Category Archives: Elections

Lesson (too late) for Romney: Always thank the servers

HuffPost has been talking to the bartender who shot the infamous “47 percent” footage that did so much to undermine Mitt Romney last year.

Here’s what he said about how it happened:

The man, who tended bar for a company that catered to a high-end clientele, had previously worked at a fundraiser at a home where [Bill] Clinton spoke. After Clinton addressed guests, the man recalled, the former president came back to the kitchen and thanked the staff, the waiters, the bartenders, the busboys, and everyone else involved in putting the event together. He shook hands, took photos, signed autographs, and praised the meal—all characteristic of the former president.

When the bartender learned he would be working at Romney’s fundraiser, his first thought was to bring his camera, in case he had a chance to get a photo with the presidential candidate. Romney, of course, did not speak to any of the staff, bussers or waiters. He was late to the event, and rushed out. He told his dinner guests that the event was off the record, but never bothered to repeat the admonition to the people working there.

One of them had brought along a Canon camera. He set it on the bar and hit the record button.

The bartender said he never planned to distribute the video. But after Romney spoke, the man said he felt he had no choice.

“I felt it was a civic duty. I couldn’t sleep after I watched it,” he said. “I felt like I had a duty to expose it.”

As Huffington suggests, Obama owes Clinton on this one…

Looks like Tom Davis regrets not running in 1st District

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While we’re speculating whether Tom Davis will change his mind and run against Lindsey Graham after all, it looks like Tom himself is sort of regretting that he didn’t run for the 1st Congressional District. Here’s his reaction, on Facebook, to the campaign’s descent into cultural wedge issues:

Two days ago in SC 1st district GOP primary, it was creationism, now it’s gay marriage. Ridiculous. Obsession with using the coercive power of the federal government in such “social conservative” matters is inconsistent with the principle of limited and constitutional government. I wish one of the candidates had answered the gay-marriage question like this: “I oppose federal government efforts to redefine marriage as something other than a union between one man and one woman, and my personal belief is that marriage should be between a single man and a single woman. But I also oppose federal government efforts to define marriage as only the union between a single man and a single woman. The federal government has only those powers delegated to it in the constitution and defining what constitutes a marriage is not one of them.”

Grooms jumps into Culture Wars with both feet

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Larry Grooms has apparently decided that Kulturkampf is the way to differentiate himself from the rest of the Gang of 16 in the GOP primary for the 1st Congressional District:

Charleston, SC – In a political shocker last night at the College of Charleston Forum – not one Republican up on stage stood up and supported traditional marriage being between one man and one woman.

In fact, the Post and Courier this morning, published an article titled, “1st Congressional District Candidates Speak Up on Gay Marriage, Other Issues,” and it exposed the candidates’ decidedly liberal position on marriage.

For example, Teddy Turner, Jr.’s newly found conservatism apparently doesn’t include protecting social issues like marriage. Turner said, “I don’t think social issues should be a federal issue.” Candidate Tim Larkin said, “…This is a South Carolina Republican telling you the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. It’s wrong.” Candidate Elizabeth Moffly said she didn’t think Congress should legislate morality or what goes on behind closed doors. Candidate Peter McCoy said, “When it comes down to the government telling somebody how to get married … I think the government has zero role in it.”

Even self proclaimed conservative, former Governor Mark Sanford didn’t refute the others – and now we know why – because at the Forum, Sanford refused to be clear on the issue too.

To view the article, click the following link:

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20130312/PC16/130319795/1031/1st-congressional-district-candidates-speak-up-on-gay-marriage-other-issues

Conversely, Larry Grooms was about 90 miles away at a Tea Party Forum in Bluffton – defending social issues like life and marriage. When asked about the Republican Party hemorrhaging demographics – Larry pointed out that Hispanic voters and African American voters care deeply about social issues – and abandoning life and marriage would hurt Republicans with those groups and not help.

Today, Larry issued the following statement about the lack of support for marriage at the College of Charleston forum last night:

Larry Grooms said, “I firmly believe marriage is between one man and one woman – and I will fight to defend traditional marriage against every attack. Quite frankly, I’m appalled that the other candidates refused to stand up for traditional marriage. But I’m not surprised. My opponents have sure talked a good conservative game, but now everyone can see, the others just won’t be as conservative as they say they will. And last night’s forum proves my point.

But whether it’s social issues, government spending issues or government waste issues – voters can trust me to stand in the gap for conservatism because I’ve got a record of doing just that.

If these other candidates can’t be conservative at a College of Charleston forum, then how can you trust them to be conservatives in the face of other Congressional members or Congressional leadership or this President?”

Larry Grooms has received various awards fighting for social issues including:

Legislator of the Year, South Carolina Citizens for Life

Senate Legislative Champion Award, Palmetto Family Council

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Images from the 1st Congressional District race

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I was impressed by the way the Jonathan Hoffman campaign used a fisheye lens (or an app that apes a fisheye lens) to make their guy stand out from the mob at a recent forum.

