Category Archives: James Smith

How about doing something GOOD that’s ‘unprecedented?’ For a change…

That would be nice. That would be a wonderful change from what we’ve seen ever since 2016, both nationally and here at home.

I’ve never seen anything like this happen in South Carolina. I saw it happen on the national level, though. Once. And once was enough. That was when Mitch McConnell violated his responsibility as leader of the U.S. Senate by refusing to let Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination even be considered in committee, much less come up for a vote.

That’s not exactly what happened here, but in a way, what the Legislature did yesterday was worse, just on a smaller scale. I say that because James Smith did get considered. Not only was he considered, but he was duly found qualified by the screening panel. (How could the panel have possibly reached any other conclusion?)

The only other candidate found qualified dropped out back in January. And yet this judgeship somehow didn’t come up for a vote until we were past the middle of April. And when it came up, lawmakers did the “unprecedented” thing: They refused to vote, and sent it back to the screening panel to try again. Here’s the AP story:

In my SC news from today, 2018 SC Democratic gubernatorial candidate James Smith was the only remaining candidate for a circuit judge seat. Republicans refused to put him up for a vote https://t.co/WEXHoE36x2

— Jeffrey Collins (@JSCollinsAP) April 17, 2024

I’m thinking the AP version is more likely to be accessible to all. But here’s the P&C story that the image above refers to, the one with “unprecedented” in the hed.

That story had this passage in it:

State Rep. Micah Caskey, a West Columbia Republican who is chairman of the judicial vetting panel, voted to find Smith qualified on the panel but voted to spike his election during the joint assembly. He said that the role of the vetting panel is to check a candidate’s qualifications while the Legislature can consider a broader set of factors.

“More information was revealed with respect to various positions and statements he’s taken in the past,” Caskey said of the opposition to Smith, who was in attendance for the vote…

As y’all know, Micah is my representative. I supported him for that seat rather than run myself. And I have continued to support him. I’m meeting with him tomorrow. I’ll let you know if he has a good explanation for yesterday, or if anything else newsworthy is said.

What follows is aimed not only at him, but at everyone who participated in this sorry business.

But the only new “information” I have read about would be this:

Anti-abortion groups had pressured Republicans to reject Smith, who supported abortion rights during his political career….

In other words, something completely irrelevant. As I mentioned in my last post, I have utter contempt for people who judge others based on a single issue, that one or any other. Especially when, as in the immediate case, it has pretty much nothing to do with the matter at hand. (That was different in the Garland case, since SCOTUS had made abortion its business back in 1973. But what happened to Garland was still inexcusable, and will blacken Mitch McConnell’s name forever, especially since he remains proud of it.)

This is the kind of behavior you see from people who don’t think about abortion either way, not on any level that matters. They just use it as a litmus test to determine which “side” someone is on (in their feeble minds) so they can know whether to love or hate that person absolutely. Which is sickening. And people on both sides do it to some extent. That’s what Dick Harpootlian is counting on in his contest against Russell Ott.

Some other points:

Making all of this even more contemptible is the fact that they could have simply voted James up or down. That’s what honorable people — or people who don’t want to waste everyone’s time — would do in this situation. But they didn’t. Presumably, the cowards must not have thought they had the votes. They figured it was easier just to cop out, and throw it back to Micah’s screening committee.
Here’s where the alter cocker talks about how things were “in the old days,” but I assure you what I say is true. This would never have happened (and to my knowledge never did happen) before very, very recently. For instance, it wouldn’t have happened at any point during the 20 years James was in the House himself. People in both parties respected him too much. Of course, some of those people who would never have done this before did it yesterday. That’s because they’re now different people. The whole country is different.
Following up on that previous bullet, we now live in a country in which Republican lawmakers will do any contemptible thing — even abandon Ukraine to the bloodthirsty predations of Vladimir Putin — to pacify the loudest, most ourrageous lunatics in their ranks, people they would have laughed at a few years ago. That’s what we have sunk to.

I had coffee with James downtown this morning, keeping an appointment we set several days ago. He, like me, is very disappointed. Personally, I had looked forward to saying “your honor” when I saw him. For his part, I’m sure it’s painful to be treated this way by an insitution in which he served so honorably and respectably for two decades.

But James will be fine. Folks, in case you wonder, he didn’t need this job. He’s a partner in one of the biggest, most successful law firms in the state. Beyond that, he also enjoys serving on the Patriots Point Development Authority Board. His grandfather served on USS Laffey, one of the ships in that museum, in World War II. He was on his way down there after our meeting this morning.

