Category Archives: Elections

Hutto camp encouraged by Jimmy Williams’ assessment

Lachlan McIntosh over at Brad Hutto’s Senate campaign made sure today that I saw this piece by Jimmy Williams:

In head-to-head matchups against his three opponents Graham can’t hit 50%. In most of the polls, he isn’t close, averaging about 45%. Bottom line: people know Lindsey Graham and they’ve made their minds up about him.

Like most incumbents, Lindsey Graham has very little room to grow and will likely not move much in the polling. Independent-conservative Thomas Ravenel, of Southern Charm fame, and Libertarian Victor Kocher are combining for near 15% in these polls. I have to assume nearly all of it is coming from Graham. Ravenel will likely spend millions of his own daddy’s money to help seal Lindsey’s fate. And so in the end, Ravenel and Kocher give very conservative voters a place to go other than Graham, whom they despise for his positions and votes on immigration reform and global warming and for his votes in support of Obama’s judicial nominees.

In recent history, Democrats in South Carolina normally end up somewhere in the mid 40’s on election night. In Obama’s two elections down in my home state, he finished with 45% and 44% here. In 2010, state Senator Vincent Sheheen received 47% in his bid for governor. The Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor got 45% and Matthew Richardson who was running for Attorney General ended up with 44%. In 2008, the guy who ran as a Democrat against Lindsey Graham and didn’t spend any money got 42% of the vote. And no, I have no clue who the hell he was….

That math is pretty similar to the scenario that Lachlan painted for me not long ago. But note that ominous bit at the end of that excerpt, about not remembering who the Democratic nominee even WAS in 2008 (I had to look it up myself; his name was Bob Conley).

Brad Hutto isn’t in quite as bad a position as that, in terms of name recognition, but he has a ways to go to be competitive, as Williams notes:

Despite being well known in the bubble of the state legislature, Hutto isn’t well known with most voters. For now, he’s showing up in the mid to lower 30’s in the polling. But most of the undecided voters are Democrats and Independents. Assuming Hutto can raise enough money to make a decent TV buy later in the fall, he’ll end up in the mid 40’s – right there with Lindsey Graham….

The Hutto campaign is betting they can raise that money and make that buy and hit the mid-40s. We’ll see…

The ad below shows the message Sen. Hutto will be trying to get out.

Good news: It’s not the economy. Bad news: It’s not foreign affairs, either…

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Last week, the WSJ’s Daniel Henninger wrote a column that, from my perspective, was expressive of wishful thinking.

At one point, he wrote, “The world has reframed the politics of the 2016 election.”

A bit later, he said, “In a foreign-policy election, as it looks like we are going to have in 2016…”

Oh, if only it were so, Daniel.

Reason would dictate that we would have such an election. To begin with, all presidential elections should be foreign-policy elections, since that’s the most critical part of the job of POTUS.

But with what’s happening now in Ukraine, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan and so on, there should be no question at all — a rational electorate would want first and foremost to know how a prospective president would lead us in dealing with the rest of the world.

But it doesn’t work that way, does it?

Still, my heart beat a bit faster when I saw this headline on my NPR app this morning: “It Might Sound Stupid, But Maybe It Isn’t The Economy This Time.”

But then I read on. Turns out that the world out there still doesn’t make the cut:

The economy is not the No. 1 issue?

That’s right. Gallup pollsters asked voters what was important, and the No. 1 topic turned out to be dissatisfaction with politicians. No. 2 was immigration. The economy had slipped to No. 3….

“Foreign policy/Foreign aid/Focus overseas” came in sixth.

And even the economy’s third-place status was rather artificial. Yes, “Economy in general” came in third, but “Jobs/unemployment” came in fourth. And if you combine the two, which would make more sense, they’re easily in first place.

And don’t get all overexcited and think that because “immigration” came in second, the public is all worried about the horrific conditions in Central America. No such luck.

If I had responded to that poll, and the question had been open-ended, I might have said, “dissatisfaction with voters…”

Graham gives Rubio a big pat on the head in SC

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I sort of missed this event up in Anderson yesterday, but U.S. News and World Report was there:

Lindsey Graham Calls Marco Rubio ‘Son of Ronald Reagan’

South Carolina’s senior senator offers high praise of his colleague.