Meanwhile, Larry Grooms has produced yet another TV ad. He keeps cranking them out…

Familiar names crop up as potential Graham opponents

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The Twitterverse is still buzzing over Lindsey Graham’s criticism of Rand Paul’s filibuster last week, as the über-libertarian wing of the GOP desperately seeks a Great Right Hope to oppose him in next year’s primary.

How desperate are they? Well, they were floating Lee Bright‘s name last week.

Since then, other names have emerged. Tom Davis — again — and Nancy Mace. You’ll know Nancy as the first woman to have graduated from The Citadel, and more recently as a PR and web design consultant, and Will Folk’s partner in his well-read blog (Will handles content; Nancy handles the technical side).

Buzzfeed initially reported the news about Nancy:

WASHINGTON — The first woman to ever graduate from the Citadel — who is also the co-owner of a controversial South Carolina political blog — is weighing a primary challenge to Senator Lindsey Graham in 2014, two Republican sources suggested Saturday.

Nancy Mace

Conservatives have long mulled a challenge to Graham, seen in some circles as too establishmentarian for the state’s conservative grassroots, and allies of Senator Rand Paul — whose filibuster last week Graham denounced — hope State Senator Tom Davis, who backed Paul for president, will enter the race. But another conservative candidate could be Nancy Mace, best known in local political circles as the partial owner of FITSNews, whose name is short for “Faith In The Sound” after a George Michael lyric and which has for several years served as the center ring of the state’s sometimes hallucinatory political circus.

“She’s got an inspirational personal narrative, a gorgeous young family, the right ideological mooring and all sorts of political connections. Oh, and her name fits nicely on a 4X8,” FITSNews founding editor Will Folks said in an email. “Obviously I’m a little biased, but there’s a lot to like about her as a potential candidate in the event Tom Davis decides to stay out of it.”

In a separate email, Mace didn’t rule out a run, though she downplayed its likelihood…

Meanwhile, Will had reported that his former fellow Sanford staffer, Sen. Davis, was rethinking his decision not to run.

Between the two possibilities, the one that seems more likely is that Tom would run, and Nancy would help run his campaign — since the senator is one of her clients.

Vincent Sheheen kicks off 2014 campaign, apparently…

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This came in about an hour ago:

Sheheen Kicks Off “Back on Track” Tour

State Senator will discuss ideas for moving South Carolina forward and his new book “The Right Way” in three-week statewide tour

Rock Hill, SC. – Today, state Sen. Vincent Sheheen kicks off the Palmetto State “Back on Track” tour at Sun City in Rock Hill to rollout his new book “The Right Way” and discuss his ideas for how to move South Carolina forward with local residents and leaders around the state.

“This short book is not meant to propose solutions to all of our state’s problems. It’s a revolt against the status quo. This book proposes ideas for us to consider and debate to try to get our state back on the right footing and shed the inanities of the past few years,” said Sen. Vincent Sheheen. “More than anything, this book of ideas is an attempt to promote more rational political discussion and policy making. Ultimately, we will still need committed citizens and leadership on many fronts to make it so. I look forward to meeting these leaders in the coming weeks and discussing how we will all move forward together.”

The Back on Track Tour will run from March 11^th through March 30^th holding lectures at universities, listening sessions with local families and leaders, and press conferences and discussions with media about the vision laid out in his book for creating jobs, improving education, restructuring the government, and creating a more prosperous future for the people and businesses of the Palmetto state. The tour kicks off today at noon in Rock Hill, before making stops in Conway, Myrtle Beach, Florence, Columbia, Aiken, Charleston, Fairfield, Beaufort, Greenville, and Spartanburg throughout the next three weeks.

Sen. Sheheen’s book is free and available online here, or as a hard copy at each of the event stops on the Back on Track tour.

Below is a selection of key quotes from Sen. Sheheen’s book, “The Right Way: Getting the Palmetto State Back on Track.”

We must do better for South Carolina… the right way

“This book is not about me. It’s about our South Carolina—a South Carolina we know can exist if we join together in a common vision with leaders who actually care about our state. We are better than what our government has looked like in recent history. We have been better before. We deserve better now. It’s up to us to engage and change. We must do it again…the right way.” — p. 110

“Somehow, however, we have let the naysayers gain the upper hand over the last couple of decades in South Carolina. You know who I am talking about—the people who tell us what we can’t do instead of what we can do. These are folks who believe nothing will ever get better and that things just are what they are. I am not one of these people. I do not believe that the South Carolina I know is made up of people like that either. From Camden to Charleston, Aiken to Horry and Due West to Denmark, the people I know and meet in South Carolina believe we can do better than what we have experienced in South Carolina’s recent government. In fact, we must.” — p. 108

“But we also need more than just ideas. We need ACTION—action that turns the status quo of the negativists on their heads. It is almost too late. But together, we still have time. If we don’t quickly get South Carolina moving again, our children and grandchildren will pay the price for decades to come.” — p. 109