He ran for that judgeship because it was another chance to serve. James likes to serve his country and his state, perhaps more than anyone else I know. He has definitely proved his devotion to country. The P&C story noted that he is “a decorated combat veteran from the Afghanistan War.” That ain’t the half of it. As I wrote in 2006:

Rep. James Smith of Columbia was a JAG officer in the National Guard with the rank of captain, but he didn’t think that was doing enough. So a couple of years back, he started agitating for a transfer to the infantry. His entreaties were rebuffed. He bucked it up to Washington before someone told him fine, you can do that — as long as you give up your commission and start over as an enlisted man…

So that’s what he did. He went through basic training with kids half his age, and after OCS (that is, the Guard version of OCS) and advanced infantry combat training, went to Afghanistan and distinguished himself in combat. He was named to the Palmetto Military Academy Hall of Fame for that. You know why?

Because it was unprecedented.

America is counting on you and your team, Scott!

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On the road, with Scott Harriford driving (and yours truly at shotgun), in 2018. That’s the candidate in the back…

Right after Thanksgiving, I was at the Township watching my twin granddaughters dance in “The Nutcracker” (and they were awesome!). During intermission, I saw Kendall Corley sitting several rows ahead of me and went down to chat with him.

Kendall was our political director during the Smith/Norrell campaign in 2018. More relevantly to this post, he was the man who saved America (OK, Jim Clyburn helped) by directing the campaign that won the South Carolina primary for Joe Biden.

I asked whether he was involved this year — now that America needs saving again, and from the same threat — and he said no. But he said the state team would be announced soon, and “some people you know” will be running the Biden campaign here.

That Kendall Corley knows what he’s talking about.

Two weeks ago (sorry to take so long to get to it), the campaign put out this release:

Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Announces Key South Carolina Staff Hires

Today, the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign announced the hiring of the following key staffers to serve as the South Carolina state leadership team for the historic first in the nation presidential primary:

Scott Harriford, South Carolina State Director

Clay Middleton, South Carolina Senior Advisor

Jalisa Washington Price, South Carolina Senior Advisor

Brady Quirk-Garvan, South Carolina Advisor

Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign National Co-Chair Congressman James Clyburn issued the following statement:
“South Carolina Democrats have been the best preparers of our party’s nominees for decades and we are thrilled to have been given the opportunity to continue playing this historic role in nominating Joe Biden for reelection next year. Every candidate who has won the South Carolina primary in recent years has gone on to be our nominee and get the majority of the popular vote in the general election, and no one knows that better than President Biden. This seasoned, skillful South Carolina team will lead the Biden-Harris coalition to victory in South Carolina and the nation in 2024.”
At President Biden’s recommendation, the Democratic National Committee voted earlier this year to put South Carolina first on the Democrats’ 2024 calendar, followed by New Hampshire, Nevada, and Michigan. The Biden-Harris 2024 campaign’s leadership in the state will be focused on reaching out to voters and organizing in key communities ahead of South Carolina’s historic Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 3, 2024.

South Carolina State Leadership:

Scott Harriford, South Carolina State Director
Scott Harriford is a Principal at Hilltop Public Solutions. Most recently Scott was a political appointee at the Small Business Administration and served as the White House liaison. Scott worked on the 2020 Biden campaign as the South Carolina Political Director, and after the primary election he became the Southeastern. Political Director for the Biden-Harris campaign. In his role he helped the campaign develop and implement a regional political strategy. He was also responsible for community outreach, strategic planning, and political organization. Before joining the Biden campaign, Scott worked in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District as a Senior Field Director for Congressman Joe Cunningham. Previously, he worked on Representative James Smith and Mandy Powers Norrell’s campaign for Governor-Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina as the Deputy Political Director. Scott graduated from the University of South Carolina where he had the opportunity to start a small business that focused on hydroponic farm development and consulting.

Clay Middleton, South Carolina Senior Advisor
Clay comes to the campaign after previously serving as Senior Advisor to Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. During the 2020 cycle, Clay worked as House Legislative Advisor for the Biden-Harris Transition team. He was also Senior Advisor to Senator Cory Booker’s presidential campaign. A former Director of Business Services in the City of Charleston, Clay served as Regional Political Director and South Carolina State Director for the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. A long-time staffer for Representative Jim Clyburn, Clay also worked on the 2008 Obama presidential campaign as South Carolina Political Director. Clay is a graduate of The Citadel and is a Lieutenant Colonel in the South Carolina Army National Guard serving as a Battalion Commander.

