Democrat voters will decide between U.S. Senate candidates Robert Conley and Michael Cone on Tuesday. Following are their profiles and stories about their campaigns and the issues being debated.

Robert (Bob) Conley

AGE: 42, born Sept. 6, 1965, Marion, Ind.

HOME: North Myrtle Beach

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree, Tri-State University in Angola, Ind.

OCCUPATION: Commercial pilot, licensed professional engineer and certified flight instructor.

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: Ran unsuccessfully in 2000 for a seat in the Indiana legislature.

MILITARY: None

FAMILY: Single

Michael Cone

AGE: 38, born Oct. 7, 1969, Charleston

HOME: Mount Pleasant

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree, The Citadel; law degree, University of South Carolina School of Law

OCCUPATION: Attorney

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: None

MILITARY: Lieutenant in the Navy, 1991-95

FAMILY: Single

WEB SITE: http://mjcone.com

Robert Conley

COLUMBIA (AP) — Bob Conley is counting on a mix of conservative principles, opposition to the Iraq War and dissatisfaction with incumbent Republican Lindsey Graham to help weave his way to a win in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.

Conley, who voted for Ron Paul in South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary, says he believes his opposition to abortion rights, belief in marriage between a man and a woman and opposition to illegal immigration strike the right chord for voters here.

“I can grab a significant portion of the pie that would otherwise not vote Democrat,” he said in a recent interview.

Conley should know. He says he walked away from the Republican Party years ago out of frustration over trade and immigration policies and the Iraq invasion. He says his Catholic background has given him “sanctity of life” views that apply equally to fetuses and innocent Iraqis and contends the GOP does not own traditional Christian values.

“That party can go to the devil,” Conley said. “There’s a big myth out there that there aren’t pro-Life Democrats. In the South generally, but especially in the state of South Carolina, you can’t go out and attack traditional Christian values, traditional Christian morals and expect to carry the day.”

Now, he said the GOP’s “sellout of the American worker” infuriates him.

“I think the time is right for the picking of that seat, between Iraq and between the jobs problem we’re having,” he said. “Lindsey Graham has betrayed the people of South Carolina, and his time has come and gone.”

Conley will first have to get past Michael Cone, an attorney from Mount Pleasant in the primary.

Conley refers to likely GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain as “Juan McCain,” for advocating last year’s failed immigration bill that would have provided a path to citizenship. He calls Graham McCain’s “Mini-Me.”

He’s also critical of Graham for being a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq and what he calls the continued occupation.

“The American people are paying for this occupation. We have corporations who are just milking this cash cow,” Conley said. “This occupation has to end.”

He believes the military should determine how to pull out responsibly, while the administration talks with leaders in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran to “ensure a full out bloodbath doesn’t erupt” when U.S. troops leave.

“That’s their back yard. They should be the folks who are taking care of what’s going on there,” he said. “How would we feel if Communist China invaded Quebec?”

He references both the British and collapsed Roman empires as he explains the need for American troops to come home from all over the globe, citing South Korea as the first place for withdrawal.

“Why in the world are we paying to protect South Korea? We’ve been over there over 50 years. The South Koreans need to stand up and pay for their own defense,” he said. “We have gotten mixed up in all this globalism and this empire-building abroad. It’s time that we take care of the republic.”

He lashes out at both illegal and legal immigration. He says some of his colleagues have suffered as corporations are allowed to recruit engineers and computer professionals from overseas.

Greedy businessmen also are exploiting illegal workers — a human rights tragedy, he said — while driving down wages for Americans and leaving them unemployed. He blames the Bush administration for not punishing corporations.

“Until the corporations who are responsible for leaving Americans unemployed and underemployed, for lowering of working conditions, until they are made to pay the price for fueling the immigration conflagration, nothing’s going to happen,” Conley said.

MOUNT PLEASANT (AP) — Michael Cone has never run for political office before, but the Mount Pleasant Democrat believes a combination of unrest with incumbent Lindsey Graham and enthusiasm created by the presidential race can propel him to the Senate.

Cone contends South Carolinians want change Republicans can’t provide — primarily an energy policy that gets cars off interstates, an economic plan that punishes American companies that operate overseas or employ illegal workers, and gradual withdrawal from Iraq, to occur over “many months.”

“I encourage people, particularly Sen. Lindsey Graham, to continue to think that I’m a long-shot candidate,” said Cone.

Observers might be excused if they use that label for Cone. While he comes from a political family, he had just $109 in available cash as of his last quarterly report. June 10 primary opponent Bob Conley, a Democrat from North Myrtle Beach, had only $42.

Still, he considers dissatisfaction with Republicans a major factor in the race.

“I think South Carolina, rather than being the so-called ‘red state’ everybody thinks we are, is actually a purple state. Democrats have for a long time been demoralized and maybe not as energetic to get to the polls, but after two terms of President Bush and obvious failures of Republican policies, those Democrats are more likely to show up,” he said during a recent interview in his office in this suburb of Charleston.

Cone said he believes abortion is a health care decision each woman must make herself and thinks that improving the economy and increasing jobs is a “simple” matter of punishing businesses for being overseas by taking away some of their income tax deduction options.

“Tell American companies they need to bring their jobs back here,” he said.

While his father is a staunch Republican who whips out a copy of the U.S. Constitution as he explains his detest of big government, Cone comes from a line of Democrats on his mother’s side. He’s the grandson of former state Sen. O.T. Wallace, the namesake of Charleston County’s office building, and nephew of Charles Wallace, a Charleston County Council member for three decades.

Cone said he didn’t plan to enter politics until 2004, when he was shocked by President Bush’s re-election and decided to get involved. The death of his managing partner, and opening his own firm, put the 2006 elections out of reach, he said.

The Charleston native said he wants to get rid of America’s need for oil and gas by promoting wind, solar and tidal power and several layers of mass transit systems. That would include a monobeam system, which resembles monorail but allows two-way traffic on one track — a technology developed by a Charleston company.

Cone believes gradually raising the federal gas tax to $3 a gallon — up from the current 18.4 cents — over a decade would help pay for those plans and encourage people to leave their cars in the garage.

“We keep talking about oil — how to find more, how to use more, how to make it last longer — when we need to be getting off of oil completely,” Cone said. “Automobiles, in general, I think are a thing of the past that we need to look beyond.”

Cone said he opposes any expansion in nuclear power until scientists can figure out a way to generate it without waste, and he cringes at the thought of cars powered with hydrogen fuel cells — a technology Republican lawmakers hope will transform the state’s economy through South Carolina’s Savannah River National Laboratory and national hydrogen and fuel cell centers here.

“When I think of hydrogen, I see an image of the Hindenburg,” Cone said, recalling the German airship that burst into flames in 1937.

Breaking Americans’ fondness for their cars, he said, would bring not only energy independence, but also prevent wrecks, drunken driving deaths and hours wasted while stuck in traffic.

But he’s also realistic about the state’s rural areas.

“Let’s be honest, nobody’s going to want to give up their car. This is mainly to reduce car travel as much as possible,” he said. “I’m not sure I would sell my car so much as park it and rarely use it.”