Total change needed

“We have suffered embarrassment after embarrassment caused by our leaders’ unethical behavior and boneheaded statements and we have become the butt of late night television jokes all too frequently. This downward spiral in our government should surprise no one. Why? Because we have elected leaders who proclaim a belief that government is always part of the problem. Once elected, they prove their theory correct by making our state’s government a dysfunctional embarrassment that is incapable of efficiently meeting the demands of core government functions.” — pp. 1-2

“Future success for South Carolina’s workers—as well as the entire state—requires more education, not less. Unfortunately, South Carolina’s recent leaders don’t have a good record in making smart investments in education to ensure that our children will have the training they need to get the better-paying jobs of the future. I believe it’s time we turn that abysmal record on its head. Simply put: How can the students of today expect to hold the jobs of tomorrow if they don’t have enough knowledge? — p. 8

“Accountability in South Carolina’s government has been missing for more than a decade. In the end, a government can be successful and accountable regardless of deficiencies in its structure if it has strong, responsible and effective leaders. However in South Carolina, a combination of ineffective leaders and confusing structure has led to our government being ranked one of the most dysfunctional and unaccountable in the nation.” — p. 27

“I am not opposed to healing our government incrementally. I am, however, skeptical that our current leaders will finish the job with that approach. I believe that when a government has reached such a level of dysfunction and disintegration as South Carolina’s, it is time to return the power to the people.” — p. 48

“Through weak leadership in recent times and a governmental system confusing to virtually everyone, South Carolina’s government has arrived at a low point. We have a choice: To continue with the same poor leadership and same poor system, or break with the past and make dramatic change. We can’t afford to wait on current crop of political leaders to make the changes our state needs and deserves. We must take things into our own hands and force change. Either through incremental or dramatic change, we must alter the trajectory of South Carolina’s future. My children and yours deserve our best efforts.” — p. 50

Forward, to a path to prosperity

“One of the greatest obstacles to robust economic growth in South Carolina is our state’s broken and dysfunctional tax system. Furthermore, a special-interest-controlled tax code means that general taxpayers will end up with fewer core services that they say they want. Sure, in good times of budget surpluses, politicians will spread the wealth to make all appear rosy. But all they’ll be doing is bandaging a broken system, which will unravel once again when they cut what they recently added during downturns. It’s a seesaw system of government that leaves us all up in the air.” — p. 54

“The goal of tax reform should not be to raise taxes. To achieve true economic success, our state must reform how it taxes goods so that it can reduce the rate for everyone. That’s something we should all be for.” — p. 67

“Like most South Carolinians, I believe in hard work. I believe we should expect everyone who is physically able to have a job. I don’t believe in handouts. But I also expect that our state government will do all it can to ensure that opportunities exist for our citizens to find a job. It’s in all of our interests for the state to provide a hand-up in the form of job training, economic development, good education and support for small businesses.” — p. 85

“What is excluded from most local economic development offices’ services is support to startup companies and entrepreneurs. This reflects, in part, a lack of expertise in the area but also recognition that the failure rate of these types of companies is high. A handful of groups around the state provide services to startups and entrepreneurs, but they are the exception rather than the rule. The S.C. Department of Commerce has a department that provides access to resources for small businesses, but there is little affirmative effort by the state to assist small business.” — p. 98

“Our state needs a multipronged approach to saving our rural areas and small towns. Failure to meet this challenge will doom many communities to a low standard of living and even non-existence. North Carolina has met this challenge head-on and invested heavily in the strategies and infrastructure for its rural areas. We should do the same.” — p. 102

“Our leaders are pricing the middle class out of a college education. The alternative has become hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt incurred by our future workforce. This is a dumb policy. We should dedicate a decent portion of future budget growth to stabilizing college tuition. And when the state funds higher education in a reasonable manner, colleges and universities should be required to keep tuition increases low.” — p. 106

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Is Graham helping or hurting himself for 2014?

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Of course, that depends on which of his many actions you choose to focus on. As I noted in my last post, our senior senator went back and forth between hugging and slapping Barack Obama yesterday.

National Journal asserted yesterday that “Lindsey Graham Isn’t Acting Like a Worried Man,” citing “demographics and a tea-party fade:”

At the height of tea-party fever in spring 2010, Sen. Lindsey Graham walked out of talks on a bipartisan climate-change bill, saying he was angry about Democratic plans to move first on comprehensive immigration reform. It almost seemed like he was anticipating a hypothetical, hyperconservative primary challenger more than four years before his reelection race.

But now the South Carolina Republican is in the thick of bipartisan talks on immigration reforms that include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants; making overtures on a fiscal “grand bargain” that would include higher taxes along with entitlement trims; and praising President Obama for reaching out to him and others in his party. On Wednesday, Graham held a press conference to announce a bipartisan bill to strengthen mental-health provisions in gun background checks. He also attended Obama’s dinner party with Republicans at a Washington hotel. In fact, Graham drew up the guest list…

In 2010, Graham’s pal John McCain tacked hard right to fend off a tea-party challenger in Arizona. In 2012, Orrin Hatch did the same to survive in Utah. Graham could eventually back away from some of his bipartisan projects, and some skeptical Democrats expect he will. But for now he is gambling that changing times and his own political skills will keep him safe in 2014. And for now he is in a commanding position in his party. Among self-identified Republicans and GOP-leaning independents in a Winthrop University poll last month, he was at 71.6 percent approval.

