittmer, a Democrat.
Climer, 44, on Friday morning had 151,305 votes, or 52.8% of the total cast, to Dittmer’s 134,959 votes, or 47.1%, according to the New York Times at noon on Friday.
Climer has been a South Carolina state senator since 2016 and is replacing South Carolina Representative Ralph Norman.
A happy coincidence: one of LPL Financial Holdings Inc.’s main corporate campuses is based in Fort Mill, S.C., which happens to be in Climer’s new district.
LPL Financial is the largest brokerage firm in the industry by headcount, working with more than 30,000 financial advisors. Now it’s becoming even more diverse, adding a Congressman.
As InvestmentNews reported last month, Shawn Hochuli, a longtime NFL referee and son of a referee, has spent more than two decades in financial services, helping build IWM Partners, an LPL Financial- -affiliated wealth management practice in Irvine, California.
The Representative-elect did not return a phone call Friday morning from InvestmentNews to comment.
In a Facebook post, Climer said that he was "humbled by the trust the people of South Carolina's 5th Congressional District have placed in me and grateful for the privilege to serve our community in the House of Representatives."
According to his BrokerCheck profile, Climer started in the financial advice industry in 2011 as a rep with Merrill Lynch in Charlotte, N.C., before moving to Wells Fargo two years later.
The Climer Wealth Management Group, which includes his father Michael, is based in Charlotte, N.C. It’s not clear what committee seats he could gain, but the House financial services committee would be a natural fit for a financial advisor.
The 2026 mid-term elections has seen a wide shift in power to Democrats in both the House and Senate from Republicans like Climer, whose party will be in the minority when he is sworn in in January 2027.
According to the New York Times, there was a shift to Democrats in South Carolina’s fifth district, but it wasn’t enough to flip the House seat.
One of the most notable wins of election day came in Climer’s home state: Annie Andrews, a Democrat, defeated Darline Graham, the sister of the later Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
With most of the results in as on noon on Friday, the district has voted 17 points more Democratic than it did in the 2024 presidential election, according to the Times.
According to Climer’s profile on the South Carolina Legislature’s website, he had a variety of committee assignments, including chairman of agriculture and natural resources, finance and transportation.
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