ANDERSON, S.C. – Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., “the son of Ronald Reagan when it comes to national security” Monday night at a barbecue gathering of nearly 1,000 conservatives in the upstate.

South Carolina’s senior senator also dubbed Rubio “a rising young star” in the GOP “who you will see a lot,” a nod to his colleague’s White House aspirations in 2016.

The high praise comes from one of the Senate’s biggest foreign policy hawks at a time when the country is confronting how to deal with the unraveling violence and chaos in Iraq being caused by the radical Islamic State….

Not to mention, it comes as certain Republican stars are championing isolationism.

I don’t know whether this is just Lindsey being polite to the visiting fireman, or maybe he’s getting on the Rubio bandwagon. This bears watching.

When you think about it, who is coming along in the next generation to carry the national security torch in the GOP? Also, I suppose Graham and McCain appreciate the help they got from young Master Rubio on the ill-fated immigration bill — which frankly was the first time I took favorable notice of him.

STILL no victims of Department of Revenue breach

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When an alert reader brought this to my attention, I thought that maybe I’d been wrong about no one yet being harmed by the huge SC Department of Revenue security breach. In other words, maybe Vincent Sheheen was in “luck,” in that there was a rich vein of wronged taxpayers out there ready to channel resentment at Nikki Haley:

Calls pour in to ID theft unit

South Carolina’s tax agency hacked in October 2013

By Tim Smith

Staff writer [email protected]

COLUMBIA — The incidents are an all too familiar and scary part of modern life: a monthly statement shows someone has been fraudulently using your credit card; a store where you’ve never shopped sends you a notice demanding repayment of charges you’ve never made; a laptop belonging to a government agency with your personal data has been stolen.

Two years after a hacker broke into South Carolina’s tax agency and took data belonging to 3.6 million taxpayers, the incidence and threats of identity theft are so pervasive that a four-person state unit regularly handles calls about the subject.

In fact, since October 2013, when the identity theft unit for the state Department of Consumer Affairs began operating, more than 3,300 people have called to talk about identity theft or some type of scam, some of which are attempts at identity theft, said Juliana Harris, a spokeswoman for the agency. “I definitely know that calls are up,”she said….

But then, I got to this line, way, way down in the story (the 27th graf; not many news stories these days even have 27 paragraphs):

After the Department of Revenue breach, she said she stayed on the phone constantly all day, with every one of her lines lit up. She said she might have talked to 100 people per day following the revenue department hacking.

No one has come forward since the breach saying it has caused their identity to be stolen, she said.

So. We have yet to see our first victim of the huge hack at DoR. I mean, we’re pretty much all of us “victims” in that our data were stolen. But who has been harmed by that yet?

By the way, you might want to read Cindi Scoppe’s column today on how Sheheen is emphasizing the wrong things in his criticisms of the incumbent — but also how he has little choice, since the right things are so hard to explain…

One thing education does not need is political parties

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I’m hoping this quote from Bruce Smith’s story about the state education superintendent candidate debate in Myrtle Beach Sunday was just out of context:

“Party matters” in public education said Democrat Tom Thompson, a former dean of graduate studies at South Carolina State University who bested three other Democrats in the primary.

“You can have the state superintendent of education say one thing but the party behind that person has to be consistent with what the state superintendent says,” he added, in a comment directed at Republicans, some of whom favor taxpayer vouchers for private school students….

The problem, you see, is not having officials who are Republicans. The problem is having officials who want to take money from public schools and pay them to parents for withdrawing their kids from public schools. Doesn’t matter to me whether the people wanting to do that Republicans, Democrats (and sometimes they are) or Zoroastrians. The idea is the problem, not the letter after the name.

The problem with Mick Zais isn’t that he’s a Republican. He could have been a Republican and been just fine. The problem is that he so firmly embraces bumper-sticker ideology. Which frankly was a shock to me. I expect retired military officers to be above that nonsense. I expect them to be pragmatists. So Zais was a surprise to me.

And I liked what Molly Spearman said right after that in the story:

Spearman, meanwhile, said the way to improve education is for people to work together.

“The job and our efforts are too important for us to squabble and not get along,” she said. “I have worked hard over my career never to burn bridges.”…

And adhering closely to a party line, to the exclusion of other ideas, is one sure way to burn bridges. In fact, that’s sort of what it’s for.

