Category Archives: Contact report

Say hello to Daddy Warbucks, only with hair

"Are you talkin' to ME?..."

Had an odd thing happen just a few minutes ago, as I was leaving a local drugstore, on my way back from taping something at ETV.

As I crossed the parking lot, I heard a small voice pipe up behind me, “Do you know where there are any jobs?”

Hearing no one respond, I turned and found a cute, petite, college-age (this was near USC) girl hurrying to catch up with me.

Once it was established she was addressing me, I asked, in order to have something to say, “What sort of job?” I was prepared for her to say almost anything, but not what she said: “Administrative.” Something ran through my head that the HR director at The State once told me about how young people today have unrealistic expectations of starting at the top.

I must have looked questioning, because she added, by way of explication, “You know, office work…”

“Well,” I told her, slowly, “I don’t know of anything at the moment…” searching my brain, thinking Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to live up to this girl’s unlikely expectation of me and actually connect this question with an actual job I’ve heard about, but came up dry.

Not wanting to leave it at that, I said, “Would you like to give me a card, so that if I hear of anything…?” with the alarm bells going off in my head as I realized how much that sounded like You wanna give me your phone number?, or how much it might sound like it to someone of her age and experience in life, but it was completely innocent, just what I’d ask of anyone else who told me he or she was job-hunting…

She, continuing to move on past me as I arrived at my car — I realized that we had kept moving the whole time — patted her pocket sort of nervously as though she would normally have cards, but had none today, and said, “No, I don’t have any cards on me…”

And I said, “Well, good luck!” And that was that.

She was bold as brass, which I suppose will stand her in good stead at some point. But what did I look like to her? Like Daddy Warbucks with hair, I suppose.

I didn’t have the heart to call after her and say, Honey, you just don’t know… it took me a year to find a job for myself…

Why spoil her illusions, especially when they are so flattering to me? She looked at me and thought me a powerful and magnanimous man, able to scatter jobs across the pavement like so many doubloons from a Mardi Gras float. Why spoil that, indeed?

Mojitos: The best new thing I’ve tried lately

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Since I’ve become a Mad Man, I’ve branched out a bit in my eating out. Since for me every unknown menu is like a minefield, my usual M.O. is to approach eating out the way a cautious commander approaches a military campaign: Only on familiar terrain using proven tactics — in other words, going to three or four places where I know the menu, and only ordering one or two things from it. (And don’t even eat out, if it can be avoided. Mamanem know what you can eat.) Hey, it’s kept me alive so far.

But Lanier, Brian and Lora eat out pretty much every day, and invite me along. So I’ve come to try and enjoy new things at Al Amir, and Nick’s, and Doc’s Gumbo Grill, the Mouse Trap and other places. I still pull them toward my old faves — Yesterday’s, Longhorn and the like — whenever I can get away with it, but my horizons have been broadened.

Today, however, I must report having enjoyed the best new thing I’ve tried since starting at ADCO. It was at Mojitos Tropical Cafe on Gervais, a place that just opened a couple of weeks back. It was fantastic, especially what I had — the pulled pork with saffron rice, black beans, sweet plantains and yuca con mojo.

We also had a great chat with the matriarch of the family that runs this joint and Salsa Cabana, Jane Fishburne, whose mother was Spanish and comes by this sort of cuisine honestly (although it’s her daughter, Lynette, who does the cooking). I gave her a card and urged her to consider a blog ad. She responded by saying that the Shop Tart has brought them about half their business so far.

So I’ve been scooped. In fact, the Tart even wrote about the place before it was opened. An excerpt:

Speaking of good stuff, Tracie and the Shop Tart spent a while chatting with owner Jane, who is in the process of opening another business, Mojito’s Tropical Cafe on Gervais in the space formerly occupied by night club Hush. She is awesome and introduced them to her daughter Lynette, who will be the chef at the new place. They also met Jane’s son Gabriel and his girlfriend Crystal, who might be the best-looking couple in all of Columbia, if not the world. They noticed the Shop Tart’s empty glass and insisted on getting her next round. They asked what she was drinking. She hesitated, not wanting to be greedy. “Vodka soda,” she answered, not wanting to admit to the pricey Grey Goose she has come to love. (Thank you, Fergie.) Crystal’s response? “Grey Goose, right?,” with a wink. Perceptive lady. (And yummy vodka.)

So she was ahead of the curve on that. Not to mention being way ahead of me on the blog ad front. Oh, well — her success is well deserved.

And Mojitos is deserving of all the success the Vista can provide. I’ll be going back, for sure. And if — no, when — you go, be sure to tell Jane you read about it here. And try the pulled pork. It was pretty awesome. For one used to barbecue, the more subtle flavorings on the meat were a really nice change of pace, and a great accompaniment to the beans and rice.

Oh, and watch out — while the place wasn’t crowded when I was there, Columbia’s Mad Men are discovering it, so it’s liable to be jammed before you know it. David Campbell from Chernoff Newman came in with a couple of others just as we were leaving. Dang, just like that guy Ted Chaough tracking Don Draper — every time I look in my rearview mirror, there’s Campbell…

Randolph and Mortimer Duke, redux

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This afternoon at Rotary I found myself seated next to Boyd Summers, Richland County Democratic Party chairman. (Just to be ecumenical and UnParty, I also chatted with Richland County Republican Chairman Eric Davis after the meeting, so there.)

It was noted that he and I were wearing essentially the same tie, although mine was bow and his was not. Sort of a Palmetto variation on the old Brigade of Guards regimental stripe.