Not surprisingly, no strong primary challenger to Graham has emerged. The antitax Club for Growth is keeping an eye on the race and will consider getting involved if a viable candidate surfaces, says spokesman Barney Keller. Graham scored 72 percent in the Club’s 2011 report card, close to what the group considers a “bottom-of-the-barrel” Republican. But he did better in 2012 and “obviously you can’t beat someone with no one,” Keller says. GOP consultants in the state predict Graham will have an opponent, but probably a weak one.

That reckoned, however, without the reaction to Graham and John McCain criticizing Rand Paul’s filibuster, which Politico says led to “Lindsey Graham’s very bad day on Twitter:”

Laced throughout the thousands of tweets cheering on the filbustering Kentucky Republican was a vicious, visceral anger aimed squarely at the South Carolinian up for reelection next year.

The rallying cry hashtag: #PrimaryGraham.

Of course, a couple of things stand in the way of Graham being in serious trouble: First, there’s the lack of an opponent, since Tom Davis said he wouldn’t run. Then, there’s that $6 million Lindsey’s sitting on. Politico quoted Wesley Donehue about that:

One name that surfaces regularly as a likely primary challenger is state Sen. Lee Bright of Spartanburg. His name was floated again by callers on Glenn Beck’s radio show Thursday, and although he’s undeclared, sources say he already has a campaign manager in place.

What may be holding him back is money. Graham has a war chest in excess of $6 million, which South Carolina-based GOP digital strategist Wesley Donehue said “goes a long way in our cheap media markets.” Donehue doubts the anti-Graham flare-up over Paul’s filibuster will last long because “there is no one for the pissed-off Internet crowd to give money to.”

Lee Bright? Really?

Yeah, but when’s the OTHER Koch brother going to kick in?

MedicAID, Larry, not MedicARE. There’s a difference…

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Note: After this post was published, the Grooms campaign sent out two corrections. The first did not correct the “Medicare” mistake. The second, at 4:52 p.m., did. The original release moved at 4:18 p.m.

Just got this, about 14 minutes ago, from Larry Grooms’ campaign for the GOP nomination in the 1st Congressional District:

LARRY GROOMS ISSUED A STATEMENT ABOUT DEMOCRAT VINCE SHEHEEN’S FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE DEMAND TO EXPAND MEDICARE

Charleston, SC – Republican State Senator and Candidate for Congress Larry Grooms issued the following statement today about State Senator Vincent Sheheen’s desire to expand Medicare in South Carolina:

State Senator and Candidate for Congress Larry Grooms issued the following statement:

“There is no question the federal governments desire to expand Medicare is a horrible idea for South Carolina and this nation. I stand firm with Governor Nikki Haley on this issue and will continue to fight against this massive federal government overreach.

I was deeply concerned to see Senator Sheheen’s comments today about his desire to expand Medicare – but I wasn’t surprised. What he and President Obama can’t seem to grasp is that we are on a path to bankrupting this state and nation. In fact, if Sen. Sheheen and Barack Obama have their way, in three years South Carolinians will owe almost 2 Billion dollars to the federal government. This is a deplorable and quite frankly, immoral thing to do to the people of this state.

I, for one, will stand firm with Gov. Haley and will continue to push my colleagues in the South Carolina Senate to do the same. If elected to Congress, you better believe I’ll take the fight for fiscal sanity to Washington so that Governors like Nikki Haley will never be faced with such a ridiculously harmful proposition.”

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I added the boldface on the “Medicares.”

Um, Larry — I just checked. Sheheen hasn’t said anything about expanding Medicare. Perhaps you’re thinking of Medicaid. I’m not aware that the governor has taken any particular stand on Medicare lately, either. But she is standing against expanding Medicaid…

To help you out, Larry, here’s a story from Adam Beam about what Sheheen did say today, headlined “Sheheen endorses expanding Medicaid.”

There can be a drawback to suggesting that voters make their own signs about your campaign for Congress

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We all know about Mark Sanford’s bizarre campaign signs. You know, that he’s encouraging people to take scraps of cast-away plywood and crudely letter them with the message, “Sanford saves tax $.” Signs like this one.

Sanford thinks this is terribly clever, and sends out a terrific message about him in his bid for the GOP nomination for the 1st Congressional District. Me, I think it just reminds us what a startlingly cheap so-and-so he is, and not in a good way at all. More like this way:

In her 2010 memoir, former first lady Jenny Sanford tells her own stories — most of them unflattering — of his frugality. In one, Mark Sanford bought her a diamond necklace for her birthday. He ultimately made her give back the beloved gift after deciding he’d paid too much for it…

Anyway, an alert reader sent me the above image, which the reader reports was found “near Ravenel Bridge in Charleston.” This is what the sign refers to, in case you’ve forgotten.