There was one thing in that party from which I can draw some comfort: The first candidate quoted was American Party candidate Ed Murray. Not that I can support the American Party, either, but I applaud the fact that Jim Rex and Oscar Lovelace are at least trying to promote a Third Way in South Carolina. And the attempt is drawing some positive attention, it seems…

Little-noticed fact: Sheheen has had a stellar legislative year

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I don’t disagree with any of the “experts” who say Nikki Haley is the favorite to win the gubernatorial election this year.

But I do take exception to this observation:

The panelists stopped short of criticizing Sheheen, whom Winthrop University political science professor Scott Huffmon called “a great candidate” because he came so close to knocking off Haley last time. But when asked by Bierbauer what Sheheen has done in the past four years to strengthen himself as a candidate, they mostly kept silent….

That silence suggests something that we frequently hear here, particularly from Doug: That Sheheen hasn’t been a leader in his job as state senator.

Sheheen has done little to tout his successes as a lawmaker.

Actually, in terms of being a guy who gets things done in the Legislature, Sheheen has done quite a lot.

In the past year, significant progress was made on two things that Sheheen has been pushing vocally and visibly: The elimination of the Budget and Control Board and 4k expansion.

Argue how much of that was Sheheen if you’d like. For instance, his opponent had identified herself strongly with the restructuring initiative. But the fact is that Sheheen was pushing this bill, and working on his colleagues to promote it, since well before Nikki Haley ever decided to run for governor. (Which is kind of how long it takes for a good idea to seep into the heads of a majority of lawmakers.)

Those aren’t his only accomplishments. He was a significant player in the ban on texting-while-driving. The first two are much more impressive to me, however, as reflecting the kinds of strategic, fundamental changes that we need for South Carolina to progress.

What puzzles me is that we don’t see Sheheen touting these successes as a reason to vote for him. Instead, we see money and effort wasted on repeated attempts to get folks angry at the incumbent about the Department of Revenue hacking.

I don’t know why…

New Sheheen ad: Another attempt to get us stirred up about hacking scandal

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Above is the latest Sheheen TV ad.

Here’s a release that elaborates upon it, contrasting the promptness with which credit card companies tell us when there’s been a breach, versus the two weeks it took Gov. Haley to let anyone know about the huge Department of Revenue breach.

The Sheheen campaign keeps plugging away at this, But I doubt it will catch fire with the public until someone, somewhere has actually been harmed by the hacking, and we hear about it…

Is it too late for Hillary Clinton?

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I say no. But then, I’m old school. I would have been happy being a liberal in the age of JFK, or conservative during the Eisenhower administration. But today’s “liberals” and “conservatives,” who strain the very meaning of the words, leave me cold.

Note that this isn’t about me being a grandfather. I’ve been disaffected this way for most of my adult life. You’ll note that my examples of what I prefer date from before I was old enough to vote.

What I like about Hillary Clinton is that she gets what the presidency is about. And on the issues that are most important to the job — foreign policy, and America’s role in the world — she is consistent with presidents throughout my lifetime. Despite the overheated rhetoric of left and right, there has been an essential consensus among those who actually make it to the White House, providing a consistency in our nation’s most important policies.

Hillary Clinton is at home in that continuum, probably because she’s been secretary of state and has been at the hub of executive decision-making for more than two decades. Other likely (or at least talked-about) candidates, from Rand Paul to Elizabeth Warren, are strangers in that land.

But some of these very qualities have caused some to deride Mrs. Clinton as an anachronism, as being out of touch, for instance, with millennials over such issues as NSA surveillance. As though being in touch with them on something like that were a good thing. Let’s see… would I want someone who is a grownup on national security, or someone who thinks Edward Snowden is a hero? Hmmm…

Anyway, for the opposite point of view, I point you to this piece, conveniently headlined, “Hillary Clinton is an anachronism.” Or consider recent comments from the kiddie corner, such as Rand Paul calling her “yesterday’s news,” or Marco Rubio calling her “a 20th century candidate.” (Of course, those of us who remember Walter Cronkite hosting “The Twentieth Century” still think the phrase invokes modernism, don’t we?)

