I was way tired last night after going to Charleston and back and then swinging by a couple of watch parties, so no posting about runoff results.
But then, I didn’t have much to say. There was nothing to say about Nikki Haley because we knew she was going to win. Even the historic news of Tim Scott becoming the first black Republican nominated to Congress from SC since Reconstruction was anticlimactic; we had fully expected him to win big as well.
The suspense was with the lawyers — in the GOP attorney general’s race on the statewide level and Democratic solicitor’s race locally. And the results on both was disappointing.
Leighton Lord was clearly the stronger candidate for attorney general. Alan Wilson is a fine young man (and his wife is a friend from church and from the news biz), but come on — he’s been a lawyer 7 years. I’ve got a kid who’s been a lawyer almost exactly that long. Lord was the managing partner of a large law firm, a man at the peak of his career, admitted to practice before the Supreme Court, and so on and so forth. There just was no contest. If you were a rational employer choosing between these two applicants for such a senior position as attorney general, it wouldn’t take you more than a couple of seconds to choose Lord.
John Meadors was just as clearly better-qualified to be solicitor, something he has amply demonstrated over the course of 23 years of able service as a prosecutor. Yes, Dan Johnson had such experience too, but less of it. I see that Rep. James Smith had endorsed him. I’m having lunch with James tomorrow and maybe he can explain it. But with the endorsements Meadors had, including that of the third candidate in the primary, plus the fact that his team included Joey Opperman, who helped run such an effective runoff campaign for Steve Benjamin, made me think he’d win this one. (Plus, he advertised on this blog, which is usually a clincher.) But he didn’t.
After the Alvin Greene debacle, my faith in democracy has been a bit shaken. While these two instances are nowhere near as bad as that case — not within light years of it — I’m struck again at how whimsical election results can sometimes be. And this year, seemingly, more than most. Yeah, I know about the narrative of “less experience is better” this year, but that is so irrational, so positively childish, that I look for better reasons for the voters to have for the decisions that they make. I wonder: Was Leighton Lord too aristocratic, too “born to rule” seeming for an electorate in the hunt for the common touch (which is related to “experience is bad,” but not quite the same)? If so, why go with the son of a congressman? Was Meadors’ loss as simple as “the black guy won” (even though Meadors had plenty of visible black support)? Let’s hope not.
Anyway, at this point the only thing to do is congratulate Dan Johnson and hope he’ll be a great solicitor — since solicitor he will be, with no GOP opposition. And to give Alan Wilson a more conditional congratulations, and begin to focus on the contest to come in the fall against Democrat Matthew Richardson.
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Dan had huge support in the black community. They were far less likely to vote in the Republican Party runoff than Meadors supporters might have been. They were single candidate voters.
Wilson is Joe’s (step)son. Joe is popular. I saw plenty of signs for both, side-by-side…..we get whom we vote for….
And still it is amazing how much peace and tranquility we enjoy. From insiders in Kyrgyzstan we get the news of continued butchering and ethnic cleansing, despite the headline about the government encouraging Uzbeks to go to the polls today. Sounds like a headline out of the Voelkischer Beobachter, except that it’s on Yahoo.
So I guess it can be a lot worse, though if we do not leave the froth and get down to reading seriously and tackling issues, it will undoubtedly get worse here.
To lose your faith in democracy, look no further than the national media coverage of Haley’s win, which is extensive and will doubtless help her candidacy. The worst, on Politico, was a reference to her as a potential VP candidate in 2012 (yes, VP of the United States, not the Lexington County Chamber of Commerce). All of that coverage, however, misses the point. She has not triumphed over racism, she uses it for her own ends, as do all those SC politicians who push school vouchers and an end to government assistance to the poor. Meanwhile, Tim Scott, an African-American defeating Strom Thurmond’s son, gets nothing but brief mentions in the national press. I can see why he is not “the next Sarah Palin”, as one paper labeled Haley, but why is he not the “rising star” of the Republican Party, as Haley was also described? This is not a bright and shining moment for South Carolina, but it is also a poor performance by our national press.
Why would Tim Scott get national press? Thurmond’s son hasn’t done anything besides being born to deserve any national/state/local attention. This isn’t the British monarchy where your future is determined by the father’s fastest swimmer.
Brad: Just wondering. Do you know? Alan Wilson has been referred to as Joe Wilson’s adopted son, and also as his stepson. ??
I believe stepson is correct. And the fact that he uses the name “Wilson” indicates to me that he was legally adopted, although I have not confirmed that.
I mean, you can be both, right?
I voted for Lord, but I don’t think it’s just as simple as saying “Lord has been a lawyer longer, Lord is more qualified, therefore the only rationale thing to do is vote for Lord”. This is all subjective stuff we’re dealing with here. How many times have we heard politicians say “it’s not the amount of experience that matters, it’s what kind of experience that counts”.
If we were voting solely on resume and longevity of experience then Chris Dodd or Joe Biden would be president.
And a lot of people voted for Wilson because they think that when one candidate for AG has prosecutorial experience and one doesn’t, they’ll go with the one who has been a prosecutor. Is this some dumb reason for voting that way on their part? I don’t think so.
Then again, I know people who voted for Wilson because they like Joe Wilson as some sort of folk hero. But I also know at least one guy who voted for Lord because he did a summer clerkship at Nexsen Pruitt–yet admitted to me that he only met Leighton once during his summer there, and that was just for a brief hello.
