More from Kit Spires

As promised, here are additional notes from my last interview with Kit Spires. I had been trying to reach him last Thursday in connection with my column for Sunday, and he called back on my cell phone while I was in the waiting room at the Ear, Nose and Throat doc seeing him about my aforementioned perpetual sinus pain. I had a long wait, so he and I were able to talk for about 35 minutes.

The interview was somewhat more awkward than it might have been
otherwise, since our runoff endorsement of his opponent, Rep. Ken Clark, had
run that very day. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as some such chats can
be, and I credit Mr. Spires for that. He was quite gracious,
considering the circumstances, and that speaks well of him.

I had missed him earlier in the day because he had taken off from his pharmacy and had been out campaigning. He said he’d "been out to the senior centers today."

I asked him about his successful day the previous Tuesday, and he said "I was excited by the turnout." As I look back at these notes, I realize I had meant to get back to that and ask him to elaborate. The turnout had been low, and all the Clark supporters I had spoken to at the meeting described in my column had said that low turnout — which they mostly attributed to weather — had been the reason Mr. Spires was going into the runoff with a considerable lead.

(In light of that, if I were inclined to bet, I’d bet that Mr. Spires is going to prevail tomorrow — as wrong as I believe that outcome would be, both for South Carolina and for the voters of District 96. A lot of things can happen in a runoff, but having greater turnout than in the original primary is generally considered to be one of the likely possibilities. All Mr. Clark has to do is turn out another 600 or 700 voters, but that is not easy under the circumstances.)

Anyway, I’m not sure whether Mr. Spires was saying he was pleased by the low turnout, or simply saying he was gratified that enough of his people turned out. He and I have missed each other on the phone in the past 24 hours as I write this. If we make contact, I’ll try to remember to ask him.

He noted that he had taken the Lexington County portions of the district by 48 percent, while "Dean" — the third candidate in the race — had taken the Aiken County portion (barely). Dean Rawls, a candidate with whom I am largely unfamiliar because he never came in for an interview, has thrown his support to Mr. Spires.

Mr. Spires was still saying his main issue was the property tax, particularly older folks such as his 73-year-old mother having to pay property tax for schools when they have no kids in schools. I kept asking him to explain how that could be an issue now that the Legislature — with his opponent’s help — had eliminated all residential property taxes for school operations.

This was about the only point at which we touched on the main issue in the race — tuition tax credits for schools. Excuse me, one of the two main issues in the race. There is, as I noted in my column, something different in this race, which prevented Mr. Clark from prevailing June 13 the way other candidates targeted by out-of-state anti-schools money did. That would be the matter of local issues, particularly in the Swansea area (Mr. Spires will allude tangentially to this below), that really have nothing to do with what a representative is sent to the State House for.

As usual, Mr. Spires spoke in general terms. He seems to have little strong opinion on the subject one way or the other. He seems to have been chosen by the pro-"choice" money people for no greater qualifications than the facts that he is willing to run, and he is not Ken Clark. Ken Clark is a remarkably strong and articulate explainer of everything that is wrong with their position, so the likes of SCRG and CIA are determined to see him go.

"The best solution is compromise," was about as far as Mr. Spires would explain his views on this. He used the example of what he learned in 10 years on the Lexington Medical Center board. He didn’t see the need for the recent political fight over whether the hospital would be allowed to do open-heart surgery. "That should have been an issue with the certificate of need people." Well, he and I agree on that, assuming I understood him right. (The problem was that the Lexington Medical folks and Lexington delegation refused to leave the decision to be handled through that process, and insisted on provoking a bitter battle at the State House.)

Mr. Spires and I did not always understand each other clearly right away. We seemed to be talking past each other, and the imprecision of the way he would express his views often led to misunderstandings and having to backtrack in the conversation. For instance, he said, "There’s got to be a better way to fund public schools than on the backs of the taxpayers." He said this within the context of having expressed doubts about the efficacy of the Legislature’s tax swap, with a sales tax increase making up for eliminating the residential property tax for school operations.

So I asked how he would pay for schools if not with taxes of some kind. He then hastened to explain that he meant it should be done on the backs of property taxpayers.

Then, a moment later, he mentioned the need to fix up state roads, and said, "Let’s take 25 percent of the property tax and designate in for roads and improvements." I asked how, if he was going to cut or eliminate property taxes for broad swathes of the electorate, he would come up with more money for roads. He said he was talking about using car taxes for roads. So I said, you mean a portion of the taxes on cars, boats and airplanes would take care of our huge maintenance backlog on our highways? It seemed unlikely enough that I was trying to make sure I understood him.

He seemed a bit confused at my bringing up boats and planes (he may have misheard me on a cell phone connection), so I explained that personal property taxes apply to those as well. At this point, I think we had it all straight, although his plan doesn’t seem to have any sort of practicality to it. If you raised personal property taxes enough to pay for that billion-dollar or so backlog, the taxpayers would probably totally freak out.