Even a supporter, Howard Dean, says this to our old buddy Peter Hamby:

“Hillary, she has been on the scene since, what, 1992?” he said. “To elect Hillary, the country would have to do something we’ve only done once in my lifetime, with Reagan over Carter, which is the country would have to go back a generation. Usually, you don’t go back.”

Still, he said Clinton “might be a great candidate because of that.”

Hey, that’s what I think (that last part). I don’t think either party has produced any candidates worth writing home about during this century so far. OK, except for Barack Obama. But the bloom is kind of off that rose these days.

What do y’all think?

The Dude as a Senate candidate

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For this to make sense, you sort of have to know that some folks in Montana have been talking up the idea of Jeff Bridges running for the U.S. Senate.

Armed with that, you are more likely to get this item on The Fix yesterday, headlined “The Jeff Bridges Senate campaign, a play in one act.” An excerpt:

Scene 1: Interior, a large house in Montana. BRIDGES enters and turns on the light. He is grabbed by a pair of INTRUDERS, dragged to the bathroom, and his head is thrust into the toilet.

INTRUDER: You better run for Senate, Bridges.

BRIDGES: (gurgling sounds)

VOICE: Run for Senate, Bridges.

BRIDGES: (gurgling)

They pull his head out of the toilet. BRIDGES doesn’t recognize the pair, nor does he know what the “DSCC” on their name badges means.

BRIDGES: (sighing) Does this place look like I’m a f***ing politician?

The room is decorated in a marijuana leaf motif. One of the intruders looks at the decor, then at Bridges, and then looks at the rug.

In spite of it all, as The Dude says to the Narrator later in the script, “The Dude abides, etc.”

The Narrator lays some homespun wisdom on The Dude.

Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul step out to appeal to very different groups of voters (guess which one I’m in)

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Charles Krauthammer today noted how Hillary Clinton is reaching out to appeal to voters like me (and Krauthammer himself to an extent):

Leave it to Barack Obama’s own former secretary of state to acknowledge the fatal flaw of his foreign policy: a total absence of strategic thinking.

Yes, of course everything Hillary Clinton says is positioning. The last time she sought the nomination (2008), as she admitted before Defense Secretary Bob Gates, she opposed the Iraq surge for political reasons because she was facing antiwar Sen. Barack Obama in Iowa. Now, as she prepares for her next run (2016), she’s positioning herself to the right because, with no prospect of being denied the Democratic nomination, she has the luxury of running toward the center two years before Election Day.

All true, but sincere or not — with the Clintons how can you ever tell? — it doesn’t matter. She’s right…

Yes, she is right. And she deserves the respect she gets for it.

Meanwhile, Rand Paul has been getting a lot of respect over what he has said about Ferguson, Mo. The Fix says his op-ed on the subject in TIME makes him “the most interesting voice in the GOP right now.”

That’s because, when it comes to the behavior of the cops in Ferguson, there’s a consensus across the political spectrum, and that consensus in this case happens to be the libertarian position. That makes Paul look, momentarily, like a centrist.

This brings Rand Paul to the fore among voters who are more focused on domestic issues than on foreign policy. And among those people, Hillary Clinton has been criticized:

Hillary Clinton has had much to say of late about foreign policy, drawing a great deal of coverage for an interview in which she pointed out her differences with President Obama on how he has handled crises around the world.

Analysts suggest that she is signaling to a general election electorate where she disagrees with the currently unpopular Obama on issues important to them, should she decide to run for president in 2016.

Closer to home, however, Clinton has yet to say anything about the events in Ferguson, Mo., which has exploded into protests – both peaceful and violent – since the weekend shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African American…

Elizabeth Warren has something to say about Ferguson, but not Hillary Clinton:

This is America, not a war zone. The people of #Ferguson just want answers. We all want answers.

— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) August 14, 2014

Which is one big reason why I prefer the Clinton view — either Bill’s or Hillary’s — to the Warren view, pretty much every time.

I’m one of these folks who believes the president’s chief job is dealing with foreign policy. That is, after all, what we have a federal government for.