See, people come up with all sorts of reasons to vote for people.
Lord: it was those shirts with the European/Wall Street banker collars.
Per The State, Alan Wilson’s father died when he was very young; his mom married family friend, Addison Graves Wilson (named after three incurable diseases, no less).
You can call yourself Lord Gaga in SC if you wish, so long as you are not doing it to defraud your creditors. There is no assumed-named filing.
“Lord was the managing partner of a large law firm, a man at the peak of his career, admitted to practice before the Supreme Court, and so on and so forth.”
Yet another elected position for which lawyers only are eligible. Why is it that large corporations employ legal departments who report ultimately to non-lawyers?
Hmmm!
Kathryn, a good friend used to call me “Citizen Arcane.” Maybe I should go by that…
@Juan–there are strict ethical guidelines for those lawyers. They have a very tight line between independent professional judgment and being responsive to their direct employers. Private practice lawyers usually answer to several clients, and so are not in quite such a bind.
As a lawyer, I have known a few nonlawyers whose grasp of legal concepts was excellent, but by and large, going to a good law school and doing well there has no substitute for teaching one to think like a lawyer–and no cheesy jokes, please. There are very good reasons for a lot of things that don’t make “common sense” to the lay person.
Oh, by the way — I had breakfast this morning with Anton Gunn after I wrote this, and he pointed out a number of things Dan Johnson did well that were invisible to me, living as I do outside the circuit. Such as mailers that he thought were better than Meadors’. Or the fact that while Meadors used robocalls, Johnson had real people calling voters live.
Also, he said there was an interesting contrast between the two counties in the circuit. He said that in Kershaw, Meadors had good black support while Johnson was strong among white voters, but in Richland it was the other way around. I protested that Meadors had good black support in Richland — Shadd, Paul Brawley and others. Anton explained some of that was reactive, because of the black supporters that Johnson had. For instance, Darrell Jackson (who in Anton’s pastor) supported Johnson, and the Brawleys tend to oppose pretty much anyone Sen. Jackson supports. (If you’ll recall, Wendy Brawley ran a pretty bitter race with Darrell a couple of years back.)
So I appreciate that perspective. I feel like I understand what happened a little better now.
More from Anton tomorrow. He brought along supporting materials to make the case that the Sanford veto will NOT decimate the Budget and Control Board. James Smith insists the opposite is true. I’ll be talking with James tomorrow, and will file something on both interviews after that…
Didn’t Dan Johnson also get support from Johnny Gasser (ex-top assistant solicitor, white)?
The criminal bar as a whole is very racially integrated, btw.
As I said elsewhere, Dan Johnson is a fine candidate–just not as strong as Meadors in my book.
There is a racist and xenophobic thread that runs through South Carolina Republican party.
I first learned of it age six when when an old, fat, and powerful white man told me that my friend couldn’t play on my small fry baseball team because he was black. He was a GOP faithful had donated the land for the baseball field and told me that he would “disk up that ball field before he let a n****r play on his home team.” That was rural SC in 1980.
This year, the thread appeared several times. The new GOP faithful will point to Nikki Haley and Tim Scott to illustrate that Republicans have changed and are no longer uneducated and self-righteous religious zealots. I call BS and say on a whole, the GOP electoral is exactly that and offer a few examples.
a) Andre Bauer learned that if you pull the thread too hard, it’ll break. In the race for Governor, Bauer compared poor people to stray animals. Pop.
b) Jake Knotts openly used the Asian equivalent of the N-word. Pop again.
On the other hand, the most skillful career politicians carefully craft their tugs at the racist vote.
c) Joe Wilson yelled at President Obama in a session of Congress. The response was, yeah – tell ’em Joe. (Pst, we don’t want Obama getting too “uppity.”) The thread held, skillfully pulled by a career politician.
d) Leighton Lord is clearly more qualified than Alan Wilson. Yet young Alan followed in Daddy’s footsteps. Alan’s refrain while politicking this year – “My family and I are going to Arizona for vacation this summer. We love that state and its new anti-immigration law!” Ah yes, a gentle tug results in a 60-40 win.
Fact is, South Carolina is still full of ignorant racist rednecks. Sure, not as full as it used to be, but there are way too many. And, all of them who vote, vote Republican.
PS. Mr. Wilson, if you do take your wife and family out to Arizona, take lots of sunscreen – it’s hot and bright out there!
Neal
I found out that many political candidates and politicians are violating South Carolina law regarding robocalls:
http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t16c017.htm#16-17-446
(C) Adad calls which are not prohibited under subsection (B):
(1) are subject to Section 16-17-445(B)(1), (2), and (3);
(2) shall disconnect immediately when the called party hangs up;
(3) are prohibited after seven p.m. or before eight a.m.;
Calls are prohibited after 7 PM and they must disconnect if the person called hangs up.
I will be more observant and answer calls between 7 PM and 9 PM for the November elections. There are probably 7 violations between June 8 and June 21 but I didn’t keep the recorded messages.
I received a robocall June 21, 2010 at 8:57 PM from GOP AG candidate from Alan Wilson; that’s a shame when the state’s top prosecutor wannabee doesn’t know state law.