So sometimes you might just want to go ahead and have official signs run up, and put them out yourself. It’s easier to stay on message that way…

Hoffman: Another TV ad from the 1st District

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Looked at from this distance, the contest for the 1st Congressional District GOP nomination has looked like a case of Sanford sitting atop the name-recognition hill, and Larry Grooms exerting the most energy trying to take it from him.

A third candidate I keep hearing from (and let me remind you that my perspective is skewed by the fact that I keep hearing from this guy and Grooms; others could be running just as hard but not making the effort to let me know about it) is Jonathan Hoffman.

No, I hadn’t heard of him, either, so of course he’s running a standard “I’m not a politician” campaign. To the extent that is appealing, he certainly has an advantage over Sanford and Grooms.

But this new TV ad tells me next to nothing. It shows him in uniform, and I thank him for his service. It shows him with the last Republican president. He uses the word “conservative” only once in 30 seconds, which by Republican primary standards shows extraordinary restraint. Of course, he uses other phrases that suggest such values to the base, such as “small business owner.”

And he makes the usual dubious claims that Republicans in SC tend to believe as gospel, such as:

He wants to be elected “to take on out-of-control spending and the growth of government.” Compared to what absolute measure, I find myself wondering. It’s interesting to contrast this belief to what I read this morning in the libertarian Economist, which, after asserting that “By most measures Mr Obama’s positions have been rather moderate,” notes that the public now is in a more conservative mood: “The conservative idea that spending must be cut is taken for granted, even though government spending is already lower in America than in most advanced economies.” Did you catch that? Looked at from outside, the U.S. government is not some out-of-control behemoth. It is only that to people who choose to believe it is.
Then there’s this chestnut: “let’s get back to constitutionally limited government.” Something that, of course, we’ve never left. He doesn’t have to explain what he means because no on in the GOP base would challenge him on it. Me, I want details. Back during the Bush administration, Democrats would say this very same silly thing. They were usually referring to the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 measures that Democrats as well as Republicans voted for and legally passed, under lawmaking provisions of our, ahem, Constitution. Now, Republicans generally mean something like Obamacare. Which, according to the GOP-appointed Chief Justice and a majority on the Supreme Court, is constitutional. Or is he referring to killing U.S. citizens with drones and without the benefit of due process? If so, I’d like to hear him square that with is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with President Bush in fighting the Global War on Terror, which the current president is only guilty of pursuing a tad more aggressively than his predecessor, casting drones far and wide and putting boots on the ground in the very heart of Pakistan.

Mind you, I’m not being critical of Mr. Hoffman. He’s not doing a thing that pols of both parties don’t do in this ridiculously facile medium, the 30-second ad. It would be practically impossible for him to answer the questions he raises in my mind within that format.

But these ads aren’t meant to answer questions. They are meant to communicate, in the most minimalist, Gestalten flicker, a set of emotions along the lines of “he’s like me,” or “I trust that man.” So they deal not in facts, but in presumptions, ones that are shared, even if they fly in the face of reality.

Grooms’ ads are the same. Sanford’s go a bit farther, because so much is known about him, and some of what is known is problematic and has to be addressed. But it is of course addressed in the most emotional, simplistic kind of way, merely communicating, “You must not hold it against him.” Why? Because “I trust that man, despite all.”

But it is on these extremely thin, grossly inadequate bases that we decide elections in this country.

Of COURSE Sanford wanted Jenny to run his campaign…

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The quirks of SC politics continue to fascinate national media.

The most recent edition of Slatest leads with Mark Sanford having wanted Jenny to run his congressional campaign.

Personally, when I heard that a week or two ago, I really didn’t think much of it. I was like, Of course he wanted her to run it; he has no clue how to run for office without her telling him what to do.

Jenny was always the brains in that outfit. Here’s my favorite anecdote illustrating that, which I’ve probably already told here before…

Early in the process of running for governor — probably in late 2001 or early 2002 — Sanford asked to come see the editorial board and tell us about his economic proposals (in a nutshell — reduce or eliminate the state income tax). Fine, we said. So when he came, Jenny came with him. I went down to greet them in the lobby, and Jenny handed me a basketful of cookies (message: I’m not Hillary). I was sufficiently nonplussed that I thanked her, then handed them back to her. Which wasn’t very gracious of me; I just wasn’t prepared to be presented with cookies (to which I’m allergic, anyway).

So I led them upstairs, Jenny still carrying the cookies. When we got to the boardroom and sat down and started the meeting, Mark said something like, “Jenny’s going to make the presentation; this is her plan, after all.” And she, having ditched the cookies somewhere along the line, proceeded to run us through a Powerpoint presentation.

Another anecdote, illustrating the way she ran his campaigns with an iron hand… I forget who told me this; it was probably either Tom Davis or Kevin Hall…

Anyway, they were running that same campaign out of the Sanfords’ Sullivan Island house. Whenever Jenny was mad at someone in the campaign and wanted to have a private chat to unburden her mind on the subject, she would have that campaign staffer meet her in a secluded part of the house. I think it was near the backdoor or something. Anyway, there was a rack for multiple hats on the wall in that location, loaded with the boys’ baseball caps and such.

