Category Archives: Character

Good move, Vincent. Now release your e-mails, too

Finally, after a couple of weeks hiatus, there’s a sign of life from the Sheheen campaign, and it’s a good one. Vincent released his last 10 years of tax records, and challenged Nikki Haley to do the same.

Normally, this kind of gesture wouldn’t mean much to me. But it means a lot in the context of this particular contest. As you may recall, refusing to release the last 10 years of her tax records is one of several rather glaring ways in which the Republican running on a “transparency” platform has refused to be transparent. Only after Gresham Barrett pressured her into releasing the last three years (saying, when asked by The State, that releasing 10 years would be an “excessive” amount of transparency) did we learn that she had previously failed to disclose that Wilbur Smith had paid her$42,500 for her influence.

So laying his tax records out and challenging Ms. Transparency 2010 to do the same is perfectly appropriate, and a service to the voters.

Now I’d like to see him release his publicly-issued e-mail records. That is, if he hasn’t done so already (I didn’t get a release on the tax records and had to read it in the paper of all things, so for all I know I missed one on the e-mail records, too). There is no way that a candidate running entirely on trying to tear the veil of secrecy from the Legislature should be hiding her e-mail records behind a special exemption to FOI law that lawmakers carved out for themselves. No way at all.

I did think this was of note:

The couple’s charitable giving has risen as they earned more money. The couple reported charitable donations of $1,025 in 2000, or 1.4 percent of their income. In 2009, the couple reported $7,301 in charitable donations on $372,509 in income, or 2 percent of their total earnings.

Haley and her husband, Michael, earned a combined $196,282 in 2009 and gave $971 to charity, or one half of one percent of total earnings.

Yeah, OK, so he’s giving more than Nikki, but 2 percent is pretty sad. Maybe this doesn’t include giving to the church. I mean, we Catholics are notorious for not tithing but come on, Vincent.

At least he’s not hiding the fact, though.

‘Finish Him Off’: Things getting rough in the 2nd District

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Whoa! Not to be outdone by the “You Lie!” guy, his opponent in the 2nd Congressional District is getting a bit overwrought in his rhetoric. I just got a fund-raising release from the Rob Miller campaign urging supporters to help “finish him off” — referring to Joe Wilson. In fact, that was the headline on the e-mail: “Finish Him Off.”

Totally aside from the implied violence of the phrase, there’s the additional problem of inaccuracy. It invokes a picture of Joe lying on the ground at death’s door awaiting the coup de grace. But near as I can tell, Mr. Wilson is poised to do what he usually does — get re-elected.

Nikki’s business meeting in Greenville

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Still haven’t heard from anyone who attended Nikki’s meeting today to shore up her business relations, but The Greenville News took a stab at finding out what happened at a similar meeting up their way.

An excerpt:

Republican gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley has met privately at least twice with Greenville business leaders and assured them she would seek a better relationship with lawmakers than Gov. Mark Sanford, her political ally, and would champion economic development more fully than he has.

Haley arranged the meetings – including one here Tuesday and a similar one in Columbia today – at a time when some business leaders, long disappointed with Sanford, are considering whether to take a cue from the state Chamber of Commerce and rally behind Haley’s Democratic opponent, state Sen. Vincent Sheheen.

The first question for Haley at Tuesday’s meeting at The Loft at Soby’s was whether she would govern as Sanford has, said Lewis Gossett, president of the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance.

Haley “basically made the point that she would be her own person,” said Gossett, who lives and works in Columbia but stopped by the meeting while in Greenville for a personal appointment.

Gossett said members of the manufacturers’ alliance have been “frustrated” with Sanford and “want to know are we going to see a spirit of cooperation in Columbia?” He said some of the alliance’s members support Haley and some Sheheen.

Trav Robertson, spokesman for the Sheheen campaign, said Haley would indeed govern like Sanford, who Robertson said tried to derail plans for Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research when he first took office in 2003.

“Who carried Sanford’s water in the Legislature? It was Nikki Haley,” Robertson said. “Who was the first person Nikki Haley thanked when she won the nomination? Mark Sanford. So make no mistake. It’s one and the same.”

Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said business people in the Upstate were interested in meeting Haley and it was natural for her to meet with them.

On the one hand, I’m almost inclined to excuse these secret meetings on the grounds that a lot of business people won’t show and say what they really think in a public forum.

But then I think, NAAAHHHH. No way should Ms. Transparency get away with this, and here’s why: According to this story, she’s telling these business people how normal and cooperative and constructive she’ll be in working with lawmakers, unlike her mentor Mark Sanford. She’s saying things sufficiently reassuring that some are coming away deciding to back her.

For her to say things that would be persuasive to sensible, pragmatic business people (who are fed up with that ideological firebrand Gov. Sangfroid), it seems to me that she would have to say things that are pretty different from what she says in front of her Tea Party fans. With them, she definitely doesn’t say, “No way I’ll be like Mark Sanford.”

But doing it in private allows her to get away with that.

Did anybody go to Nikki’s meeting?

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Since I got uninvited from the meeting at which Nikki Haley was to woo business support today, I’m wondering… Did it even happen, or did it get canceled or postponed? Who showed up? What was said? Did she make any progress against Vincent Sheheen’s Chamber support?

I drove past the Wilbur Smith building a little after noon, and about all I can report is that they certainly weren’t spilling out onto the sidewalk. But then, I wouldn’t really expect them to. It’s a big building.

Anyway, if you were one of the Elect who attended, drop me a line at brad@bradwarthen.com. I’d love to hear how it went.

By the way, Kevin Geddings is out of prison

How about that zero? THAT was something, huh?

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I have two things to say about this brouhaha over Charles Bolden saying he was told to help Muslims feel good about their culture’s historic contributions to science, and the White House denial of such a brief.

