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.

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