Anyway, having arrived way early for the meeting (I rode with Lanier Jones from ADCO, and as an ex-president of the club, he goes early), I had time for a digression. So I noted that we were like the Duke brothers, Randolph and Mortimer. I had to explain that the Duke brothers were the partners in Duke and Duke, the fictional Philadelphia commodities brokers in “Trading Places,” and that in every scene, they were wearing ties made from the same material, only Randolph (you know, Randy, like Randy Jackson of the Jackson five) wore a bow and Mortimer wore the more boring sort of tie.

When I was done with the explanation, John Durst said wow, you really notice detail, don’t you? I allowed as how I did, but that’s not really true. I mean, how could anyone NOT notice something like that — especially when one has seen the flick a certain number of times?

After the meeting, I got John to use my Blackberry to shoot the above photo, to record the moment. Aren’t you glad I did?

By the way, Joe Wilson noted to me that he, too, was wearing a similar tie. I nodded, but I was humoring him. His was like Boyd’s, except silver (as in, “Silver Elephant”) in the places where it should have been dark red. Obviously, Joe misread the memo.

Remembering the suffering at the Bulge, and elsewhere

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This morning, Henry McMaster dropped by my table at breakfast, opening our conversation by saying, “Are you blogging somebody over here?” Which I took to mean that he was somewhat wary of talking with me after this incident. Or maybe he was referring to this piece involving his protege Trey Walker.

In any case, we didn’t dwell on the subject, but moved to something more important. Henry, apparently seeing I was reading the paper, mentioned The State‘s series this week about the survivors of the Battle of the Bulge. He immediately fixed on the very thing that always fascinates me about that battle — the day-to-day, routine human suffering apart from the combat. He said something like, “And we think WE have it tough sometimes…”

Indeed. As one who has never been tested by combat, but have certainly thought a lot about it, the thing that I’ve always found most intimidating about it is not the actual shooting part. Yeah, if you survived something like the landing at Omaha Beach, you’d be marked by the trauma for life. But in my own imagination at least, that part would be easy compared to the day-to-day misery of living in the field in harsh conditions.

And what the men trapped by the German blitz in the Ardennes went through is an extreme example.

This Bulge reunion is a particularly poignant event for my family, because when I first heard about it, I had thought of how we might be able to bring my father-in-law here for it. But he didn’t make it. He died in January. And when I told y’all about it on the blog, I wrote the following:

My father-in-law, Walter Joseph Phelan Jr., lived a full and worthwhile life. I was thinking yesterday as we mucked through the ice and snow about some of the far-harsher hardships he endured along the way. He was there in the Ardennes in late 1944, the coldest winter in Europe in a century, when the massive, unexpected German attack came. He was a member of the ill-fated 106th Infantry Division (like Kurt Vonnegut). That means he was right at the point of the German spear, right where it smashed through the Allied lines. A friend fell right beside him in the snow, victim of a bullet he felt was meant for him. If he had been the one it found, I’d never have met my wife, and our children and grandchildren wouldn’t exist.

Like Vonnegut and thousands of others, he was captured and held in a German stalag in the last months of the war, when the Germans didn’t even have enough food for themselves, much less for prisoners. After that experience, he never wanted to go to Europe again, and didn’t.

The coldest winter in Europe in a century… That detail from Stephen Ambrose’s Citizen Soldiers has stuck with me ever since I read it. Some of our troops, such as members of the 101st Airborne, were out in that, living in foxholes, for over a month. Every morning, as they stirred, their clothing would crackle as the ice that had formed in it overnight would break. In many instances, they couldn’t build fires for fear of revealing their positions.

I find the idea of soldiering on under such conditions inconceivable. Even if you weren’t killed, or captured (like Mr. Phelan), or wounded (like Bill Guarnere, who lost a leg in an artillery barrage), how on Earth did they not break? Many did, of course. But who could blame them.

Right now, I’m reading With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge. Many have noted that for the Marines in the Pacific, the entire war was just as miserable as what the Army endured at the Bulge — only it was mud and blood and jungle rot rather than sub-freezing temperatures — and such books as this one and the one I just finished, Bob Leckie’s Helmet for My Pillow, present compelling evidence to that effect. As Sledge wrote of Okinawa, the Marines lived day after day in “an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell’s own cesspool.”

There was a passage Sledge’s book that sticks with me, about how after that experience, the veterans had trouble relating to the rest of us back home; they had to struggle “to comprehend people who griped because America wasn’t perfect, or their coffee wasn’t hot enough, or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or bus.”

People like me. I just notice my coffee has grown cold as I was typing this. As I go to replace it with hot, I am mindful of the privilege, and those who suffered and died to make my life so easy.

Just ran into Nikki Haley. She looked well…

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I ran into Nikki Haley at lunch today, at M Vista on Lady Street. She was there with Rob Godfrey and Tim Pearson of her campaign.

I think it was the first time I’d conversed with her since that time at Starbucks on Gervais shortly after the 2008 election. That day, she had a young woman in tow whom she introduced as being “with my campaign,” and I thought that was odd. The ’08 campaign was over, and it was early for a House candidate to be having meetings about the next campaign. I was probably the most shocked guy in South Carolina when it came out a month or two later than she was running for governor — it just seemed so totally unlikely that she would see herself as ready for that. It was the beginning of me seriously wondering about Nikki…

Anyway, Nikki was pleasant and charming as always when I went up to chat with her today. I don’t think Rob or Tim were all that thrilled to see me, though. They certainly didn’t smile, but then we guys don’t, do we, under such circumstances? Nikki did, but then ladies do.