First, the silly thing: I have trouble picturing the no-nonsense Marine on a self-esteem-building mission. When I try, my imagination comes up with something really goofy, like:

Hey, guys and how about the concept of zero? That’s a biggie! I don’t know what we’d do without it! Why, back in the Middle Ages, sports fans all over poor, benighted Europe didn’t know how to keep up with what was happening on the field when their team hadn’t scored (which is a big disadvantage when you’re soccer-crazy — you could spend the whole game in the dark!). They had to make up lame alternative words, like “zip” and “nil.” The guys who kept the medieval scoreboards would just be standing up there scratching their heads wondering what to put up until somebody finally scored… Boy, I’m glad I wasn’t trying to follow sports back then…

And that just doesn’t sound like Gen. Bolden.

Now, to my serious point: If Charles Bolden says that the White House told him it wanted him to make the Muslim world feel warm and fuzzy about itself, that’s what happened.

Charles Bolden is one heckuvan impressive guy, and a squared-away Marine. If he says those are his orders, those are his orders, and don’t get between him and his mission.

Anyone at the White House who says otherwise either isn’t in the loop, or is lying.

And that’s the name of that tune.

Show us transparency, Nikki: Release the e-mails

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Did you see the strong editorial in The State Sunday, challenging Nikki “Transparency” Haley for hiding behind a loophole in FOI specifically carved out to protect legislators, and legislators alone, from transparency in order to keep her state-issued e-mail secret?

I was very glad to see it. As the edit pointed out, this isn’t about Will Folks or disgusting sex allegations. Neither The State‘s editorial board nor I expect to find anything about that if we ever see those e-mails. But the fact that this started with such accusations creates a smoke screen that lets Nikki get away with a flagrant flouting of the principles she lets on to hold most dear. From the heart of the editorial:

Ms. Haley, after all, is not just someone who thinks government transparency is a nice thing. Her one claim to fame as a legislator is her crusade to bring sunlight to a legislative process that for too long has protected lawmakers from accountability rather than giving the voters information they deserve. Her entire campaign for governor is built on that push for openness, for letting the public in on the Legislature’s secrets, for eliminating the special perks and privileges legislators give themselves and their friends.

Does that apply only to the direct expenditure of public money?

Does it apply only to other people?

Imagine if the blogger had claimed that he helped Rep. Haley secretly funnel millions of tax dollars into a green-bean museum and steer tens of millions more in cushy no-bid contracts to her campaign donors, and that messages on her government e-mail account would back up his claim. Is there anyone who would not be demanding that she make the correspondence public?

What is she hiding? Why doesn’t she want us to see the messages she has been sending as she juggled her campaign for governor with doing her job as a legislator?

It is not Ms. Haley’s job to disprove unsubstantiated allegations. It is, however, her job to prove that her commitment to ushering in government transparency and ushering out special legislative privileges is sincere — even more since it has been called into question before. She still hasn’t explained what she did to earn more than $40,000 in consulting fees from a government contractor that hired her for her “good contacts.”

If Ms. Haley were governor, we already would have seen her e-mails, because what governors write on their government e-mail accounts is public record. In fact, Gov. Mark Sanford’s attorney saw fit to turn over some e-mails from his personal account, because she determined that he was using it to discuss public business.

If Ms. Haley were the president of the University of South Carolina, we already would have seen her e-mails. Ditto if she were a $30,000-a-year clerk in the bowels of the bureaucracy, because what nearly all state employees write on their government e-mail accounts is public record.

The only reason her public e-mail correspondence has remained hidden is that she is a legislator, and legislators have written themselves a special exemption to the Freedom of Information Act.

This exemption is the very epitome of the secrecy that Ms. Haley vows to eliminate.

I’m glad to see this now. Because at some point, someone was going to point out this obvious inconsistency and raise a stink about it. My concern has been that it would happen in late October, thereby engendering another tidal wave of protective emotion that would sweep Rep. Haley to victory.

The time to address this is now, when there’s time to be calm. Time to see that she cannot possibly have any legitimate excuse not to share these state-sponsored communications.

What is she hiding, indeed? For all I know, absolutely nothing. But then I don’t know, because she’s hiding it, in a stunning display of contempt for the ideals she says she stands for.

Whoa! On his last day, Mayor Bob bites back

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There has been little love lost between Mayor Bob Coble (who today becomes former Mayor Bob Coble) and Kevin Fisher since Kevin ran against him several years ago.

So it is that there is some sharp criticism of Bob in Kevin’s column about his departure from office. Sharp, but not out of bounds. In fact, much of it is written with the same crusty, edgy sort of good will that went into his column about me when I left the paper. I enjoyed his column about me, but then, I’m in the political criticism business. (Also, I was a couple of sheets to the wind from free beer when I read it, at Goatfeathers on the night that I left the paper.) I can enjoy a column for being well-done, even if it isn’t exactly hagiographic. In fact, I’d probably object if ol’ Kevin started to put a halo on me.

Bob responds in a way that makes me smile because of the irony of it. Part of Kevin’s criticism of him is that Mayor Bob was TOO nice. Oh yeah, says Bob?, and responds by giving him some sharp elbows in this letter to the editor:

Dear Editor,

Kevin Fisher writes in his latest op ed piece that, “everybody likes Mayor Bob. I know I do. And he knows I do. Moreover, I dare say he likes me.” – Kevin Fisher City Watch (Sept. 5, 2007). I do like Kevin. Moreover, I admire Kevin for his political courage. If I had gotten the number of votes he received in the last two City elections after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money, I would have been too embarrassed to keep writing those columns in The Free Times. But Kevin, despite the humiliation and complete rejection by the voters, soldiers on with “Joe Azar” like determination. He is one tough hombre.

I’m gonna miss this repartee between these two wacky kids…

Who is the “SC Truth Squad?”

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Here’s an interesting little last-minute puzzle.

See the above video. Note that it’s an attack video against Alan Wilson, yet not approved by his runoff opponent Leighton Lord. It’s from a group calling itself the “South Carolina Truth Squad.” It’s a South Carolina classic, having a PO Box but no physical office address, Web site or any other overt presence (you know, like Alvin Greene).