I’m not one of those people who gets antsy waiting for the president — or someone who wants to be president — to opine about something that is clearly not part of the job. What’s happening in Missouri is clearly a state and local matter. The local folks weren’t handling it right, so the state stepped in. In a matter such as this, the role of the rest of us — including the president — is essentially that of a spectator (unless things deteriorate to the point that federal troops are sent in, which has yet to happen and seems unlikely to happen). We may have strong opinions about what we’re seeing (assuming that we’re watching it, instead of watching the deteriorating situations in Iraq and Ukraine), but we are not the ones expected or empowered to take action in that sphere.

This has been an important week, within the context of the 2016 presidential campaign. In each party, a leading contender (or in the case of Hillary Clinton, the contender) has stepped out to define a position that cements that contender status.

They did so in ways that don’t invite comparison — except in terms of noting how very separate their spheres of interest and focus are.

Among the apparent GOP hopefuls is, um, Rick Perry. Oops!

Has ANYONE been harmed yet by the SC DoR hacking?

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I’ve asked that before, and I am prompted to ask it again after seeing this release from the Sheheen campaign:

Two Years After First Hacking Breach, Sheheen to Haley: “You Broke the People’s Trust”

Sheheen demands honesty & accountability in letter to Governor Haley, calls for answers following continued reports of South Carolinians’ information being in jeopardy

Camden, SC — Today Sen. Vincent Sheheen sent a letter to Governor Haley, exactly two years after a malicious email opened a hole in the Department of Revenue that allowed 3.4 million people’s Social Security Numbers to be stolen.

The text of Sen. Sheheen’s letter is below.

August 13, 2014

Dear Governor Haley,

I write today to demand honesty and accountability for the people of South Carolina.

Two years ago, weak cybersecurity measures at the Department of Revenue allowed a malicious email to open a hole for a hacker to steal our citizen’s most private financial information. The people of our state demanded answers, and received no response, just a secret report. Less than one year ago, I wrote to you on the October anniversary about the safety and security of the people’s information to ask for answers regarding ongoing activities by Experian, and received no response.

Now, reports of an alarming nature have made headlines recently detailing an additional hacking at the credit-monitoring agency you handpicked to provide services to the people of South Carolina. CNN and TV stations here in South Carolina reported that not only was Experian hacked, but they also have been selling personal information of their members to third parties. So it’s time to demand answers once again.

After the Department of Revenue was hacked under your watch, the people of South Carolina were essentially forced to sign up for credit monitoring with Experian, the company which received a no-bid contract from you to handle credit monitoring. Now they are seemingly at risk once again because they trusted that the government had done its due diligence in securing the contract and negotiating the terms.

Leadership is about honesty and trust. When your Department of Revenue was hacked and you covered it up for 16 days, you broke the people’s trust. When you pushed through a no-bid contract with Experian, with no conditions to safeguard the people’s most personal information further, you broke the people’s trust. Every day you refuse to make public the secret report on what happened rather than being open with your constituents – you break the people’s trust. And as our citizens’ information is at risk yet from another breach, we have to read about it in the news once again before the people of South Carolina hear it from you.

South Carolinians deserve to know whether the contract you negotiated allows Experian to sell their personal information to third parties. They deserve to know if they are at further risk from the subsequent hacking of the company. Most importantly: the people deserve to hear about these events straight from their Governor and they deserve real answers instead of having to rely on passing reports in the news.

Because honest leadership is also about accountability– about putting our people first, and always being on their side. At every step in this hacking crisis, from the initial delay in informing the people to still refusing to release the final report on what happened, your administration has chosen to operate in secret and you have failed the most basic test of leadership. That is unacceptable. The people of South Carolina deserve much better.

This latest development in the Department of a Revenue hacking scandal is just the latest example in the long pattern of secrecy in your administration and it is beyond disappointing. The people of South Carolina deserve a governor they can trust.

I have written to the CEO of Experian asking for a full accounting of who in South Carolina is at risk due to the additional hacking. I have also requested clarification on the terms under which they are allowed to sell our people’s most personal information to share with the public so they are fully aware of where things stand.

I hope that you will not stand in the way of transparency and honesty any further as we continue to restore the broken trust and damage of the Department of Revenue hacking scandal.

Sincerely,

Vincent Sheheen

###

I’m pretty sure that in these two years, I haven’t seen a single report of anyone who has been harmed by the hacking. Which is weird.