We didn’t talk shop. She did the standard thing polite people do when other topics are awkward — she asked after my family. Then she asked how I was doing, and I told her that I was with ADCO and having lunch with my colleagues over there, and gave her one of my ADCO cards. She said I was probably glad not to be at the paper any more, and I thought that was perceptive of her. Or a good guess. Maybe it was just an understated slap at the paper; I don’t know. So I asked how she was holding up, and she said great, and I said something about how things had probably gotten a lot less crazy in the last few weeks, and she agreed. And then she asked me again about my family. So I began to dismiss myself, thinking I should wish her all the best but wanting to be honest, and ended up saying something totally inane like, “Well, as long as you’re enjoying yourself; that’s the thing…”

My ADCO friends thought it odd that I had gone to speak with her. Maybe they thought I was showing off, as in That Brad! He’ll just do any crazy thing! But that’s because they only know about Nikki and me through what I’ve written on the blog lately. They don’t realize that I’ve known her for years, and we’ve always had a very cordial relationship. I’ve happily endorsed her twice — in 2004 and 2008 (those were the only elections in which she had opposition), and always enjoyed chatting with her. I always had good hopes for her — before she embarked on her quest to become the new Mark Sanford and darling of the Tea Party, South Carolina’s answer to Sarah Palin. Which is deeply unfortunate.

So it was nice to see her, even though there was that slight awkwardness.

Everything conspires against me, including myself (See you next time, Joe)

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Well, I was sort of looking forward to seeing ol’ Joe Biden again for the first time since fall 2007. He can be quite entertaining, especially when he’s talking about his old buddy Fritz Hollings. Also, I hadn’t seen Fritz in a while, and was interested to know how he was doing.

So I was glad to RSVP that I would indeed attend the dedication ceremony for Fritz’ new library, and grateful to Harris Pastides et al. for remembering to invite me. (Still am, so thanks again for including me in your plans.) Then, after I RSVPed, I put it on my calendar and put it out of my mind.

Then this morning, I had a new thought: It was Friday. I knew from memory that I had no meetings with ADCO clients. So I decided to go casual like everybody else at the office. Or casual for me, anyway. I put on some worn-out, rumple gray chinos and a sport shirt I bought several years ago for $3 at a Wal-Mart up in Pennsylvania. And a jacket from an old khaki suit. I have to wear a jacket, so I have someplace to put my stuff (wallet, keys, notebook, other junk).

And no tie. Which to me is like walking down the street naked. This is only like the second time I’ve done this since starting at ADCO.

Then at breakfast, I read that the Hollings library thing was today. OK, so I do have something to do today. Forgot that. Fine. It will give me something for the blog, maybe something good.

Then on the way out after breakfast, I saw myself in a mirror. Oh, no. I was going to have to go all the way back home and change. I looked like a seedy character from a Graham Greene novel, on acid (the strangely colored shirt being the acid part).

(At this point, you highly organized people are wondering, “Why don’t you consult your calendar every morning when you’re getting dressed, so you know how to dress ahead of time?” And you’re wondering it with that really irritating tone that highly organized people have. Well, I’ll tell you … years ago, I decided to dress in a suit and tie every day so that it didn’t matter what I had to do that day, since often things came up during the day that I couldn’t anticipate, things that weren’t on my calendar yet anyway. So I started waiting to consult my calendar when I got in. It just had not struck me, standing half asleep in the closet this morning, that deciding to do something as radical as not wearing a tie required entirely different assumptions about daily procedures. In the future, I’ll think of that.)

But I needed to get to the office and do SOME work. So I went, and feeling like I neglected the blog yesterday, I posted something quick and easy and then plunged into my e-mail and getting organized on a couple of ADCO projects. Next thing I knew, it was 11:13, with the Hollings thing starting at 12.

For a second, I thought about going as I was. That way there’d be no rush. I could walk over to the event. But then I thought, no, your invitation is at home. And this isn’t a typical university event; you’re going to be dealing with the Secret Service, and you know what obsessives they are. They aren’t just going to say, “Oh, it’s Brad; come on in.”

So I ran home, knowing I could still be on time if unless I ran into really bad traffic.

When I’m a block from the office, I realize I don’t have my camera. Damn, damn, damn. Turn around? Try to swing back by the office to get it on my way after changing and getting the invitation? Neither. I decided I’d make do with the Blackberry. I wanted to be on time. Any other event like this, the speaking wouldn’t start until half an hour into it, but the Secret Service was involved. I had to be on time.

And at this point, I would have been. At least, I would have made it by noon — fairly easily.

So I get home, a little impatient with the traffic, but it’s OK. I’m good. I change into a good suit, white shirt, tie. No problem. And then I start looking for the invitation. It’s not on the dresser. Damn, damn, damn. It’s not on the desk in my home office. Damn, damn… I suddenly remembered: Even though I had received the invitation at home, when I had called to RSVP, I had done it from the office.

Oh, damndamndamndamndamndamn.

At this point, having turned up the thermostat in the house when I’d left that morning, I’m starting to sweat in the suit. So I jump back in the car, and rave at the traffic all the way back from the office. I’ve got the AC on me full blast, but the sweat is taking hold. I go to park in front of ADCO, and for the first time since I’ve started here, there’s a guy standing right there checking meters. So I get out my SmartCard and put 20 minutes on the thing, when I just need 20 seconds. Then I rush up the stairs, tripping on one, causing a co-worker to call out, “Are you OK?” Yeahyeahyeah, I’m fine.

