Carroll Ashmore Campbell Jr. (July 24, 1940 – December 7, 2005), was an American Republican politician who served as the 112th governor of South Carolina from 1987 to 1995.

His father, Carroll A. Campbell Sr. worked in the textile mills and the furniture business, and later owned a motel in Garden City, South Carolina.

[1] Campbell served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1970 to 1974 during the administration of Governor John C. West, who defeated Republican nominee Albert Watson, the choice of U.S.

With Lee Atwater as a key political strategist, he made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 1974 on the ticket headed by Republican James B. Edwards of Charleston.

In 1978, Campbell won election to the United States House of Representatives from the Greenville-based South Carolina's 4th congressional district; he defeated Max M. Heller, the Democratic mayor of Greenville and an emigrant from Austria, to fill the seat vacated by the retiring James Mann.

[3] In recognition of his role, in 2002 it was announced that BMW had donated $10 million for a facility at the site of Clemson University's International Center for Automotive Research.

[4] Like nearly all such large donations, it came with naming rights: the company chose to call the new facility the Carroll A. Campbell Jr. Graduate Engineering Center.

Operation Lost Trust, a federal investigation of bribery and drug use allegations against members of the South Carolina General Assembly, led to convictions of twenty-seven legislators, lobbyists and others in a vote-buying scandal.

[6] In 1998, Campbell and former South Carolina First Lady Lois Rhame West became the co-chairs of Winthrop University's first capital campaign.