Until I do, or rather, until all of us do, Vincent is unlikely to get much traction with voters on this in Anno Domini 2014. I think there was a good bit of general harrumphing when we first learned about it, but time passed, and we heard no horror stories. And, to my knowledge, none of us personally experienced any harm, or even serious inconvenience, as a result of the breach.

So as an issue at this time, it seems rather a dud.

I’m not saying it’s good that we were hacked, and I’m certainly not saying that those in charge did all that they could to prevent it. Obviously, they did not.

But the other shoe never dropped. Or rather, hasn’t yet.

Sheheen video hits Haley for HER ‘no comment’

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The Vincent Sheheen campaign released this video today hitting Nikki Haley for not commenting on the DSS child-protection scandal.

Hey, maybe if they can get her to comment on that, then I can get a comment from Sheheen on the immigration issue? Ya think?

Who’s doing stupid s___ now? Not Hillary Clinton

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During the January 2008 meeting in which I shot this photo, then-Sen. Obama persuaded me he had a clear, correct conception of America’s proper role in the world. Today, I have my doubts.

Hillary Clinton is sounding better and better. I liked reading this:

Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton has not yet said whether she will pursue the presidency. But for a candidate-in-waiting, she is clearly carving out a foreign policy distinct from the man she used to serve.

In the spring, President Obama articulated a philosophy for avoiding dangerous entanglements overseas that was modest in its ambitions and focused on avoiding mistakes. Don’t do stupid things, he said.

Now Clinton is offering a blunt retort to that approach, telling an interviewer, “Great nations need organizing principles — and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”…

She drew special attention to Obama’s determination to sidestep costly foreign interventions. The president and his aides have referred privately to that strategy in recent months as, “Don’t do stupid s—.” That approach has come under fire from some now that Islamist militants have gained ground overseas.

… she argued that the United States has to strike a better balance between overreaching in foreign affairs and being so restrained that conflicts can spiral out of hand.

“You know, when you’re down on yourself, and when you are hunkering down and pulling back, you’re not going to make any better decisions than when you were aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward,” Clinton said…

Amen to that. That “down on yourself” think is particularly to the point. In this context, it refers to the president being down on his country (I haven’t noticed him being down on himself, personally), and seeing it as unworthy of trying to do any good in the world. Which is not an appealing trait in a POTUS.

In the same editions of The Washington Post (OK, maybe not in the actual paper, but on my iPad version, which is what I see), the paper’s house conservative, Jennifer Rubin, gives Mrs. Clinton a backhanded complement in the course of giving Rand Paul a good slap upside the head:

Will Americans want to replace President Obama with a candidate who thinks critics of his failed Middle East policy are “warmongers,” who thinks containment of Iran shouldn’t be ruled out, who opposed imposition of the Menendez-Kirk sanctions, who thinks Guantanamo Bay terrorists should be moved to the United States for trial, who wanted all troops pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and who didn’t want to take any action in Syria? It seems Hillary Clinton doesn’t think so, and I suspect she’ll start running from Obama’s Iran policy just as she has from his treatment of Israel and refusal to take action in Syria. Why then does Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) think the Republican Party will accept positions that even Hillary Clinton can’t stomach?

Oh, and to complete the hat trick on deriding Obama’s foreign policy, Dana Milbank had this to say today, in the same paper:

President Obama must really be teed off.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, his once-loyal secretary of state and his likeliest successor, has gone rogue, criticizing his foreign policy as too timid.

Obama responded with not one but two rounds of golf….

Obama stood on the South Lawn on Saturday updating Americans on the new bombing campaign in Iraq — and then he boarded Marine One for a two-week trip to Martha’s Vineyard. There, half an hour after arriving at his vacation home, he was already on his way to a golf course. He played again Sunday, then had a beach outing Monday followed by a political fundraiser.

Even presidents need down time, and Obama can handle his commander-in-chief duties wherever he is. But his decision to proceed with his getaway just 36 hours after announcing the military action in Iraq risks fueling the impression that he is detached as the world burns….

Aw, give POTUS a break. He needs a vacation from the strain of not doing stupid stuff around the world. Or smart stuff, either.

Can Tom Ervin spend his way to viability?