The invitation is not readily at hand. I start picking up piles of paper and other junk and rifling through it, dropping every pile on the floor as I finish going through it. Of course, the invitation is at the bottom of the very last pile. I jam it into my pocket and grab my camera, long as I’m here…

Damndamndamn…

I get back in the car, head over toward campus, and as I start looking for a parking space, it’s noon. Well, I failed. By now I’m sweating like a pig in the new suit, and I’ve gone to so much trouble that I figure I’ll try to go anyway. Luckily (my first bit of luck all day), I find a space only a block away, since it’s summer. I get out, put an hour and a half on the meter, take off my coat and head for the library. Sweating like mad.

As I’m heading there, it occurs to me that I don’t know exactly where I’m supposed to go, beyond the fact that it’s the Thomas Cooper library. The new thing is on the other side of the building, so where should I approach from?

I’ll bet the invitation will tell me…

Mind you, this is the first time that I had had any reason to look at the invitation beyond the time, date and place (“Noon on Friday, July 23, 2010,” it had said). I mean, what else do you look at an invitation for, aside from dress code and how to RSVP? And sure enough, there was a card inserted into the invitation with a map on one side saying to enter through the library main entrance. Good. That I can find.

Then, on the other side of the card from the map, there was a bulleted list of information, which if I had noticed before I suppose I had thought it was information about the new collection. You know how there’s usually an insert about that sort of thing. But it wasn’t. It was a list of instructions beginning with “Please bring this ticket with you to the dedication ceremony.”

Well, I had done that, but my heart sank. I had a premonition that there were going to be other requirements, perhaps requirements that had something to do with the fact that even though I was only five minutes late to an event that I knew would involve everybody being carefully checked at the front door, meaning people would still be filing in at this point… and the front of the library was deserted…

Yep. There it was. Third bullet: “Doors open at 10:00 a.m. All attendees must be in the Thomas Cooper Library by 11:45 a.m. Please allow ample time to find parking, walk to the Thomas Cooper Library, and be processed through event screening. There will be no exceptions made to this time frame.”

So that was that. After all that, I had failed to make it. I was too hot and harried at this point even to go, “Damndamndamn” any more.

But being the world’s most persistent optimist, rather than turning back to the car, since I had already walked halfway, and since I had spent a rushed hour trying to get this far, I kept going to the door.

And was turned away by a USC security guy who explained that the doors to the event were closed and the Secret Service, as is their wont, weren’t allowing anyone else in. “No exceptions.” I saw the Secret Service guys standing there, looking around with no more crowd to deal with, and reflected from long experience that no exceptions meant no exceptions. I’ve been pushed out of the way and yelled at for standing in the wrong place by these guys often enough in my career to know that they are no respecters of persons, and there is no arguing with their procedures (which is why I was never fond of covering events that involved them, since as a reporter I always sort of assumed that boundaries were for those other, less enterprising, reporters). I lamely, foolishly, gave the guy my excuse about having to run home looking for my invitation, because at a moment like that you want people to know that you weren’t being cavalier about the time, and he was sympathetic, but…

Sheesh.

Anyway, that’s why I don’t have a report for you on Joe Biden’s visit, or on how Fritz is doing. And why I’ll have to get the sweat cleaned out of my good suit even though I didn’t even make it to the event I put it on for. And why I’m feeling the frustration of knowing that the punctual people among you, the people who have judged and harangued and lectured me all my life because I’ve always tried to do to much and put myself in these situations, will smugly judge me again for this failure. Y’all are like that.

But I tried. I tried hard. It just didn’t work out.

Sorry, Fritz — I had wanted to see you again. Sorry, Joe. Sorry, Harris, for not making it to your event. I really wanted to.

Dang.

Blog readers and their kids!

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Yesterday, as I was on my way in to lunch, someone calls “Mr. Warthen!” — which strikes me as unnecessarily formal under the circumstances, but that’s what he said — and I turn and Phillip Bush, our regular commenter here, was just getting his little boy Spencer out of the car. At least, I learned that was our Phillip when he introduced himself.

As is my custom when I first meet people I had previously known only via the blog, I immediately took their picture with the Blackberry.

As Phillip explained by e-mail when I wrote to him to double-check Spencer’s name:

Spencer and I were just coming back from his third and final day of Sprout Camp at Riverbanks Botanical Garden, where I spent much of my time running around trying to keep him from inadvertently squashing the bugs, worms, etc. we were supposed to be looking at, in his newly-3-year-old enthusiasm. But we had lots of fun.

That encounter reminded me of another recent one that I forgot to share with y’all — I ran into Michael Rodgers of “Take Down the Flag” fame at the Vincent Sheheen primary-night victory party. He had daughter Kate with him.

Now you know what these guys look like, along with Doug and Bud and Laurin and Paul DeMarco (whom we haven’t heard from in awhile) and others.

It was great meeting Michael and Phillip and Kate and Spencer…

The Benjamin inaugural breakfast

Two happy customers of bradwarthen.com

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Steve Benjamin and Seth Rose before Columbia Rotary Club meeting.

Steve Benjamin and Seth Rose before the Columbia Rotary Club meeting.

A good time was had by all at the Columbia Rotary Club today.

First, I got to sit with the lovely Shop Tart, whom our own Kathryn Fenner introduced to the Club as the authoress of her “second favorite blog.” I’m sure the Tart was suitably flattered.

Kathryn also introduced the main speaker, Columbia Mayor-Elect Steve Benjamin. Who, to beat a cliche within an inch of its undeserving life, actually needed no introduction, since he’s a member of our club.

Anyway, Steve said a lot of good stuff. And I was reminded of a reason I was glad he was elected: When asked about such delicate matters as whether he’s for a strong-mayor form or government or for the Midlands Housing Alliance’s effort, he comes right out and says he supports them. Which is a level of risk-taking we haven’t seen at City Hall. Here’s hoping the gamble pays off for us all.