Thus, when one campaign worker told another he’d been “taken to the hats,” it was understood that he was in the doghouse for the moment.

Anyway, it’s hard to imagine a Sanford campaign without Jenny, so his request is understandable on one level. The other thing to understand is what Josh Voorhees of The Slatest intuited: “that Mark Sanford still hasn’t figured out how personal relationships work.”

Anyway, the subject was brought up by this profile of Sanford in New York magazine, if you’d like to go read it.

Yeah, but it’s that other 8 percent that gets him in trouble

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Lindsey Graham receives an award from Paulie Walnuts of “The Sopranos.” No, wait — that’s probably someone from the ACU. The release didn’t identify him…

With re-election coming up next year, you know that Lindsey Graham was thrilled to be able to send out this release yesterday:

Graham Named ‘ACU Conservative’

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) was recognized by the American Conservative Union (ACU) for his conservative voting record. The group honored him as an ‘ACU Conservative.’

“Senator Graham’s ACU rating of ‘92’ for votes cast in 2012 shows a consistent commitment to conservative principles on a wide range of issues,” said Al Cardenas, Chairman, American Conservative Union.

The Senate, on average, voted the conservative position 39.28 percent of the time in 2012.

The ACU, which describes itself as the largest and strongest grassroots conservative organization, serves as the umbrella organization for conservatives in America.

The ratings cover issues running the gamut of legislative action, including energy production, government reform, foreign policy, and social issues. These issues are carefully selected to ensure legislators are scored and rated on the bellwether conservative topics they voted on over the course of the year. According to the ACU, their ratings have become a go-to guide to determine whether an elected official’s philosophical rhetoric matches his or her record.

Among the conservative votes Graham cast that were part of the group’s 2012 scorecard:

Approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada

Increasing domestic energy production through new oil and gas leases throughout the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS)

Opposing the National Labor Relations Board’s union-backed snap elections limiting workers’ rights

Prohibiting the transfer of terrorist detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States

Opposing the major expansion of welfare programs under the Obama Administration

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A 92 is a pretty good score and all. But the people who are likely to give Lindsey a hard time are the kind who call you a “RINO” if you don’t get 100. All they want to focus on is what he does the other 8 percent of the time…

Stephen Colbert, promoting his sister’s candidacy

Grooms running hard to catch Sanford in 1st District

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From where I sit, up here in Columbia (admittedly not the best vantage point), the person who seems to be running the hardest to catch Mark Sanford in the 1st Congressional District GOP primary is state Sen. Larry Grooms.

A day doesn’t pass that Hogan Gidley — last seen in these parts acting as spokesman for Rick Santorum — doesn’t send me a release or two on his behalf. Several in recent days have boasted about Tea Party congressmen Mick Mulvaney and Jeff Duncan endorsing him.

And this is the second TV ad for Grooms I’ve seen. Here’s the first.

Of course, it doesn’t really say anything to distinguish Grooms from anyone else (typical line from the ad: “I’m a pro-life Christian conservative who knows DC spends too much”), but when’s the last time you saw originality in one of these things?

NPR’s take on Lindsey Graham’s political situation

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I notice there was another SC story on Weekend Edition this morning, aside from my interview about Mark Sanford. It was their take on why Lindsey Graham’s been posturing so furiously on issues that endear him to the right, in the wake of his risky stepping out on immigration again:

It seems Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has done his best in recent weeks to get as much ink as possible, talking about things that play well with the conservatives in his home state of South Carolina, like Benghazi and gun rights.

Graham also held up the nomination of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary to get more answers about what happened in Benghazi, even as he admitted Hagel had nothing to do with it. But his opposition might have more to do with home state politics than the nomination itself.

Republican senators who have shown moderate leanings have been hit with primary challenges from the right recently, and while no serious challenger has emerged yet in South Carolina, there are a whole lot of people hoping one does.

“There are some legitimate concerns to be asked about Benghazi … [and] Chuck Hagel,” says Tom Davis, a Republican state senator in South Carolina. “That being said, I do think it is fair to say that there has been a conscious effort on the part of Sen. Graham to elevate his role in those debates.”…

Don Gonyea didn’t ask me about this one in my interview, but if he had I would have said the obvious: That Tom Davis, whom they quote, was the threat from the right that everyone had expected, but that he says he’s not running.

But Graham’s still not taking any chances. After all, as we saw in 2010, especially in the 4th Congressional District, these days a successful challenge to a Republican incumbent can come out of nowhere.

Hear me on Weekend Edition tomorrow morning

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If you’re not sleeping in tomorrow morning, you might want to listen to Weekend Edition on NPR. I taped an interview with Don Gonyea this morning about the 1st Congressional District special election. [Update: You can listen to the interview here.]

That is, it was sort of about the 1st Congressional District special election.

Earlier in the week, I got a call from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation wanting to interview me about that race, and I begged off. I told them I just hadn’t been following it that closely.