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Tom Ervin Releases First Campaign Ad as Candidate for Governor from The Post and Courier on Vimeo.

First, I’ve got to learn that his name is “Ervin,” not “Erwin.” I keep confusing him with Joe, the former state Democratic Party chair (and there hasn’t been one as good since).

Maybe his new media blitz can help me with that. (Although I’m dependent on press releases or news coverage of the ads to call them to my attention, since I seldom see these things on the boob tube. All that money spent to place them on broadcast outlets is lost on me. Fortunately for me, it’s impossible to stick them into old episodes of “The West Wing” on Netflix.)

Now I’ll get to the substance, and the question of the day: Will Mr. Ervin’s (just typed “Erwin” again, but caught myself) expenditure of $2 million on three TV ads through Labor Day make him a contender?

Or will it just make him more likely to pull votes from Nikki Haley, thereby putting Vincent Sheheen within reach of a win?

The later seems more credible to me, and it’s apparently what is causing the Sheheen campaign to be very careful not to do anything that might mess with this developing dynamic.

That’s his first ad above, the point of which is to say that Tom is a really nice guy. And also a guy who can afford to do something like this, which has got to be nice.

Here, by the way, is Ervin’s second ad, and his third one. He seems to be pretty good at sounding folksy. It’s a gift for a Southern pol to be able to sound genuine when saying “bidness”…

No comment from Sheheen on refugee children

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File photo.

On Saturday, July 26, while on vacation, I posted “The pettiest thing I’ve ever heard Nikki Haley say,” which referred specifically to this comment about the refugee children from Central America being billeted in South Carolina:

“You want me to educate them, right? And you want me to pay their health care, right? It does cost us something”…

We had a moderately lively discussion of the matter here on the blog, and it got more buzz on social media than weekend items usually get.

Anyway, as I was writing that, I put in a phone call to the Sheheen campaign, seeking his thoughts on the matter.

I tried Phil Bailey, who works for Senate Dems and can usually put me in touch. He suggested I call Kristin Sosanie, the state party spokeswoman, who has been working closely with the campaign. I tried to call her a couple of times. Then I moved on…

I only went to that much trouble, on a Saturday on vacation, because I thought it was really worth knowing whether he took a different position from the governor’s, and no one in the MSM seemed to be asking him about it. But I figured two or three attempted calls from the coffee shop of a Barnes & Noble was above and beyond. I went on to write another, unrelated post and went back to my family and my vacation.

But after being reminded of it late last week, I reached out again to Kristin, reminding her of my previous call. She responded, “Yes, sorry we were on the road that day and I dropped the ball. Will talk to him and let you know, thanks!”

I bugged her about it again this morning, and received this response:

We don’t have any comment for you in this, sorry!

Which is disappointing.

When I mentioned last week my initial unsuccessful attempt to get a response on the subject, Doug Ross — ever the cynic — responded:

It’s another issue he has to avoid (like gay marriage) to try and hang onto Republican votes. If he says anything, it will be through a mouthpiece and be sufficiently obtuse as to not be clear what he thinks.

He’s trying to win an election, not be open and honest. I can picture the campaign meetings where consultants tell him what he can and cannot say in order to appease crossover Republicans.

I responded that I would hate to think that’s why I didn’t hear back, but the possibility did occur to me.

Anyway, I told y’all I would try again to get a response, and so I’m sharing what I got back. I told Kristin I was sorry to hear that they weren’t going to respond. And I am.

Today’s best political news: Alexander wins handily

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Alexander welcomes U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell to Tennessee earlier this year for the unveiling of construction plans for the Joint Curatorial Collections Facility to be built in Townsend, Tenn. Imagine that — allowing himself to be photographed with a Democrat, with the Tea Party breathing down his neck. (from campaign website)

I was very glad to see this news out of Tennessee:

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) easily won his primary on Thursday, defeating a conservative challenger and effectively ending the tea party’s hopes of unseating a Republican senator for the third straight election cycle.

Alexander beat state Rep. Joe Carr, a conservative insurgent who ran hard to his right on immigration. Five other candidates also fell short.