Finally, quick, what do the recent electoral winners pictured above have in common, aside from the fact that they’re both members of my Rotary Club? That’s right: The thing that MAKES them both winners is that they both advertised on bradwarthen.com.

Hey, that’s my theory, and it fits the available facts…

We’re making one heck of an international impression

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It’s just not the sort a sane person would want to make.

As I was getting out of a vehicle to walk to the State House right after lunch today, I got a call on the Blackberry from Paris. Caller ID said the number was … well, there were 11 digits. To summarize the phone call, I quote from the e-mail I found when I got back to the office:

Good Morning M. Warthen,

I am a french journalist, working for a french national private media
called Radio Classique.
I am working today on a story about Alvin Greene and the democrat
candidacy.
It would be very interesting for me to talk to you about that and may be
doing a short interview by phone.
Is it possible ?
It would be great.
May be within two hours or tomorrow morning your time ?

It would be great and very interesting.

thank you very much.

Best regards.

Marc Tedde
Radio Classique

I asked if he also wanted to talk about all the Nikki Haley stuff. He didn’t know about any of that. Just as well.

Just what South Carolina needs.

Anyway, we’re going to do the interview tomorrow morning — afternoon, his time, morning our time. I’m going to let him call me again, rather than vice versa, I assure you.

Lawmakers will uphold most of Sanford’s vetoes

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Governor threatened to veto entire budget again

It took me all afternoon, but I finally balanced my checkbook. Having done that, it is with a great sense of self-sacrifice that I know turn back to the state budget. Oh, my head!

Anyway, you’ll recall that I mentioned the e-mail exchange that a reader had had with House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham, which to me raised questions. That reader later wrote to me again to relate a phone conversation that he’d had subsequently with Kenny. That caused me to send Kenny an e-mail asking him the following:

Kenny, I’ve got a question for my blog… is this correct? Did the governor threaten to veto the whole budget again? And did y’all promise to uphold his vetoes if he didn’t?

If so, why in the world didn’t you just tell him to veto the whole budget if that’s what he wanted to do, and then override him, just as you did before?

I’m just not following this…

— Brad

Kenny responded last night by calling me at home and taking a long time to explain to me what had happened. The two startling things I learned are reflected above in my headline and subhead, to repeat:

In all the wrestling back and forth over the budget at the end of the session, at one critical moment the governor threatened again to do the outrageous thing he did in 2006 — veto the entire budget. Rather than call that bluff, the GOP leadership (the group led in the House by Speaker Bobby Harrell, Ways & Means chair Dan Cooper and Kenny) made a deal to uphold most of his line-item vetoes. Why did they not just let him veto the whole budget and override him as they did in 2006? Because between the Democrats, who were voting as a bloc against every move the GOP leaders made, and the Republicans who could be counted on to vote with Sanford, the leaders didn’t think they COULD override a veto of the entire budget. And the leadership didn’t want to see the government shut down.
To avoid that, the leadership agreed to sustain most of the governor’s vetoes. I can’t give you numbers, because frankly I’m not sure of them, and Kenny wasn’t giving me precise numbers anyway. We’re talking about roughly $70 million in vetoes that will be sustained. That’s nowhere near the $414 million that the 107 vetoes total up to. But about half of that is a special pot of money created to deal with a special, stimulus-related, higher Medicaid match that Congress hasn’t yet extended, and the governor says they won’t and lawmakers think it will, and even if it doesn’t there’s enough money to last in the program through next February or April, and… well, it gets REALLY complicated. That disputed Medicaid match is isolated in a section of the budget called Part Four. Most of the vetoes lawmakers will be sweating over are in Part One. (Part Two is where you find provisos, and I never even bothered asking about Part Three, if there is a Part Three…)

And yes, the parts they’re likely to sustain include some of the things that folks are most upset about being cut, such as the State Museum. So does that mean the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, for instance, will shut down?

Kenny says no, because the Budget and Control Board has reserves that will keep the museum and other drastically cut programs

Kenny Bingham -- 2006 file photo/Brad Warthen

going. But there he is relying on the governor SAYING those reserves are available to bail out those programs. And the e-mail campaign against these vetoes that I’ve seen says the governor is wrong about that. I asked, how do you know the governor’s right? And he doesn’t know. I asked, what does Frank Fusco (head of the B&C Board) say? Kenny said he hadn’t talked to Frank yet. Presumably he will before the voting on Tuesday.

Bottom line, Kenny doesn’t know exactly what will happen Tuesday on all those vetoes, because there are a number of things that haven’t been worked out yet. And THAT’S what’s different about this situation. In the past, at this point he would have said with confidence that no one should worry; the vetoes would be overridden. That’s what we’ve seen year after year: Sanford makes his symbolic gesture, and the Legislature keeps the government running.

But this is the first time I’ve seen the GOP leadership this flummoxed over the Sanford vetoes. And as Kenny tells it a lot of it arises from the fact that the leaders just don’t think they have the votes. They blame the Democrats (no surprise there, huh?) for voting against them on a number of key budget votes. He said every single Democrat, with the occasional exception of Herb Kirsh, voted against them. Add to that the minority bloc of Republicans that can be relied upon to vote the Sanford way, and the leadership barely had the votes to pass a budget at all, much less come up with the two-thirds to override the governor.

As an example of the things they fought over… the leadership came up with a plan to raise court fees and license fees to help keep the courts running and pay for the next class of state troopers. The Sanford loyalists wouldn’t go for it, and the Democrats said Republicans should raise a general tax rather than paying for the added expenses with new fees.