If you wrack your brain, and the Web, for an answer to the question, “Why does ‘South Carolina Truth Squad’ sound so familiar?” you’ll see that it’s the name of that pro-Obama group that was the vehicle for Dick Harpootlian and others to attack the Clintons back in January 2008. I wrote about it back here. Dave Barry wrote about it, tangentially, here.

So are Dick et al. getting their licks in early, assuming Wilson will be the nominee. I doubt it, while not discounting the possibility entirely.

Meanwhile, the Wilson campaign has put out this release:

EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION

FROM: Robert Bolchez, former Republican candidate for Attorney General

Over the past 24 hours. we have called as many Republicans as possible and left a recorded message about an incredible last minute dirty trick someone has launched during the final hours of the Attorney General’s race.

PLEASE MAKE ALL YOUR FRIENDS AWARE OF THIS:

A mysterious group calling itself the S.C. Truth Squad is spending over a hundred thousand dollars to pay for last minute TV ads attacking Alan Wilson. And it’s important for Republican voters not to be deceived by these underhanded tactics. I can assure you that those ads are either misleading or completely untrue

As you know, until last Tuesday I was a Republican candidate for Attorney General. Now that I’m no longer in the race, I have offered my full support to Alan Wilson.

Alan is now the ONLY prosecutor in the race. He’s also a decorated combat veteran and he’s the only candidate who’s actually served as an Assistant Attorney General. By far, Alan is best qualified for the job.

Again, please tell all your friends that the TV ads attacking Alan Wilson are NOT true. In the race for attorney general, Alan is by far best qualified to protect our families.

I ask you to join me in supporting Alan in the runoff election tomorrow. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Robert Bolchoz

One assumes Robert Bolchoz was involved, even though his name is misspelled in the “from” line.

Funny thing about all this mystery — the video’s not all that out of line. One can believe an actual campaign would claim it. Sure, it goes overboard to be unfair, such as when it says “The truth is, the only notable thing in Alan Wilson’s background is being a congressman’s son.” Actually, I think his being a combat veteran is notable, even though its relevance to the post he’s seeking is questionable.

In fact, the tone is no more negative than the tone in the ad below that Wilson actually posts on his Web site.

As for substance in these ads, such as it is? Well, I think Lord’s experience running a big law firm is more relevant and impressive than young Alan’s short time as a prosecutor. For what that’s worth. (And calling his Daddy “our conservative hero Joe Wilson” is for me the biggest turnoff in either ad.)

‘I am not a moderate.’ That just says it all…

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First, an apology: I realize it’s unfair to single out this one thing that Gresham Barrett said in his interview with The State. There was a lot of other information in the piece, and I learned things about him I hadn’t known — or had forgotten. I recommend that anyone who plans to vote in next Tuesday’s runoff and is undecided read it.

But I tend to zero in on telling details, and this one really struck me — not for what it says about Gresham Barrett, but for what it tells us about what’s going on in the Tea Party-besieged GOP:

Barrett said he’s been on the receiving end of more attacks, including a Haley TV ad, than any other Republican gubernatorial candidates “My record over the last several months has been distorted. I am not a liberal. I am not a moderate. … Unfortunately, a lot of people have disagreed with my TARP vote and can’t get over it. There’s nothing I can do about that. It is what it is.”

Let’s hear that again:

“I am not a moderate.”

God forbid he should be seen as anything but an extremist. Obviously, he (like pretty much all the Republicans this year) believes that would be political death. Which reminds us why I simply could not see endorsing, or voting for, any of the GOP gubernatorial hopefuls this year — which is a real departure for me.

Now, to highlight some of the good stuff I learned about him from the piece: He remains unafraid to differentiate himself from Mark Sanford, at least in small ways. I knew that he did not hesitate to criticize him in the past. But this year, Republicans all seem to be doing a calculation that goes like this: What’s going on? The voters — at least MY voters, who are usually sensible conservatives — all seem to have lost their minds this year! How can I stay on their good side? What’s my guide? Oh, yeah — Mark Sanford! HIS ideas are totally nuts… since the voters have gone nuts, maybe they’d like it if I act like HIM… and so forth. But Gresham Barrett is saying no to that, at least to some extent.

And that means voters (or at least, those who did not vote in the Democratic primary) have an actual choice next Tuesday. Not that he has a chance, but at least they do have a choice, between an actual conservative Republican, and a Sanfordista who talks about being a conservative (and not so much a Republican).

Truer words than Jake’s never spoken in SC

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Well, I’ve gotta hand it to Jake Knotts — he stood up as what he is and spared no words about it: He is a redneck. And he was right to be proud of the supposed ephithet. A farmer suntan is a mark of hard work, something of which a simple kind of man should be quietly proud. Or blusteringly proud, depending on his inclinations.

In saying that, he touched on something — a minor, side issue, really — I tried to explain in my column about why we VERY RELUCTANTLY endorsed him against Mark Sanford’s candidate in 2008. The decision nearly killed Cindi Scoppe from sheer mortification, but there was one silver lining in it for me: I had always felt a tiny bit of middle-class guilt over always being against the rednecks (on video poker, on the lottery, on the Flag, and so on), and sometimes doing it in a way that betrayed class snobbery on my part. I figured, endorse this rough, brutish son of the soil against the Club for Growth snobs just once, and for the next 20 years I wouldn’t have to feel that guilt again. Yes, I’m being a little facetious, but also a little bit serious.

Anyway, you can’t deny (unless you are a Republican Party functionary, in which case you will deny it most vehemently) the truth of what Jake said about the hypocrites of his party, who defend Nikki from his brutishness because she’s their gal, and their likely standard-bearer in the fall. Unlike Henry McMaster, Jake will not humbly join that train; he remains what he is, with all the good and bad that entails.

What is Jake right about?