When Brigid McCarthy called from NPR, I told her the same. But she said what they really wanted to do is talk about Mark Sanford.

That, I said, I can do.

And that’s mostly what we talked about.

But just in case, I did some reading up on the contest so I’d have a broad familiarity with it, in the event that we went beyond Sanford (which we did, a bit). That’s what led to this earlier blog post.

To update y’all from that post…

It’s looking to me like the GOP candidate running the hardest other than Sanford is Larry Grooms. Hogan Gidley, the former SC Republican Party executive director who in recent years has been associated with Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, has been sending me releases this week for Grooms, including one yesterday noting that Jeff Duncan and Mick Mulvaney (two of Tim Scott’s fellow Tea Party classmates of 2010) have endorsed him. And like Sanford, Grooms released a TV ad this week.

But then, maybe some of the other candidates are running just as hard, but don’t have my email address. If you’re out there, it’s [email protected].

Also, I’ve sort of been operating on the assumption that the winner of the GOP contest will likely be Scott’s replacement, rather than Stephen Colbert’s sister. Republicans have held that seat since Tommy Hartnett won it on Reagan’s coattails in 1980. But… in 2008, the Democratic nominee came within a couple of points of winning. That was another coattails situation, though, in this case Barack Obama’s. There won’t be any Obama coattails operating this spring.

More than that, I checked this morning with someone who was fairly intimately involved in the most recent reapportionment. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the district is now safer for Republicans than it was in 2008.

Sixteen (that’s 16) candidates in one Republican primary

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While Mark Sanford is getting all the attention — NPR wants to talk to me about him tomorrow — he is actually but one of 16 candidates officially seeking the GOP nomination in the 1st Congressional District.

I’m thinking that’s gotta be a record, at least in a special election, and at least in South Carolina. Lord knows our cup runneth over with Republicans these days, and it’s no biggie for six or seven of them to go chasing after a choice situation on the public payroll, but sixteen?

Only four of whom I really know anything at all about. In descending order of what I know about them, they are Sanford, Larry Grooms, Chip Limehouse and Elizabeth Moffly. After Sanford, though, my knowledge drops off extremely. All I remember, without looking back in my blog, about Larry Grooms is that he wanted Fred Thompson to run for president in 2008, and I saw him at Rick Perry’s announcement in 2011 (after supporting Perry, he later very publicly urged him to drop out). I know that Elizabeth Moffly ran for state superintendent once, so I interviewed her, and she later wrote me an angry note that sort of puzzled me at the time.

With Limehouse — well, I knew I had read and even written about him in the past, but I had to go back and search my archive to remember particulars. I found that he supported Rick Perry. He pushed for creation of a special SC license plate that commemorated “Big Red,” the flag under which Citadel students fired on the Star of the West, which was trying to resupply Fort Sumter, in the most extreme, inexcusable, violent incidence of student unrest in U.S. history. He was endorsed by the Club for Growth. He sponsored a bill to make the Marsh Tacky the official South Carolina Heritage horse.

Anyway…

What else do I know about this field? Well, I saw a remarkable picture that ran Feb. 10 in the Post and Courier that showed 15 of the 16 standing together (screenshot above — here’s the original). I saw that all were white (in a race to replace Tim Scott) and Elizabeth Moffly was the only woman. That’s about all I could tell.

Here, according to Wikipedia, are the 16:

Keith Blandford, businessman^[4]
Curtis Bostic, former Charleston County Councilman^[5]
Ric Bryant, engineer^[6]
Larry Grooms, state Senator^[7]
Jonathan Rath Hoffman, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, Director of Border Security at the White House and Attorney^[8]
John Kuhn, former state Senator^[4]
Jeff King, engineer for a military contractor.^[9]
Tim Larkin, defense engineer and member of the South Carolina Army National Guard^[10]
Chip Limehouse, State Representative^[11]
Peter McCoy, state Representative^[12]^[13]
Elizabeth Moffly, member of the Charleston County School Board^[14]
Ray Nash, Former Dorchester County Sheriff^[15]
Andy Patrick, state Representative^[16]
Shawn Pinkston, attorney^[17]
Mark Sanford, former Governor of South Carolina and former U.S. Representative^[18]
Robert “Teddy” Edward Turner IV, high school teacher and son of businessman Ted Turner^[19]^[20]

I assume that’s accurate and inclusive. I haven’t found a complete list in the MSM. Mind you, there were 16 others who were talked about as candidates, but who declined to run. That included Jenny Sanford, Tom Davis, Jim Merrill, Carroll Campbell III, Thomas Ravenel and Chip Campsen. That’s actually a better-known bunch than most of the people who actually filed.

What about the Democrats? Well, scuttlebutt tells me that Stephen Colbert’s sister, Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, is going to win that over a perennial candidate, Ben Frasier.

And what happens after that? Well, normally in that district, the Republican wins. That’s been the case since Tommy Hartnett in 1980. Which is why so many are seeking the nomination of that party, I suppose. Of course, a Democrat came within a couple of points in 2008, with Obama’s coattails. There aren’t going to be any Obama coattails this time.

