Since joining the Senate, Harpootlian has been critical of the University of South Carolina's hiring practices and legislation giving the Carolina Panthers tax incentives to move their headquarters to Rock Hill, South Carolina. In May 2019, Harpootlian commissioned his own independent analysis on the economic benefits of moving the Panthers headquarters to Rock Hill. The report found that the added jobs to the area were a third of what the state of South Carolina's review found. Harpootlian stalled the Senate vote on the measure although it later passed. In November of 2019 Harpootlian was criticized for profanely threatening to have an aide of the Richland County Legislation Delegation fired over a press release which failed to include job openings at the Columbia airport. In December of 2019 he called the university's search for the president's next chief of staff "cronyism at its finest." Harpootlian came out against a bill in the senate which would legalize curbside pickup for alcohol products in January of 2020.
During the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Harpootlian stated that he was a "Joe Biden guy." He endorsed Bernie Sanders for President on February 3, 2016, comparing Sanders' passion with the kind Obama exuded in 2007 when they had first met." In 2020, Harpootlian endorsed Joe Biden for President, stating "If the Democratic Party believes nominating a socialist is the way to win in November, they need to start drug testing at the national committee" in reference to Sanders.
Controversies
In September 2012, Harpootlian drew controversy when he compared then-governor Nikki Haley to Eva Braun, the mistress of Adolf Hitler. The remarks were condemned by Norm Coleman, the chair of the Jewish coalition of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, who accused him of "trivializing Nazism". Harpootlian drew further controversy in 2013 for remarks he made at the annual Jackson-Jefferson dinner of the state Democratic Party, where he said that they needed to "send Nikki Haley back to wherever the hell she came from"; Haley is Indian-American with Sikh heritage, and her parents immigrated from India. A Haley campaign spokeswoman criticized the remarks as targeting her ethnicity. Harpootlian's remarks were condemned as racist or xenophobic by Indian news outletsIndia Today, Firstpost, and Outlook. Harpootlian later apologized, claiming that he did not intend to target her ethnicity and that he wanted her to "go back to being an accountant in a dress store rather than being this fraud of a governor that we have". On February 5, 2020 Harpootlian tweeted that the Black Caucus Chairman of the South Carolina House, Jerry Govan Jr., received "almost $50,000" from the Tom Steyer Presidential campaign for campaign services. Harpootlian referred to Steyer as "Mr. Moneybags" and suggested that he had purchased Govan's support. Later that day, members of the South Carolina House Black Caucus held a press conference asking Biden to distance himself from Harpootlian. Later that day, Steyer accused Harpootlian of having "“a horrid track record of disrespecting and disparaging African Americans." Steyer also asked Biden to disavow Dick Harpootlian and what he said during a 2020 Democratic Party presidential debate in New Hampshire. Harpootlian denied that his comments were racially motivated, State Sen. Marlon Kimpson, a Black Caucus member, noted that the press conference was not held by the caucus itself, but by Govan and his supporters; some caucus members, including Kimpson, did not participate. Kimpson, a Biden supporter, characterized the controversy as an outgrowth of personal feuds between state lawmakers.
