You want something to criticize Ken Wingate for, Democrats and other knee-jerk critics? How about his promise to denounce the extremist out-of-state group All Children Matter if it got involved with his campaign to unseat Sen. Joel Lourie, which he then failed to keep?
This was a great disappointment to me, because all other dealings I had had with Mr. Wingate gave me the impression that he was a man to keep such a promise.
Here’s why I wrote about it at the time:
LOURIE VS. THE ANTI-SCHOOL OUTSIDERS
Published on: 10/31/2004
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: D2
BY BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORTHE S.C. SENATE District 22 race is not about Ken Wingate and Joel Lourie any more.
That’s because an out-of-state group with an extreme agenda has dumped what looks like more than $100,000 into the race in the last week. (That’s $80,000 we know about in TV ads, plus a couple of mailings that likely cost more than $10,000 each.)
Even when it was just between Mr. Wingate and Mr. Lourie, two men I’d known and respected for some time, I had already made up my mind that I preferred Joel Lourie. So had our editorial board. We had good things to say about Mr. Wingate, but had to go with Mr. Lourie’s stellar record.
Also, while we thought Mr. Wingate might be OK on education, we knew Mr. Lourie would be one of the Senate’s staunchest advocates for schools.
Mr. Wingate has good things to say about his support of schools, but also has a disturbing affinity for the "choice" movement. That, combined with his close association with Gov. Mark Sanford – for whom "choice" is the only kind of education reform – gave us pause.
It also attracted the support of the Michigan-based All Children Matter. This group doesn’t care about Ken Wingate or Joel Lourie or you or me or any of the people of South Carolina. It cares only about advancing its agenda. And since it doesn’t mention its agenda in its ads (for the good reason that it is unpopular), I’ll define it: Advancing a national movement away from the notion that states have a responsibility to provide good, accountable public schools. In South Carolina, the group backs the governor’s proposal to take money that would otherwise go to run public schools and use it to pay some parents to send their kids to private schools.
It doesn’t want to do this through open debate, because it would lose. Instead, the group uses stealth tactics in an attempt to stack the Legislature with people who will do its bidding. It believes, with good reason, that Mr. Wingate will be more malleable to its purpose. By contrast, there is probably no one running for legislative office this year who is less likely to do this Orwellian-named group’s bidding than Joel Lourie.
It doesn’t matter to All Children Matter that few Senate districts in South Carolina are more supportive of public education than District 22 (and with good reason, given the excellence of the schools in the district). That just gives the group more motivation to talk about something other than its real agenda in its ads.
It is clearer than ever that Mr. Lourie is the better candidate for District 22 (as Republican Barney Giese asserted in endorsing the Democrat last week). I already had reasons to believe that. To those I must now add my disappointment with Mr. Wingate.
Several weeks ago, Mr. Wingate told me that if All Children Matter weighed into this race, he would denounce it. He now refuses to do so, using the Clintonian logic that since All Children Matter has a South Carolina presence, this does not constitute an incursion by outsiders. Yet the group had two South Carolinians representing it before he made his promise. I asked him if he had any evidence demonstrating that "All Children Matter of South Carolina" today consists of anything more than a Post Office box and the two individuals he and I both knew were involved before. "I am under the impression that there is more of a presence than that," he said. "I’m not going to start reeling off names."
But set that aside, because this is no longer about Ken Wingate and Joel Lourie. It’s about whether the voters of District 22 will be persuaded to go along with a group that would undermine their public schools.
Mr. Lourie believes that if that happens, it will not only mean his defeat. It will be a huge boost for the narrow agenda of All Children Matter. If it can use its money to defeat one of the strongest advocate of public schools in one of the most pro-school districts in the state, it will intimidate the rest of the Legislature into supporting it.
I’m afraid he’s right. And for the sake of the rest of South Carolina, I sincerely hope the people of District 22 won’t let that happen.
All Children Matter is a part of the anti-public school movement that we’ve seen manifested in other groups, such as SCRG and CIA. There’s a pattern — driven and funded from out of state, highly ideological, striving to remake our Legislature in its image, and misleading about intentions when it does get involved in the electoral process.
These groups have a much greater potential to harm South Carolinians, black and white, than the League of the South could in a thousand years. They are determined, they are well-financed, and they strike at the very heart of our state’s greatest hope for the future.
Now, do I think this disqualifies Ken Wingate to be our interim treasurer? No. Do I think it makes him a bad person? No. But I figured I should bring it up, because I had to see a guy criticized for the wrong thing.
Related Posts
> These groups have a much greater potential
> to harm South Carolinians, black and white,
> than the League of the South could in a
> thousand years
Yeah, we wouldn’t want anyone to come in and mess with our world class public schools.
Actually Brad, I don’t think you’ve presented any reason to criticize Mr. Wingate here. On the other hand, you HAVE reiterated and re-confirmed good and substantial reasons to criticize YOU and your newspapers’ position regarding school choice. Way to go. Ed
Just so Doug. Brad has raised support for the unsupportable and defense of the indefensible to art forms, hasn’t he? Ed
Sir, you have a really strange obsession with this All Children Matter group. Just because you disagree with them on school choice does not give you justification to label them as some sort of “extremist” hate group and compare them to League of the South.