Mr. Spires’ one specific idea about what to do about taxes is that "property taxes (meaning real property taxes) for over 65 be eliminated."

So I said, that’s it? A totally age-based exemption? So 67-year-old millionaires with beachfront homes at Hilton Head would pay no property taxes for schools, while we’d still kick younger folks out of their houses if they couldn’t pay up enough to make the difference of that break? He thought about that a moment and said of the theoretical millionaire who lived mainly in Columbia but had a place at the beach and in the mountains that he should still get the total break on his primary residence.

"I don’t have all the answers," Mr. Spires acknowledged. "If I did, I’d be in Las Vegas trying to bet on the numbers, you know." Well, no, I hadn’t known. It wouldn’t be what I’d do if I had all the answers. I don’t think it’s what Ken Clark would do if he had all the answers, either. That could be one key to the reason I prefer Mr. Clark.

Gambling came up a little later in our chat, when Mr. Spires expressed one of the commonest misconceptions about the state lottery. He was expressing his theory — based on no particular facts or figures that he was able to cite — that "I personally think we have the money" already to do whatever we need to do with education and other functions of state government. "We’ve got the money," he assured me. But "It’s just like the lottery money."

How’s that? Well, "it was supposed to go for all (education), and it seems like it goes too much to the colleges and universities."

OK, once again, for all those folks who paid no attention to what Jim Hodges and other lottery supporters told you before the lottery vote, and who also paid no attention to what those of us who opposed the lottery told you, college scholarships were always the main selling point on the lottery. Sure there was vague talk about "our schools" on the part of the advocates, but the point, for Mr. Hodges, was to hand scholarship checks to middle-class parents who would otherwise vote Republican. Upon receiving that manna that the state took from the poorer and more gullible, said affluent parents might be grateful enough to vote Mr. Hodges in for another term.  It didn’t work out that  way, but we do have the lousy lottery to remember him by.

But I let that go. Instead, I tried to get him going on an area of potential agreement between us. I,  too, believe that a lot (although not nearly all) of what is needed to bring critical state services up to snuff is already being spend, just on the wrong things. So I asked Mr. Spires what he would cut, but he informed me "I don’t want to cut anything." Not even some of those duplicative, wasteful colleges and programs the state funds? No,he wouldn’t cut them; he would allocate the money better without cuts.

He didn’t offer any examples of how he would accomplish that. In fact, he specifically expressed his disagreement with one recent consolidation of services — combining the pharmacy schools of USC and MUSC. He is, as mentioned before, a pharmacist. His explanation of his opposition to consolidation was that "I went to USC, and I personally think we ought to have two" separate schools.

We moved on.

Why did he do so much better than Mr. Clark the previous week? "I’m in touch with the people every day," while "he’s not even in touch with his neighbors." Mr. Spires operated a pharmacy in Swansea for years, but eventually sold it. He still has one in Pelion, while "I still have a lot of friends in Swansea." That showed on June 13.

Those neighbors are the key to it all for Mr. Spires. He doesn’t have to think for himself on issues as long as he’s got them to  guide him. Mr. Spires is very much a "small-D democrat" and not a believer in republican government at all.

"If you polled," he began in the classic argument of believers in pure-democracy, "taxes would be the number-one thing, and education would probably be down on the list."

"That’s what they’re interested in," he said of the voters.

So, he said, "Let’s do the important things first." I thought maybe he meant the budget should be delayed so it could be done in tandem with tax reform.  But no, he was complaining that legislators fail and fail to act on property taxes (and once again, the fact that they just did act,and dramatically, is shunted aside). He essentially suggests that as long as an issue is of overriding importance to people, lawmakers should not take another moment to take up anything until that overriding issue — in this case, tax cuts — has been resolved. He considers the cigarette tax and breast-feeding in public to be two examples of things that should not be talked about until residential property taxes for schools are dealt with.

I tried to make a joke, suggesting that sure, property taxes would be a higher priority — unless you were a hungry baby. I don’t think I delivered it right. Anyway, he did allow as how various issues were of greater or lesser importance to different people. "But everybody is concerned with property tax."

He then added, "And education is important, you know."

That’s about it. We did get on a tangent about the Medicare prescription drug entitlement, which I mentioned in the column.

18 thoughts on “More from Kit Spires

  1. LexWolf

    Now if only we had the transcript of this interview so we could see what Spires really said.