It seems that after seeing some longtime colleagues get picked off in two consecutive elections, Republican senators may have finally found the formula to keep primary competitors from defeating them: Take tea party upstarts seriously. And take them on early…

Alexander beat Carr 50 percent to 41 percent, with five other challengers splitting the other 9 percent. That’s not as good as the 56 percent Lindsey Graham received against his six challengers, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.

Alexander’s win is particularly meaningful to me, and not only because he looms large in my memories of the first statewide election I ever covered (as you know, since I have so often bored you with the stories). Alexander is a direct connection to a better generation of political leadership in Washington, the days of Howard Baker and Sam Nunn and Scoop Jackson. And for that matter, Dick Lugar, who lost to a Tea Party challenger in the last election.

This time around, not one incumbent Republican senator fell in a primary to such a challenge from the extreme fringe of his party. Most of us should be able to celebrate that.

‘A close race?’ Now, that’s what I call optimism…

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This came in a few minutes ago from the Hutto campaign:

Sen. Brad Hutto

Brad-

Brad Hutto is fighting hard in a close race to replace Senator Lindsey Graham, and there is some good news out of Brad’s campaign that we didn’t want you to miss.

A poll of Graham’s approval shows that more South Carolinians disapprove of how he is doing his job than approve. What’s more, Lindsey Graham never polls above 50% – this is a huge opening for Brad!

What Brad needs more than anything is our support in this race. Will you sign now to join the SCDP in telling Brad that you are behind him 100%?

It’s been a long time since South Carolina sent a Democrat to the Senate, but because of the strong campaign that Brad Hutto is running and the abysmal job that Lindsey Graham is doing, we’ve got a chance.

But it won’t happen without you! Sign now and let Brad know that you are ready to help the SCDP send him to replace Lindsey Graham this fall.

Thank you,

Kaye Koonce
1st Vice Chair, SCDP

“A close race?” Really?

Are you talking about this poll? Yeah, it has Graham under 50 percent — 49 percent, to be slightly more precise — but it has Hutto at 30 percent.

Other matchups show Graham at a minimum of 12 percentage points ahead. (The headline on that link is “Sitting S.C. senators looking solid, poll finds.”)

So how is that “close”?

Nikki Haley’s progression from backbench bomb-thrower to Establishment figure

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Kristin Sosanie over at the state Democratic Party resurrects this from the archives today:

Well, this could be awkward. Today Nikki Haley is holding campaign events with the SC Chamber of Commerce, but take a look at how she slammed them less than four years ago:

“‘The state Chamber is a big fan of bailouts and corporate welfare, so it’s no surprise that they would prefer a liberal like Vincent Sheheen over a conservative like Nikki Haley,’ Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said earlier this week, according to the AP.”

Question of the day: Do Nikki Haley and her staff still think the state Chamber is “a big fan of bailouts and corporate welfare.”?

Well, we know that she doesn’t. Or at least, wouldn’t say so now. And that has implications that extend far beyond her relationship with business leadership, and point to why the incumbent is a more formidable opponent for Vincent Sheheen than when she barely squeaked by him four years ago.

That petulant statement from Rob Godfrey was standard operating procedure for the Haley team back then. She was all about being the darling of the Tea Party, the Southern answer to Sarah Palin, “going rogue” by slapping at the Establishment as much as at perceived “liberals.”

She’s learned better since then. The successes of Bobby Hitt’s Commerce Department (for which she can legitimately claim credit, since she chose Bobby) has more than persuaded her that embracing the economic development community is her best path to continued electoral success.

Along with that shift from the fringes to the establishment has come a significant shift in communication style.

I touched on this in a post a couple of days ago, one which y’all seem to have utterly ignored (whine, mutter, moan). That mature, professional, focused op-ed piece was a real departure from the style of the Nikki Haley who threw red meat to the Tea Partiers. It stands 180 degrees from that Godfrey quote four years ago, which accurately reflected the attitudes of the Haley camp at the time.

I urge you to go look at it again. Yes, I know I’m reading a lot into style and tone, but that’s what I do. And I’m telling you, this new mode of expression reflects a strategic shift for Nikki Haley. And this is significant…

Know your Democratic nominees…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: Elections

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Today’s best political news: Alexander wins handily

‘A close race?’ Now, that’s what I call optimism…

Nikki Haley’s progression from backbench bomb-thrower to Establishment figure

Know your Democratic nominees…