He’s right when he says that if he’d only called Barack Obama a “raghead,” the Lexington County Republican Party would not have indignantly censured him and sought his resignation. Calling the president a “raghead” would be merely a comical slip, compared to the deliberate demonization of the president through such devices as Henry’s “Vultures” ad. If Jake had only been talking about Obama, it would merely have put him on the ragged edge of what is increasingly his party’s mainstream (as the mainstream is more and more infiltrated by Tea Party extremism). Oh, Carol Fowler would have fired off an indignant statement. The Black Caucus may have drafted a fiery resolution that would have died a lonely death on the House floor. But within the Republican Party, only a deafening silence. The righteous fury we’re hearing is coming from advocates for Katrina Shealy and Nikki Haley. It’s coming from the Sanford wing of the party, which is seeing the chance to achieve what it could not in eight years of holding the governor’s office — seize control of the party.

He’s ABSOLUTELY right when he alludes to the uncomfortable truth about the newly politically correct GOP. It deserves to be carved into granite somewhere over at the State House:

“If all of us rednecks leave the Republican Party, the party is going to have one hell of a void.”

Indeed. Where would the S.C. GOP be without rednecks? In the minority, that’s where. That’s assuming they went back to the Democratic Party where they came from.

I was just over at the State House myself, and fell into conversation with Dwight Drake, and I happened to ask him — now that he’s out of it — how he thinks Vincent-vs.-Nikki contest will shake out.

He said that of course one must start with the obvious — that this is a majority Republican state (actually, a plurality-Republican state, but why quibble?) … which caused me to interrupt him to say, “Which it wouldn’t be if all the rednecks left, as Jake said.” And he readily agreed.

Of course, he would agree, being a Democrat. But if Republicans were totally honest, they would agree, too. There is no question that the balance of power in the South shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans as Strom Thurmond and George Wallace led legions of rednecks to abandon the Democratic Party. No, not everyone who switched parties was a redneck; some were mere pragmatists who saw there was a heap of white people in their districts and if they wanted to be elected, they needed to go with the GOP. But that would not be the case if not for the rednecks. However much of the GOP vote may be thus described — 15 percent, 30 percent, whatever — it’s enough to mean there are more Republicans than Democrats.

And while your more high-minded sort of Republican — the kind who like to imagine themselves as the sort who 50 years ago would have been Republican, when in the South it was not much more than a debating society making up a demographic roughly the same size as the Unitarians (the kind who are feeling SO broad-minded because they may have a nonEuro, something that would excite relatively little comment among Dems) — may protest loudly at the notion, on some operational level, consciously or unconsciously, every Republican with the pragmatic sense to win a primary knows this. Occasionally we see overt manifestations of it, such as in 1994 when the GOP unashamedly boosted their primary turnout by including a mock “referendum” question on the Confederate flag. Or when, having taken over the House as a result of that election, the new majority made it one of its first orders of business to put the flying of the flag a matter of state law, so that no mere governor could take it down.

Lord knows that other pathetic gang the Democrats has enough to be embarrassed over, but this is the big dirty secret of the Republican Party. Huh. Some secret. Everybody knows it.

The Republican Party can talk all it wants to about conservatism and “small government,” yadda-yadda, but we all know that it has political control in these parts because of the rednecks in its ranks. That’s just the way it is.

Let the voters decide the fate of Jake Knotts

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The Lexington County Republican Party has called on Jake Knotts to resign, and has done so, at least on the surface, for noble reasons. Good people everywhere are nodding their heads and thinking, “About time. South Carolina no longer has room for that sort.”

I applaud many (although not all) of the motivations that cause people to say that. And I think it might do our state’s reputation some good in the larger world if he were hounded from office.

But in the end, I think it’s none of the Lexington County Republican Party’s business whether Jake stays in office or not. As he says, he doesn’t serve the Republican Party. He serves the voters of his district. He should answer to them. That’s the way the system is supposed to work. Many of the same people calling for his head within the party are also supporting the candidate who has announced she will run against him in two years. Fine. Let the battle be joined. And let the voters decide whether they prefer Jake, or Katrina Shealy. All of this mess over that inexcusable thing that Jake said should be thoroughly hashed out in that election. And it certainly promises to be an interesting one. (And maybe, if we’re lucky, someone else will step in and run, someone who is NOT tainted by the blood feud between Sanford and Knotts, so that we can have a more straight-up election about values that have nothing to do with power politics between rival factions.)

There are many things that should NOT be settled by public vote. Matters of public policy, for instance. Ours is a representative democracy, and government by plebiscite is in no way to settle complex issues.

But a vote of the people is precisely how we are supposed to settle the important issue of who will be those elected representatives. And we must have the greatest respect for that prerogative of the people, or else, whatever our high-minded standards (and I do find it ironic to hear some of the high-minded pronouncements of principle I’m hearing from some of these Lexington County Republicans, although I welcome it), our system is not grounded in the ultimate source of legitimacy, the people.

That’s what I think about the Jake Knotts affair. Leave it to the voters.

Now, I expect to get hit with all kinds of howls of protest from those who think Jake’s my big buddy, just because, after opposing him strenuously for election after election, we very reluctantly supported him over Ms. Shealy (actually, over Mark Sanford, because that’s what the election was about) in the last election. Such people fail to understand what I think about Jake. I explained it pretty well in a column I wrote at the time, and I urge you to go back and read it. If you’re still not satisfied, well, I’m working on a post that elaborates. I’ll try to get it posted by tomorrow sometime. (I wanted to get it done today before posting this, but it got so long and involved — it involves trying to explain some thoughts I have about the world that I’ve never tried to set in writing before, partly because they take so long to explain — that I just set it aside, and decided to go ahead and post this.)

But in the meantime, consider this: Sen. Knotts is not accused of stealing from the state treasury, or high treason, or physical violence or anything else that would justify short-circuiting the voting relationship between him and his constituents. What he did was say a word — a word that reveals a particularly nasty, grossly unacceptable set of attitudes toward other people based upon the accidents of birth. It was inexcusable, and indicative of much deeper problems, of a great flaw of character.