I need to talk with somebody with the Democratic leadership this week to get their side of it, but Kenny’s account of the Democratic position sounds pretty credible: Basically, they’re saying that the Republicans got themselves into this mess with their tax cuts and such, and the Democrats aren’t inclined to help them out of it.

Anyway, what I got out of all this was this time, we might actually see some of the more headline grabbing consequences of the governor’s vetoes actually happen: shutting down the State Museum and the Arts Commission, for instance. Might not happen, but there’s a bigger probability this time than ever.

And in spite what I’ve been hearing about how the governor has tried to be more reasonable in dealing with lawmakers since his personal troubles began, it appears that he’s up to his old shenanigans, engaging in the same kind of ideological brinksmanship that we saw at the height of his arrogance.

It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens Tuesday. And those who care about the State Museum or ETV or the arts in SC have every reason to be in suspense.

Watch me tonight on SC ETV with Mark Quinn — but WITHOUT Nikki Haley

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Just taped a segment over at ETV with Mark Quinn for tonight’s installment of “The Big Picture.”

Watch it at 7:30 p.m. on WRLK, as well as on ETV-HD. The show will also air on the radio Friday at 1 p.m.

My understanding is that Gresham Barrett will be on the show as well, although he wasn’t on with me. My part was just Mark and me shooting the … stuff… about Tuesday’s results. We talked Nikki Haley, Vincent Sheheen, Alvin Greene, and other stuff.

However… Nikki Haley, last I heard, will NOT be on the show. In fact, I was told that her campaign had not even responded to any of ETV’s invitations. I asked “What did you try?” and the answer was, “Everything.” Multiple times, in case an e-mail or something got lost.

Could it be … and I’m just speculating here… could it be that Nikki doesn’t want to face the folks at ETV because she plans to vote to sustain the governor’s veto of their funding next Tuesday?

Nahhhh. Probably just a miscommunication. When somebody with her campaign sees this (and apparently someone over there is watching, since it took no time for them to set me straight last week — which I appreciate), no doubt they’ll call ETV back, and you’ll see her on the show tonight.

Maybe.

Benjamin pays $81.87 fine; ready to move on

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OK, that headline sounded a little too brusque. Obviously, the mayor-elect isn’t going to put this behind him in the sense of forgetting Ms. Ruben and her serious injuries. He makes the point repeatedly that she is in his prayers, and he would like a chance to see her when it’s OK with her family.

A phone photo of a copy of the citation; sorry about the quality.

But legally speaking, Steve’s mouthpiece James Smith says that now that the fine for driving without his headlights on has been paid (this morning, at a magistrate’s office), the case is done as far as any culpability for the accident on Mr. Benjamin’s part is concerned.

At the less than 15-minute press conference at City Hall, Mr. Benjamin’s aides distributed copies of a series of written statements by him regarding the accident, plus a traffic ticket he was given yesterday, and the original incident report. (I’ll scan those into a PDF for you when I’m home where my scanner is, or link you to them if someone beats me to it, which seems likely.)

As for how he could have been driving without his lights on in a high-tech Mercedes SUV, here’s the salient part of the statement:

My wife and I stayed at the Hilton Hotel in the Vista after the conclusion of the events of election day and election night, April 20, 2010. I was scheduled to be interviewed by WLTX on the April 21, 2010, 6:00 a.m. newscast. I awoke and prepared myself for the morning. I went to the hotel lobby at approximately 5:30 a.m. I had to retrieve the keys for my wife’s vehicle from the desk as there was no valet on duty and the valet had parked our vehicle th day before. I spoke with the front desk clerk and she gave me the keys to my wife’s vehicle. I prepared a cup of coffee and exited the rear of the hotel and walked into the parking garage. I located my wife’s vehicle, got in, started the vehicle, put on the seat belt and exited the parking garage. My wife’s vehicle has automatic lights. I did not adjust the light setting. As I drove the vehicle, the dashboard was illuminated and I was able to clearly see my path of travel.

Steve was reluctant to elaborate on how the lights could have been off, repeatedly referring reporters back to the statement. We were left with the implication that someone other than he had switched the lights off of automatic mode without his knowledge, but he hesitated to come right out and say “The valet did it.”

Other items from the statements and answers at the press confab:

He had the green light.
He was in the left lane of the two lanes heading east on Gervais at the time of the collision.
“I was not impaired at the time of the accident.”
“I was not fatigued at the time of the accident.”
“I slept approximately 10 hours in the two nights prior to the accident. The night of the accident I went to bed shortly after 2:00 a.m.”
At about 11:45 the night before, a supporter bought him “a vodka and tonic or soda.” He said “I cannot remember if I took a sip or two sips, but I drank a little just to be polite.” He later had a drink of Malibu rum and orange juice, just after midnight.
During the 24 hours before the accident, he had a biscuit with meat and coffee at 7:20 a.m. on election day; baked chicken and green beans for lunch, with water; snacks and candy at various times during the day; missed dinner at the usual hour but ate fruit and vegetables with some water at the convention center celebration.
He had the sips from the vodka drink at the Liberty Tap Room, where they had hoped to get dinner, but the kitchen was closed.
He and family and friends moved on to the Sheraton, where “I consumed a cheeseburger, fries, non-alcoholic iced tea and one Malibu and orange juice at approximately 12:12-12:30 a.m. He said he also had some appetizers. Then there was the coffee the next morning.
Other than the sips of vodka and the rum-and-orange juice (which I’ve got to say sounds like a nasty drink), he acknowledges drinking no alcohol during that 24 hours.
He says he did not make or receive any phone calls while driving that morning. Nor did he send or check text messages. But he adds, “I did check my voicemail and listened to messages using my speaker function of my cell phone.” The statement is unclear whether that was WHILE driving and no one thought during the press conference to ask that question. Sounds like it was. He concludes that statement, “I was not distracted at the time of the accident.”