Sanford, of course, has the advantage in the GOP contest, by far. Not only does common sense dictate that, but every poll I’ve seen reported. Here’s one. But right now, I’m putting more stock in the common sense thing.

The primary’s next month, and the special election is in May.

Howie Rich complains about ‘hit piece’ on him in The State

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A blog post at SC Schools Report brings my attention to a letter that Sen. Kevin Bryant received from his fan Howie Rich. Here it is:

Dear Kevin,

First of all congratulations on the “A+” ranking you received this month from the S.C. Club for Growth. I understand you’ve received the highest score in the SC Legislature eight years running – which is quite a feat. Given how many of our elected officials get away with paying lip service to freedom and free markets, it’s gratifying to see when a few of them actually walk the walk – as you have consistantly done.

I wanted to write because I’m sure you’ve seen the lates “hit piece” against me in the Columbia newspaper – which is (once again) ramping up its vendetta agains parental choice and those of us who support it. This liberal rag – which gives The New York Times a run for its left – leaning money – apparently believes that demonizing me (and the legal contributions I have made to candidates in South Carolina) passes for a legitimate argument against school choice.

Meanwhile the paper does everything within its power to prop up the grovernment-run school system in the Palmetto State – which as we know is falling further behind the rest of the nation (exacting larger and larger sums of money from the South Carolina taxpayers.)

Thankfully the ongoing proliferation of new (and social) media in South Carolina means we no longer have to coddle this status quo mouthpiece – and can take our case directly to the people. This is exactly what you are doing in your “Blog from the Back Bench,” and I commend you on those efforts.

Ideologically we both know how this debate will progress. Absent the infusion of market-based reforms South Carolina’s government-run monopoly will continue to fail generations of school children – while sticking taxpayers with an ever-escalating bill.

But what is the political future of this debate? On that front I want to make something perfectly clear: Every time I read one of these hit pieces, my commitment to the fundamental reforms we are advancing is redoubled. What we are witnessing in South Carolina right now are the last gasps of a dying status quo – entrenched politicians (and their legacy media supporters) whose only remaining excuse for the poor performance of their government -run system is that parental choice has become a “distraction.” Clearly their House of Cards is close to toppling.

2016 will not be a repeat of 2012 – in which incumbent-created protections denied challengers a chance to compete in an honest primary. Mark my words: Those currently running victory laps around the South Carolina State House after giving up more than a third of the vote to “petition candidates” will be held accountable for their votes in a true GOP primary three years from now. And from what I am told, there will be an even broader coalition of pro-taxpayer, pro-free market interests aligned against them.

It comes down to this: The Republican-controlled Senate will either pass school choice this year or it wont. If it does, South Carolina’s children, parents and taxpayers will be better for it. If it does not, then school choice advocates will focus every bit of energy they have on the 2016 primaries.

On this we have learned over the years is that choice – in addition to being effective everywhere it has been implemented – is a rising tide both politically and legislatively. When we started this fight we were nowhere in the S.C. General Assembly – now the S.C House has passed choice legislation and we were one rigged primary election away from getting it through the Senate.

One way or the other choice is coming. It is only a matter of resources, planning and patience – and I can ssure you we are blessed with an abundance of all three.

Thank you for your leadership on this issue. I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Take care,

Howard Rich

Gosh, I had no idea Mr. Rich was even aware of The State’s existence, much less that he was so bugged by what it said about him. Oddly, the “hit piece” to which he refers is a fairly straightforward, news story that tells readers about his ongoing contributions to SC lawmakers. It’s also a pretty old story — I don’t know the date of his letter to Sen. Bryant.

By the way, I join “Howie” in complimenting Sen. Bryant on his blog. He was the first blogger in the Legislature, and still maintains it pretty religiously. It’s a good thing that we can keep tabs on what he’s doing and thinking.

View of Jim DeMint changed radically after the 2004 campaign

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I was rather startled to run across something I’d written about Jim DeMint in 2004.

For so many years now, I’ve seen him as a hyperpartisan ideologue, as responsible as anyone in the country for pulling his party into Tea Party extremism right up until his recent resignation from the Senate, that I’d forgotten I used to see him differently.

Here’s what I wrote right after the 2004 election, when he had defeated Inez Tenenbaum in the contest to replace Fritz Hollings:

While I criticized Rep. DeMint heavily for choosing to run as a hyperpartisan (despite his record as an independent thinker), there’s little doubt that that strategy was his key to victory. The president won South Carolina 58-41, and Mr. DeMint beat Mrs. Tenenbaum 54-44, demonstrating the power of the coattail effect. I congratulate him, and sincerely hope he now returns to being the thoughtful policy wonk he was before he wrapped himself in party garb in recent weeks.

Wow. What a difference a few years make. “Thoughtful policy wonk?” I only vaguely remember that Jim DeMint.

So that’s when it began. Before the 2004 campaign, I saw him as a fairly thoughtful guy. But I guess that campaign showed him what red meat could do for him…

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