There are people who believe that merely having such attitudes should be criminalized. I am not among them. For this reason I oppose “hate crime” laws. It’s one of the few things I agree with libertarians (like Jake’s enemy Mark Sanford) about. I believe it is unAmerican to punish a person for his attitudes, however grotesquely objectionable those attitudes are. What we should do is punish the act. And in this case, Jake Knotts didn’t ACT upon his attitude, he just said the word.

Then, let the attitude fend for itself in the public marketplace. This is particularly true of an attitude expressed by a politician. Let the voters decide whether they can live with what it reveals of the candidate’s character. Yes, I know that many people disapprove of the decisions that other voters make. But that’s none of their business. If the poor, black electorate of Washington, D.C., wants to re-elect Marion Barry, that’s up to them — unless he commits a felony or otherwise disqualifies himself. If the redneck white electorate of Georgia wants to elect a Lester Maddox, that is likewise up to them. One of the things these Lexington County Republicans are struggling with is whether they want to be associated with attitudes reminiscent of Gov. Maddox. Good for them. But the final arbiters must be the voters, not a party.

That’s the American way. With all its warts.

More on the subject — probably more than you want — later.

But only in a real emergency, mind you…

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Thanks to Jack Kuenzie for bringing our attention to this via Twitter:

Andre Bauer, describing himself on his FB page: “The only candidate who will tell the truth when need be.” Perhaps not the best wording. 1:21 PM Jun 9th via web

And sure enough, there it is, right where Jack said. The entire blurb:

From the honks to the road side chats our people are determined to vote for the real conservative in race for governor.The only candidate to give back his paycheck.The only candidate who runs his own business.The only candidate who has experience marketing South Carolina to business leaders across the world.The only candidate who will tell the truth when need be.

He means it, too. When the chips are down and all other options have been exhausted, ol’ Andre will flat tell you some truth, and take a polygraph to prove the amazing feat.

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Huck Finn, which I long ago used in a column about Bill Clinton:

So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly SAFER than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I’m a-going to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to.

Ol’ Huck had a finely developed moral sense, and could tell when it was time to do something as outrageous and “unregular” as tell the truth. And ol’ Andre’s making sure that we know that if and when the need arises, he can do the same.

The Fix lists Top Five nastiest SC races ever

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We are truly legendary, to the point that political junkies sit around up in Washington dreaming up Top Five lists about us, a laHigh Fidelity, such as “The five nastiest South Carolina races ever.”

At least, Chris Cillizza at the WashPost‘s The Fix does.

And it’s a pretty good list even though it’s awfully heavy on stuff that happened during my own career. He does, to give him credit, give a mention to the legendary Preston Brooks, but the Top Five are all 1978 or later.

Given that limitation, it’s a good list. He counts them down thusly:

5. 2002 Republican governors runoff: This is the one I wrote about yesterday (at least, I wrote about the GOP effort to come together AFTER this nasty battle), between Mark Sanford and Bob Peeler. Peeler’s campaign, run by party regulars, was inexcusable, as Cillizza correctly recalls: “In one particularly memorable Peeler ad, a Sanford look-alike is shown stripping a soldier down to his underwear to illustrate Sanford’s alleged attitude toward military funding.” Yep. I remember it well.

4. 1978 4th district race: The abominable campaign against Max Heller, featuring anti-Semitic push-polling by Carroll Campbell’s pollster. I was in Tennessee at the time covering Lamar Alexander and Jake Butcher, but I’ve heard plenty about this from my good friend Samuel Tenenbaum over the years.

3. 1980 2nd district race: Also before I came home to SC, but I knew the players later: Lee Atwater, on behalf of Floyd Spence, told the press that Tom Turnipseed had been hooked up to “jumper cables” — a reference to shock treatments he had received for depression as a teenager.

2. 2010 Republican governors primary: That’s the one we just lived through. Or rather, are still living through. If we live.

1. 2000 Republican presidential primary: The filthy tricks that George W. Bush’s campaign used against John McCain to stop his candidacy and give Bush the momentum to go on and win the presidency. Not sure this was necessarily the nastiest by SC standards, but it certainly had the most profound impact on the world. I firmly believe that otherwise John McCain would have been our president on 9/11 and thereafter, which would have been better for us all. That knowledge of how South Carolina let the world down was very much on my mind when we pushed for McCain’s victory in the 2008 primary. (I also felt responsible because the newspaper — over my strong objections — endorsed Bush over McCain in 2000.)

They keep talking about us. And they will continue to do so, until we turn our backs on all this stuff. Which is why I’m rooting for Vincent Sheheen.

The Politico profile of Will Folks

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Monday night, as I was resting up before election day, I got an e-mail from Ben Smith at Politico asking for an interview the following day — about Will Folks and the Nikki Haley story.

I said OK, and called him next morning on the Blackberry as I was driving to my polling place to vote. I was a little distracted during the interview because I was hunting for my polling place (sometimes it’s at the John Deere place on 378, sometimes at the church across the road — and I mistakenly went to the Deere place first as we spoke), but he seems to have extracted a couple of tidbits worth using.

Nothing I haven’t said before here, I don’t think. But y’all might find the piece interesting. It’s fairly long — which means that Polito has now published more about Will Folks than my old newspaper did this morning about Alvin Greene. Sigh…

It’s called “The blogger who upended S.C. politics.” Which you know Will’s gotta be digging.

Will GOP be willing to come back together?

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The Republican Party theoretically has all the advantages looking toward November, in the gubernatorial election as well as in others: After all, more than twice as many people took a Republican ballot yesterday as voted in the Democratic. Even though she didn’t win her primary outright the way Vincent Sheheen did, Nikki Haley still got a lot more votes than he did. Her 49 percent represented more than 204,000 votes. Sheheen’s 59 percent represented only 110,000.

And the embarrassment over the winner of the Dems’ primary for U.S. Senate shows that’s a party that still has a way to go to get its act together.

But if the GOP continues to be as bitterly divided as it has been lately, if she can’t put all the bickering behind her, that advantage could melt away as Republican get discouraged and stay home, and independents move toward the more upbeat, unifying figure of Vincent Sheheen.

If history is the only guide, she has nothing to worry about: Republicans ALWAYS put their differences behind them after the primary.