That’s what I’ve got for now. I didn’t have my camera, but I’ll have a phone photo or two for you shortly. I’ll post PDFs of the statements and other documents tonight.

Oh, as the “move on” thing in the headline. James said this concludes Benjamin’s part in any legal matters having to do with the accident. As for the city police, their final report won’t be done until the state Highway Patrol is done reviewing it.

The mayor-elect himself made several references to his transition team and the 8 issue areas they are concentrating on, and said he hopes to get as good a media turnout as he had today when the team is ready to unveil their findings on those issues. In other words, he’s anxious to get started doing the job.

Leighton Lord picks up support

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Just had lunch with Leighton Lord, who I hear (according to unpublished polls) is leading the GOP race for attorney general. As we were eating at the Palmetto Club, the news broke that Andy Brack’s Statehouse Report was endorsing him:

In the race for state attorney general, Columbia lawyer Leighton Lord stands out for his vital

management experience. The lead lawyer for bringing Boeing’s billion-dollar investment into the state, he has run a major law firm and knows how to oversee the needs of a multimillion dollar operation like the attorney general’s office.

Lord’s opponents tout their experience in the courtroom, but it’s rare for the state’s chief prosecutor to get before a judge or jury often. The attorney general’s role is, rather, to pull together the disparate roles of police, prosecutors and other legal entities as a team to fight crime and improve safety. Lord has the pragmatic credentials to get things done and make our state safer without simply locking up more prisoners and throwing away the keys.

That took some of the Republicans at the gathering aback somewhat (Andy Brack? Isn’t he a Democrat?), but Lord was pleased to get the boost.

The gathering was a lot like a Columbia Rotary Club meeting: Gayle Averyt was the host, and was joined by Laine Ligon, Jimmy Derrick, Crawford Clarkson, Martin Moore, John Denise, John Durst, among others. I was there as the guest of ADCO’s Lanier Jones, who had been invited by Gayle.

Now that I’m back at my laptop and can see the item, I see that Andy’s also endorsed Frank Holleman and Brent Nelsen for superintendent of education, and Converse Chellis for treasurer.

These are real people we’re talking about

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This morning, as I was headed to the office after breakfast, a guy on the elevator recognized me and introduced himself. It was a cousin of Will Folks.

Like Will’s Dad, whom I’ve also met, this cousin (whom I’m not going to name because I didn’t think to ask him if he’d mind, and it’s certainly not his fault that his cousin’s in the news) seems to be, and almost certainly is, a nice, reasonable guy who just lives his life and means no one any harm.

And chatting with him I was reminded again of how totally innocent people get splashed by these scandals that they have nothing to do with. Not that this guy complained about his cousin; he did not. But he spoke of how the family was having to make a special effort to keep their 97-year-old grandmother from seeing the news this week. And I sympathized.

I see this all the time, and to some extent, it keeps me grounded. When other people are gleefully chortling over the latest scandal, and presuming to assign the worst motives and actions to everyone involved and dismissing them as though they were abstractions — fictional characters invented for their entertainment or the furtherance of their cause — I remain conscious of the fact that they are real people. And they have connections to other real people who feel the heat from the spotlight.

We’ve all been guilty of such objectification of people in the news. For someone who’s spent a lifetime doing this, dark humor is a sort of defense mechanism against feeling too strongly the human tragedies that we deal in. But something has happened in recent years, with the ubiquity of sources of information, and with the removal of the last vestiges of respect for people’s personal lives: I’ve seen the average consumer of news, particularly the denizens of the blogosphere, become FAR more cynical than most news people.

One reason for that is that journalists actually know the newsmakers. Or writers do, anyway. I’ve noticed since early in my career that the biggest cynics in newsrooms are the editors who are tied to their desks. They see the people whose names appear in headlines as abstractions, as characters in stories, and nothing more. Reporters are more likely to have a complete, flesh-and-blood knowledge of those same people, and to care more about how what they write affects those people. This is at the root of the alienation between reporters and headline writers, for instance. Headline writers can get lazy and exaggerate; reporters have to deal with the fury of those who are mischaracterized.

Anyway, it’s considerations like this that make me absolutely hate stories such as this Haley/Folks mess, and wish I didn’t have to read or think about it (but since it bears on who will be our next governor, I can’t ignore it). I know Nikki. Yeah, I’ve been appalled at the change I’ve seen in her as she has been seduced by demagoguery. But I still hate to see her and her family in this fix. As for Will — well, he’s a somewhat less sympathetic character, no matter who’s telling the truth, and that’s because Will is one of those bloggers who show the most contempt for the human beings he writes about (like the ones I complain about so much). But Will is still a person, and there are other people who are certainly innocent in all this who are effected.

And while I don’t always succeed, I try to keep that in mind.

Visitors from Azerbaijan

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The six visitors and me at St. John Episcopal Church today. At the far right is our interpreter, Bahruz Balayev.

Today, a white guy from South Carolina met some REAL Caucasians.

Specifically, I had the honor of speaking to a group of journalists from the Republican of Azerbaijan, which for you geography-challenged folk is located in the Caucasus, hence the bad pun.