It’s ironic that a newspaper editor would attack an organization for attempting to give a counter-point to the debate, using some resources from outside the state. You sound like the very hate groups you supposedly condemn. Where was your condemnation of all of the money poured into the state from national teachers’ union groups? Your rhetoric is way over the top. It’s also ironic that after all of your bitter, excessive rhetoric about school choice proponents, public schools in South Carolina continue to rate as among the worst in the country. Maybe you are just simply a defender of the wealthy elitist public school establishment, who cater to their wealthy friends by keeping poor people out of “their” schools, and who draw huge salaries at taxpayer expense.
Your diatribe against this All Children Matter group is really quite bizarre. Maybe all the business people who support this organization should pull all of their corporate investments out of South Carolina as well, since they are “outsiders.” Then you and your public school bureaucrat friends could celebrate South Carolina not just having the worst public schools in the country, but also the worst economy!
What is it that y’all don’t understand about the points I made:
— This group hides its intentions, distributing materials that talk about anything and everything except what it wants. It does this because it knows its position does not poll well. In fact, it was well known that its position would be particularly unpopular in the district Mr. Wingate was seeking. In other words, this group was spending a very large amount of money trying to fool people into supporting its candidate, as part of a plan to stack our Legislature to do what IT wanted, with no regard to what South Carolinians want.
— Ken had promised to denounce these folks if they got involved. It was very disappointing, even a bit of a shock, that he did not. I’ve always, before and since, thought he was a better man than that. I think he got caught up in something that happens to candidates. In the last days of a tough campaign, it becomes easier to rationalize accepting aid you would reject in calmer, more thoughtful times.
There is nothing “bizarre” about this. It’s about basic integrity and intellectual honesty. Do you truly believe that anything that pushes your ideological position is acceptable? I do not.
These people were not trying to give a “counterpoint to a debate.” They were not entering a debate. They were not even proposing the things that they favored. They were staying silent about that, and trying to buy a seat in the S.C. Senate on other pretenses.
A debate would have been very nice, instead of this.
“What is it that y’all don’t understand about the points I made”
Oh Brad..
We just aren’t worthy of having this kind of discussion with such a wise man like yourself.
If only Beasley, Hodges and Sanford would have just listed to you then everything would be just fine with South Carolina.
Brad for Governor! I’ve got the perfect slogan for you:
Brad for Governor because “Some people say I’m arrogant, but I know better than that”
Heh. Someone once said that the difference between Brad and God is that God doesn’t think He’s Brad.
Hee hee! It’s so twooo…
You know, Joel made a very good point in his post. I have observed Brad wring his hands about and spew vitriol at every out-of-state organization that has ever sent a dollar here to support school choice, but I have never EVER heard him utter a word against the National Education Association, which is an out-of-state mafia family that attempts to subvert elections everywhere school choice is at issue. Brad has absolutely no problem with those out-of-state dollars. Just goes to show ya: Trust nothing the newspaper says about education. Ed
It has nothing to do with this thread, but this is too hilarious to pass up. Every year, TEXAS MONTHLY magazine does a feature on the 10 Best and 10 Worst State Legislators (they skewer both parties). One of this year’s 10 Worst was a ditzy Republican lady from Houston. Seeing two Democratic representatives reading from the Bibles that are placed in every legislator’s desk, her observation was, “I didn’t think Democrats read the Bible.” Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it’s a d___ sight funnier.
Why didn’t you just go ahead and spell out “durn”?
What a square.
or “dang”…it has that Texas nasal twang to it.
I don’t get the joke though…I didn’t think democrats read it either. Do they? Maybe they’re like W.C. Fields…they’re looking for loopholes. Ed
By the way, there IS something about the Texas legislature that I wish ours would emulate. It is my understanding that their legislature only meets every other year. Oh how I wish ours would cut its’ insanity in half like this! No more than our idiots can ever get accomplished, who’d miss ’em during the off years? Just think…no Jake E. Knots…no Gilda Cobb-Hunter…for a WHOLE year…my flabber is completely gasted. Ed
And bonus…I just thought of this: No John Land! Ed
Guys, guys, guys, all your points are well taken, but you are missing the funniest and most ironic aspect of this post. Brad denounces Wingate for being associated with some group with an agenda, while in the immediately previous post, he defends Wingate for doing basically the exact same thing, that is, being associated with some group with an agenda.
The only difference seems to me to be that the agenda of All Children Matter, while I don’t happen to agree with it, is relatively innocuous, while the agenda of the League of the South is a disgrace, and is not supported or tolerated by any decent person
Maybe the difference is that Brad disagrees with the agenda of All Children Matter, but agrees with the agenda of the Leauge of the South?
It does seem interesting to me that these groups, including SCRG, have wacked political opponents for supposed issues or stances — stuff that’s factually questionable at that — that has nothing directly to do with their core “school choice” issue.
Why do they need to engage in the bait and switch?
Do any of their supporters on this blog have an explanation of that?
An issues group using a variety of different issues in a campaign isn’t that unusual. The political parties also do it. The unions do it.
Have you ever seen the teachers unions send out campaign literature for/against a candidate about their position on collective bargaining?
Nope.
I work in politics and remember reading The State articles about All Children Matter. They certainly weren’t bashful about what issue they supported.
Basically, Warthen making an issue out of their campaign materials is just another example of him reaching to find fault.