But will they this year? I mean, seriously, have you ever seen it get this nasty before? And not even because of anything any of the candidates did. But the things that were done around them — the words of Will Folks, Larry Marchant and Jake Knotts, and the accusations and counter-accusations that came in response to what they said — revealed some bitter fissures that seem unlikely to heal easily.

Will the mainstream Republicans who have been so roundly criticized by Nikki actually line up behind her? I mean, her campaign from the start has been from the beginning more of a crusade against them than against Democrats. One is reminded of Democrat Pug Ravenel, who in 1974 called the Establishment Democrats who ran the Legislature a “den of thieves” — in response to which they took him to court and had him stripped of his nomination and dropped down the memory hole, a series of events that led a fed-up electorate to choose the first Republican governor since Reconstruction.

I find myself remembering something else closer to the present day. In 2002, Mark Sanford won a bitter runoff campaign to become the GOP nominee. I was greatly gratified over that, and pretty disgusted with the mainstream Republicans who had run a campaign that I felt sometimes went outside the bounds. (If you’ll recall, I strongly supported Sanford at the time. I thought he was the kind of good-government advocate that Nikki portrays herself as today.) Well, he showed them, right?

But as unpleasant as the campaign was, immediately after the runoff — I’m remembering it as the next day or so — leading Republicans from throughout the state, representing all his primary opponents, gathered on a dais outside of party headquarters for a big kiss-and-make-up ceremony at which they pledged their undying loyalty, and their unflagging efforts to get him elected in the fall. I was struck by some of the people who showed up — even Glenn McConnell, who doesn’t give governors of either party the time of day normally (McConnell’s party is the Senate more than the GOP).

I was there, and I wanted to talk to Sanford for something I was working on, but didn’t get a chance to talk to him. I did run into Jenny, and asked her to give him the message that I was looking for him. He called me later on his mobile from a car leaving town.

I said something like, “That was some event, huh? They’re really lining up behind you.” And while I don’t have the exact words in front of me, he said something life, “Yeah, well. I suppose one has to do those kinds of things.” He was MIGHTILY bored, and his voiced just dripped contempt for these former rivals who had showed up to promise to fight for him. He obviously saw himself as someone apart from and above the whole GOP solidarity thing.

Now, you know, I can’t stand political parties, and I think party loyalty is one of the most harmful forces in American politics — it fosters intellectual dishonesty, requiring that adherents always agree with the most foolish thing that a member of their party says, and disagree with the wisest utterances of their opponents. And I liked that Sanford wasn’t a typical Republican in that regard.

But even I was put off by his condescension. It was really obnoxious. But at the time, I brushed past it, moving on to the reason I had wanted him to call me. And it was just such an ODD moment — you know how it is sometimes when somebody says something really odd and off-key, and you just move past it — that I didn’t know how to take it or what to say about it.

Now I do. Now I’ve seen, over and over, the kind of contempt in which Mark Sanford holds those poor saps who came out to support him that day. Now, that remark doesn’t stand out as a stray anomaly. It fits.

More than that, they’ve seen it, too. And they are bound to be wary of lining up behind someone else who shows every sign of wanting to be just like Mark Sanford, someone who hasn’t even waited to become governor to alienate them and run against them.

So I wonder: Will the usual thing happen? Will the GOP close ranks and line up behind Nikki Haley? And will they be saps again if they do so?

Just in case you thought DeMint was in trouble…

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Not that you did, but just in case you did, I’ll share this release from Democratic Party HQ:

Columbia, SC- Today, South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler asked Alvin Greene to withdraw from the race for US Senate. Greene, a resident of Manning S.C., was the apparent winner of the Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate in yesterday’s primary. Since the election, the Associated Press has revealed that Greene was recently charged with disseminating, procuring or promoting obscenity after showing obscene photos to a University of South Carolina student. Fowler released the following statement after her conversation with Greene:

“Today I spoke with Alvin Greene, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the US Senate, and asked him to withdraw from the race. I did not do this lightly, as I believe strongly that the Democratic voters of this state have the right to select our nominee. But this new information about Mr. Greene has would certainly have affected the decisions of many of those voters,” said Fowler.

“We are proud to have nominated a Democratic ticket this year that, with the apparent exception of Mr. Greene, reflects South Carolina’s values. Our candidates want to give this state a new beginning without the drama and irresponsibility of the past 8 years, and the charges against Mr. Greene indicate that he cannot contribute to that new beginning. I hope he will see the wisdom of leaving the race.”

You see, the Democrats are jealous: The Republicans are getting all that free media on “The Daily Show,” and they want some, too…

Count your blessings, SC: Andre won’t be our governor

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Amid all the hoo-hah over Nikki Haley and Gresham Barrett and Vincent Sheheen, and Converse Chellis losing his job and all that down-ballot stuff, it’s easy to forget to be thankful for something:

Andre Bauer is not going to be our governor.

You’re going to scoff, now, and say “How absurd; he was never going to be our governor!” And I say, how soon we forget.

Remember that last year, when we were all suffering Sanford fatigue and thinking how great it would be not to have to look at his long, morose face any more, mooning over his soulmate, we’d get to the point of talking about getting rid of him, and somebody would always say, “Hold on! No way! Then we’d be stuck with Andre.”

Now I thought that was wrongheaded. I thought the very best way to make sure that Andre would NOT be elected governor would be to make him our interim governor. I felt certain that the best way to inoculate ourselves against him was with a big dose of scrutiny. And to make him governor at a time when that office was under unprecedented close attention would guarantee he’d have no chance at the ballot box.

As things worked out, he got enough scrutiny for voters to say “No way.” But if he had been serving as governor, there would have been so much more. There would have been another “free-lunch school kids are like stray animals” moment practically every day.

To me, the secret to Andre’s success was that he had to do something extremely outrageous — such as driving over 100 miles per hour in his state car and evading a ticket by reminding the trooper who he was, or alarming a city cop so much by his wild behavior in broad daylight on Assembly Street to cause the cop to draw his weapon, or crashing an airplane — to draw attention. As governor, we’d be watching him more, and seeing more.