They were visiting in connection with the Open World Program of the National Peace Foundation. Their local sponsors were Mary Bryan (whose daughter Chandlee follows me on Twitter, just to get a plug in) and Tom Kohlsaat, who traveled to Azerbaijan in 2006 where Mary worked with their friend Ann Furr to provide mediation training as part of a Rule of Law program funded by CEELI and OSCE. Also, Tom is currently providing technical support to a fledging conservation nonprofit in Azerbaijan.

But that’s not what I was there to talk to them about. I was there as a blogger with MSM experience to talk about new media, old media, and how to overcome the challenges facing both.

Of course, the “challenges” facing journalists in this country are pretty minor compared to what folks in that former Soviet satellite face. When Khalid Asif Kazimli mentioned that there are fewer newspapers and other news outlets in his country than there were six years ago, I rather superficially asked whether that was because of the financial challenges they face. He said yeah, that — and government suppression.

Another member of the group, Samira Bahadur Guliyeva, asked me whether it was more meaningful to be a journalist in a totally free country or in one that is less free, I told her that obviously, you have more of an impact when you are one of the few journalists in a country in which journalism is rare, and especially where it is officially discouraged and constrained.

I should have added, to all of them, that I have tremendous respect for them for being journalists at all in any country that lacks the legal, political and cultural protections that we take for granted in this country. They are far braver than I am.

It was an honor and privilege to meet them. Here are excerpts from the profiles of the group I spoke with:

Guliyeva, Samira Bahadur
Current Employment: Correspondent, Make-up Editor, Turan News Agency
Additional Leadership Position: Executive Board member, Institute for Reporters Freedom and Safety
Level of English: Basic conversation
Other Languages: Russian
First Trip to US: Yes.

Kazimli, Khalid Asif
Current Employment: Web-editor of musavat.com web-site, “Yeni Musavat” Newspaper
Level of English: Basic conversation
Other Languages: Russian, Turkey
First Trip to US: Yes.

Mammadli, Turgut Zeynal
Current Employment: Sound Arranger at Cultural Program, Azadlig Radio
Additional Leadership Position: Public Relations Officer, Journalism and Development Center
Level of English: Fluent
Other Languages: Russian, Turkish
First Trip to US: Yes.

Mehdiyev, Rashad Azad
Current Employment: Director, RIYAD MEDIA Information Agency
Level of English: Basic conversation
Other Languages: Turkish, Russian, English First Trip to US: Yes.

Huseynova, Sayida Mammad
Current Employment: Reporter, Internews Azerbaijan Public Union, Mediaforum Website
Level of English: Basic conversation
Other Languages: Russian
First Trip to US: Yes.

Farzaliyev, Elshad Akif (Facilitator)
Current Employment: Head of Corporate Communications, Azerfon LLC,Local Mobile Operator
Level of English: Fluent
Other Languages: Russian, Turkish
First Trip to US: No.

Benjamin and Sheriff Lott, having a chat

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Forgot to mention this yesterday. Steve Benjamin came up to me yesterday after a lunch meeting of the Capital City Club board to talk about several things. None of them newsworthy, yet. More later.

But I thought I’d mention that, at the end of our chat, my “twin,” Sheriff Leon Lott, came up to take my place speaking privately to the mayor-elect. I walked away a few steps, then turned back saying, “I want to hear what these guys have to say to each other.” It was halfway a joke, as I knew they weren’t going to talk about anything I wanted to hear while I was eavesdropping, so after they politely laughed I left.

I don’t know that they were talking about taking advantage of this great opportunity to merge the Columbia police and Richland County Sheriff’s departments, but I hope they were. Of course, such dialogue would be informal and unofficial at this point.

By the way, one of the reasons I maintained my membership at Cap City after being laid off was that it constantly exposes me to little inconclusive bits of intel such as this — you see who’s talking with whom, and sometimes learn what they’re talking about, and it all goes into the general hopper that provides perspective on what’s going on. Another reason I kept it was that I had just joined the governing board — two months before I was laid off — and didn’t want to bail on that. Besides, the food at the lunch meetings is great.

Just to round out this contact report, among the other board members at this meeting were Converse Chellis, Jim Hodges, John Scott, Warren Tompkins, Luther Battiste (our chairman), Jimmy Derrick, Robin Gorman, George Wolfe, Matt Kennell, Tom Persons, and my financial adviser (poor fellow) Chris Burnette. By the way, Chris advised me to keep my membership, so I know I was on solid ground with that decision. Of course, he’s also chairman of the membership committee. Hmmm.

Kathryn’s going to look at that list and say, “Hey! A Rotary meeting!”

Bauer looking for “creative way to announce”

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This morning Andre Bauer stopped by my table at breakfast, and while chatting picked up the Metro section of The State and glanced at the story about Jenny Sanford endorsing Nikki Haley.

“What do you think about that?” I asked. What he thought, he said, was that it would really mean something if Jenny could deliver some of the Sanford financial backing to Nikki. This led to some general remarks on what a shame it was that money meant so much in politics, and so forth, but then Andre shifted gears to say that he was proof that money could be overcome — “Your paper (a reference to a newspaper with which I was once associated) reported that Campbell outspent me three to one,” for all the good it did him. He also noted with satisfaction that Mike Bloomberg, despite outspending his opponent by significant margins, was barely re-elected.

I noted that Andre always seemed to overcome the odds by being a “hard worker,” which is true, and which he did not dispute, that being a large part of his public persona.

Then he said he was trying to think of “a creative way to announce,” which of course would give him some exposure he wouldn’t have to pay for.

“You got anything for me?” — meaning ideas. Nope, I said — and managed to hold myself back from begging him to give Sanford just a little longer to resign (not that any amount of time would be enough, of course) …