  2. Brad Warthen

    What’s with LexWolf? I mean, it really puzzles me. Why the hell would I take the time to type that stuff if it wasn’t what he said? My entire purpose is to go way the hell beyond my column, give you the raw stuff, and why would I do that? Because of jerks like LexWolf who don’t trust their information “filtered.” So I sit in my hotel room while I’m on my freakin’ vacation at midnight last night typing every line I had written on the back of a proof while talking to this guy sitting in a doctor’s office with my head feeling like it’s about to split open. I do this because I had promised that I would, not realizing how hard it would be to get to it with all I’ve been doing the last few days.
    And this guy has the nerve to question whether I’m giving it to him straight.
    Why are there people like that in the world? What happened to them? Did their mothers lie to them a lot or something?
    What the hell is the point of having any kind of dialogue, of trying even to have a representative democracy or deliberative bodies, if people are going to greet everything they’re told with the charge of “Lie!”
    You can’t have a civilization that way. It’s just impossible.

  3. LexWolf

    Brad,
    what is it with you? This is now the second time you’ve called me a “jerk”. Is this how you deal with people who don’t agree with you? Just dismiss them as “jerks”? No, you don’t need to answer that question but this attitude comes through loud and clear in many of your writings. Somehow you have convinced yourself that your opinions and preferences are so superior to everyone else’s that those other people must be all “jerks” or else they would properly genuflect before your superior wisdom.
    Just today I received an email that included this comment: “You know a major difference between [Brad] and God is that God
    doesn’t think He’s Brad.” Need more be said? Methinks you should try to achieve contact with (actual?) reality again.
    As for my comment above you’ll have to forgive me but I’ve seen too many instances where you and/or the State ran stories that just weren’t true. Stories that were clearly designed more as propaganda than as news. Stories where quotes were cherrypicked, folded, spindled, mutilated and taken out of context rather than presented the way they were said.
    Brad said: “You can’t have a civilization that way. It’s just impossible.”
    Prima facie evidence of just how badly you’ve lost touch with reality, Brad. Just because someone doesn’t believe and agree with you means we can’t have a civilization? Get real!

  4. Ready to Hurl

    Wow, Lex, you call a guy a liar and he gets all pissy.
    Who woulda thought? Obviously, he’s delusional.
    Can you add to Dr. Frist’s diagnosis of Mrs. Schiavo, too?

  5. LexWolf

    This is about you, Brad, not Frist and Schiavo. Have you ever perused your writings savaging anyone who disagrees with your worldview? Just look at your hitjob on Kit Spires.
    To be honest, it’s absolutely beyond me why Spires or any other candidate not in favor of big government and massive spending would even talk to you guys. It’s 100% predictable that all they’ll get for their efforts is a hit piece from your paper. On the other hand, your favored candidates might as well just write your hagiographies for you and save you the work of churning out “impartial” pieces.

  6. LexWolf

    On a totally neutral note here but it didn’t say RTH when I responded to that post. This is not the first time I’ve noticed a switcheroo on this blog. It’ll say poster ABC one time and a little later it’ll be XYZ. Must be some sort of technical glitch.

  7. Brad should run for public office and let me ink-blog months of my editorial page against him

    Really.

  8. LexWolf

    So are you running for public office? I suspect you would find out that your elitist attitude doesn’t play well with voters, just as Ken Clark found out.

  9. David

    Spires seems bought and paid for. – No, not in reality.
    Just seems like a guy that isn’t sure what he wants to do – just that he wants to do something.
    Sad but hey, a lot of folks buy that stuff hook, line and sinker.
    We have a lot of them in the general assembly just like that and have for years. How do you think we ended up 50th in the nation on almost every list out there?

  10. LexWolf

    Heh. I hate to break it to ya, David, but what we really have in the GA and elsewhere in this government is a bunch of elitists who think they know how other people should live their lives.
    What do you usually get in the GA? Mostly lawyers and public “servants” who’ve never worked a regular job in their lives or operated a business. Yeah, there are a few others but in the grand scheme of things they are a small minority.
    We don’t need any more people like that. What we do need is lots more people like Kit Spires who have been at the receiving end of the GA’s many harebrained “improvements” and mandates. Maybe then we’d get some real solutions instead of stuff a bunch of bureaucrats can “justify” to each other.

  11. David

    No, we don’t need people like Kit Spires if he answers questions about the state lottery with ” “it was supposed to go for all (education), and it seems like it goes too much to the colleges and universities.”
    Sorry. But he proves with that statement that he has been sleeping and hasn’t studied enough to realize how wrong he is on the lottery.
    If Kit Spires thinks we can take 25% of property taxes and fix up our state highways, I think the guy has been drinking something nasty.
    I’d believe your statement about Kit Spires if he seemed to have some real, logical and well thought out responses to the problems we face instead of very general, generic answers to even the most basic questions.

  12. Compounding Pharmacist

    Compound Pharmacy has gained much popularity in the field of medicine. The medications are equally effective and safe for sick patients who cannot take the actual medications due to their personal allergies.

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