The reason knowledgeable folks were having these debates — would letting him be interim governor give him a better chance or worse chance? — was that we all knew something about Andre: No matter how dim you think his chances are, he always wins elections. He seemed like a weak House candidate — but he won. He seemed like he’d never make the senate — but he did. When he sought statewide office, no one worried — but he became lieutenant governor. And from the moment that happened, everybody knew what he would try for next. The “hardest-working man in SC politics,” as both friends and detractors styled him, would never quit before he had won the top job. This is the guy who came in second in the primary in 2002, but won the runoff. Then, the same thing happened in 2006, which we all thought meant the voters had enough of him — but he won the runoff AGAIN. You just could not count him out.

The idea he would become our governor, in keeping with this maddening illogic of inevitability, has been a worry nagging at the back of my mind for the past eight years. But now, none of us has to worry about that any more.

So thanks for that, Nikki Haley. And Jake Knotts. And Larry Marchant. And Chip Saltsman (remember? the “Barack the Magic Negro” guy). And all the unsung heroes who have played a role in making sure that we wouldn’t be saying “Governor Bauer” a year from now.

Now — once Nikki has dispensed with Gresham Barrett — we just have to ask ourselves one question: With Andre out of the way, which candidate — Nikki Haley or Vincent Sheheen — would be more likely to get us on “The Daily Show” the most? And then, we most vote for the other candidate.

If I were endorsing, I’d endorse Vincent Sheheen

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Ignore what I wrote in that last post. It does Vincent Sheheen a great disservice, by suggesting the reason to pick a Democratic ballot and vote for him tomorrow is simply because of the mere absence of negativity in his campaign.

He deserves a much more positive endorsement than that, for the simple reason that he is far and away the best candidate running for governor in 2010, a year in which we badly need new and visionary leadership in the governor’s office.

Of course, I put myself in a bind a couple of months back, when I sorta kinda decided not to endorse candidates as a blogger. I had all sorts of good reasons not to: No one was paying me to take all that aggravation. No longer representing the voice of the state’s largest newspaper (at least, that’s what it was when I was there), I had no institutional obligation to do it. And while doing it for the newspaper was business, if I did it on my own blog it would be personal, with all the many levels of messiness that entails. Then there was the unstated reason: For the first time ever, I found myself in a situation in which there would be a personal cost of sticking my neck out. A year’s unemployment had shown me how reluctant employers can be to take on someone with as much well-documented baggage as I have (much of it from having taking a stand FOR this powerful person, and AGAINST that one). And I was about to start trying to sell advertising, with the only thing I had to sell being my own brand and how it was perceived — and there is no surer, more infallible way to infuriate close to 50 percent of the public than to choose one candidate over another. Did I not owe it to my family to try to launch this enterprise on a sound footing, and not undermine it by making arrogant (at least, that’s how a lot of people perceive endorsements) pronouncements that would inevitably alienate? After all, I could be honest about what I think about candidates without taking that formal, irrevocable step.

Lots of good, solid, self-interested reasons not to endorse, right?

Well… sometimes one must stand up and be counted, even when one is not being paid to do so. Remember how, when Grace Kelly demanded to know why Gary Cooper had to make a suicidal stand against Frank Miller and his thugs when he wasn’t the marshal any more, he explained “I’ve got to, that’s the whole thing.“? Full of nuance, that Gary Cooper. Anyway, this is an “I just gotta” moment for me, minus the gunplay (we hope). There are things more important than my own self-interest, or the good of the blog. One of them is South Carolina’s crying need for new leadership at this point in its history.

Ours is still a poor state. On all sorts of measurements of economic and social and physical well-being, from income to health, we continue to be last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last. We continue to have a political culture, and institutional structure, that reinforces that dynamic, and resists change more steadfastly than the government of any other state. Our government was designed by landed slaveholders to preserve the status quo, because that’s what benefited them. Those men are all gone, but the system of government designed to serve them still exists, and holds us back.

We are also held back by a lack of trust of each other, and a lack of faith in the idea that together, we can overcome the challenges that face us. This manifests itself in the phenomenon we see being played out so dramatically in the Republican primary this year, as the candidates — even candidates I would think would know better — compete to see who can be the most negative, the most rabidly anti-government. What does it mean to be anti-government, in this context? It means to deny faith in our ability to get together, people of different attitudes and philosophies, and work through our differences to build a better future to share.

The radical individualism that all of the Republican candidates embody this year — especially Nikki Haley, the front-runner — has been tried in South Carolina, over and over. Our current governor, Mark Sanford, is easily the most ideologically pure manifestation of that philosophy ever to hold that office.

It is painfully clear after eight years of Mark Sanford — whom I enthusiastically endorsed in 2002 — that such an “I, me, mine” approach to governance does not work. One cannot govern effectively when one holds governing in contempt. That should have been obvious then. It’s certainly obvious now.

Vincent Sheheen offers the positive alternative. Not the “big-government, liberal” alternative that the propagandists of the GOP will accuse him of offering (not because of anything he advocates, but because that is their reflexive, automatic reaction to everything), but a sensible, moderate South Carolina-friendly approach unencumbered by radical ideology of any kind. Before he began this campaign, he was pushing his own proposal for restructuring our government to make it effective and accountable for a change. It is a pragmatic approach that would actually have a chance of becoming law if a governor were behind it. Rather than throwing unacceptable ultimatums at the Legislature and reveling in lawmakers’ rejection, Vincent Sheheen would actually work with lawmakers of both parties (he has a proven ability to do so) to make his proposal a reality. Instead of a governor who can’t even work with his own party and doesn’t want to, imagine how wonderful it would be to have one who works amicably with both?

Now, many of these same things can also be said of Jim Rex. He, too, has a positive, teamwork approach. He’s worked across party lines in advancing his public school choice initiatives, and has formed alliances with some of the most conservative Republicans in trying to improve the way schools are funded in South Carolina. But, because it’s been his job, his policy experience in office has been limited to education. And while better education may be the thing South Carolina needs most, it’s not the only thing; Vincent Sheheen’s experience with public policy is broader, despite his youth.

And in this election, when we have such a need for new beginnings, his youth is an advantage.

That I would say that would surprise some people who have worked most closely with me. I was the grumpy eminence grise on the editorial board who would ask a young candidate, “How old ARE you, anyway?” with a tone that suggested they hadn’t lived enough to be ready for the office they were seeking.

But it’s time now for a generational change. And among the 39-year-old Sheheen’s strengths is the fact that he offers us that.

An old friend, sensing I was leaning that way — because I’ve been honest about what I think of candidates, however much I’ve resisted a formal endorsement — asked me several weeks ago why I would choose Vincent over Jim. I answered as follows, after protesting that I was not, repeat, NOT going to endorse:

Now between you and me, I’d go with Vincent. So you inferred correctly.

Several reasons:
1. You know that with me, it’s seldom about the sum of policy positions. I would be hard-pressed to tell you [off the top of my head] what their policy positions are, beyond the fact that nothing has jumped out at me as bad. Rex has a plan for spending cigarette tax money that I’m not sure about, and I know Vincent’s all about restructuring, to cite a couple of differences that jump to mind. And the restructuring is a biggie.
2. So that leaves us with character, and I think the character of both is fine. But I’ve seen Vincent grow during this campaign in terms of his ability to connect with voters, while Rex is still that trustworty elder statesman who I’d be OK with as governor, but who isn’t likely to inspire. Vincent generates a newness, a sense of a new generation taking over from all the nonsense of the past, that is appealing. And he wears it well; he has his head on straight.
3. Vincent could work with the Legislature. He’s one of them, and that helps make up for being a Democrat. He would come in with lawmakers knowing that about him. He could make a difference. Rex is the guy that they’re accustomed to thinking of as “that ONE statewide Democrat,” and they just won’t be as likely to want to engage with him.
4. Vincent could win in November. Normally I wouldn’t mention that, but this year it’s important. The Republicans are all running so hard to the right, trying so hard to convince us that, in varying ways, they will be Mark Sanfords — even Henry, who should know better — that this year I just don’t see anything good coming out of any of them becoming governor. We so desperately need a break from what we have. And that makes it vitally important that the Democratic nominee not only be someone who’d be an improvement over what we have, but who could WIN in the face of the odds, which are always against the Democrat.

Let me stress again the generational factor. South Carolina needs a fresh start, a real break with its recent past. Vincent embodies that the best. This is a decision I’ve come to gradually, in my own holistic, intuitive way, but I’ve tried to spell it out as systematically as I can for you.

To elaborate on that: Rex radiates the aura of a civic-minded retired guy who’s willing to “give back” if there’s no one else to do the job. Vincent wants to build a better South Carolina, the one that he and his young children will live in. Makes a difference.

It occurs to me that I do my readers a disservice by sharing those thoughts privately with one friend, but not openly with them. So there it is. It may seem to be high on intangibles and low on specifics, but that’s because I had already reached the conclusions that on the specifics, I’ve concluded that Vincent is sound. That makes the intangibles — the ability to inspire, the ability to be positive rather than negative — of great importance. We didn’t worry about the intangibles (such as his aloof manner, his sleep-on-the-futon quirkiness, his hermitlike aversion to the company of other Republicans) with Mark Sanford, and look where it got us.

As I’ve explained before, none of the Republicans is offering us anything positive for our future. That puts me in the unaccustomed position of not having a preferred candidate on that side. But there is no doubt that there is a Democrat who stands well above them all, as well as being a stronger candidate than any in his own party.

That candidate is Vincent Sheheen.

At least, that would be what I’d say if I were endorsing.

What do Folks and Marchant do after Nikki wins?

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Here’s an interesting (if unsavory) thing to contemplate…

First, it’s pretty much a given that Nikki Haley will win the GOP nomination — maybe even without a runoff. So what happens after that?

Well, one’s first instinct as a longtime observer of politics is to think, The allegations against her character aren’t going away. And while folks rallied around her at the last minute to give her the nomination, I’ve seen the way scandals wear away support for a political figure over time. Several months of such talk will erode a lot of her support.

But will that happen in this case? I don’t know. And the reason I say that is this: If Will Folks and Larry Marchant keep on maintaining that what they said is true — say, if Will Folks keeps raising the question of why Nikki, the transparency heroine, won’t release her phone records — then she’s in trouble over the course of several month. Scandal-weary independents, and maybe a few Republicans, will go with the squeaky-clean Vincent Sheheen as a way of putting it all behind them.

But would Folks and Marchant do that, or will they fade as quietly into the background as they can, to deal with their own personal demons? There’s reason to believe they would.

Here’s why: After primaries, Republicans close ranks. It’s what they do. Sure, there’s reason to think that some of them won’t do it this time — Nikki has run AGAINST the GOP establishment, talking about the need to elect “conservatives” rather than Republicans. But most likely their instincts will kick in, and they will swallow their pride and line up behind her.

And if they do that, what sort of future to Folks and Marchant have if they continue to try to trash her reputation? These guys may not have all that many friends — especially Folks — but the ones they have are all Republicans. And the school-choice, anti-gummint kind of Republicans at that. As I’ve noted before, the only GOP candidate I could imagine Folks supporting would be Nikki. In fact, one of the only two explanations of this scandal that makes sense is that Will’s doing it to help Nikki by drumming up sympathy for her (that’s if he’s lying; the other scenario that adds up is if everything he’s saying is true, but I recoil from believing that of Nikki).

All of that argues for these guys curling up into a ball and hoping not to get noticed any more. (Of course, the main thing that argues AGAINST that is Will “LOOK AT ME!” Folks’ natural propensity to make as much noise as possible. In which case we see whether there’s anyone who can still sit him down and persuade him to behave, which remains to be seen.)

Anyway, in a month or so the pattern will have emerged…