Jalisa Washington Price, South Carolina Senior Advisor
Before joining the campaign, Jalisa was the Political and Advocacy Vice President at iHeartMedia. She also worked on the 2020 Biden-Harris presidential campaign, serving as Senior Political Advisor to then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris. After the election, Jalisa was the Director of the Office of the Vice President-elect for the Presidential Inaugural Committee. Jalisa has also held senior leadership positions at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, advised on several congressional and statewide campaigns, and she worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. A native of South Carolina, Jalisa graduated from the University of South Carolina. She was named to Fortune Magazine’s 40 under 40 list in Government and Politics.

Brady Quirk-Garvan, South Carolina Advisor
Brady Quirk-Garvan has been working in South Carolina politics for almost 20 years, where he has worked on and supported races across the state from city council to the Presidential level. Upon graduating from the College of Charleston, Brady went to work for President Obama’s campaign in the swing state of Ohio in 2008 before returning back to South Carolina. He served as the Chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party for five years during which time they flipped six seats from Republican to Democrat. Brady has served as a delegate representing South Carolina for the last three Democratic National Conventions and was named “Democrat of the Year” by the South Carolina Democratic Party in 2015.

This is great news, because Scott’s in charge! Scott was the state political director under Kendall in 2020. But I know him better than the others because of the roles he had in James Smith’s campaign, which is where he started his meteoric rise in the politics biz.

As the bio above notes, he was the deputy field director (working under Kendall) in that campaign. That shows how quickly his talents were recognized. His original title was “body man” — you know, like Charlie Young on “The West Wing.”

He was the very first staffer James hired, fairly early in 2017, well before he had even launched the campaign. I met him one morning at the old (now closed) Lizard’s Thicket on Beltline, where I was having breakfast with James. The purpose of our meeting was for me to tell James that when he started building his staff, I wanted him to think about whether there was any way I could be a part of it. The answer, which was yes, came much later. (This was late summer or early fall of 2017, I would not join until the following July.) But James had been told a body man — mainly, a driver — had to come first. And he was right. And he and Scott were already out on the road.

Scott put in more hours, and far more miles, than anyone else on the campaign besides James himself. I need to ask him how many miles he drove, if he knows; it must be a stupendous figure. But he did more than that, involving himself in every aspect of the campaign, which I assume is how he ended up as Kendall’s deputy.

He was certainly essential to me. The other Scott on the campaign — our manager, Hogan (seen standing at the center with me behind Biden below) told me once that there should be five people doing my job handling communications, but we didn’t have the money. So I was tied up in the office most of the time, and relied on the pictures Scott Harriford texted to me to illustrate the social posts I was pumping out most of the time. He also handled Facebook Live videos out on the scene.

Occasionally I got out with him and James. In early October, I caught a ride with them up to my hometown, Bennettsville. It took us a while to get up there, because whenever Scott saw a good spot for signs, he would stop, and he and I would get out and put them up (something I’d never done before that day; Scott was giving me basic training).

At all times, Scott did whatever was needed. That, among many other considerations, makes me very happy he’s running the show here in South Carolina. America needs Joe to win re-election, to put it very mildly, and this is where it all starts…

Also back in 2018, when Scott (upper left) and I were working together, and Joe was just a former veep.

That would have been a good tweet during the campaign

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I posted this with a release advocating medical cannabis, and James saw it and told me to take it down NOW. So I did, and I saw his point. But I had liked it, and whatever I substituted it with was boring…

Y’all may or may not remember that back during our campaign in 2018, James and Mandy supported medical cannabis. James knew veterans who would benefit from it, and Mandy had co-sponsored the bill in the House that would have legalized it.

I myself was kind of neutral on the issue, but my job as communications director wasn’t to push my views, but theirs. So I wrote a release or two about it. Here’s one, if you can read it. (I can’t link you to it because the website is long gone — or at least, I can’t find it.) That one was taking Henry McMaster to task for his coldly facile dismissal of the idea — I certainly believed he was wrong about that, however undecided I may have been on the larger matter.

Why undecided? Well, to quote from the release, Henry had been asked “whether the substance should be legalized for the limited use of sick people who have no other recourse for relieving their suffering.” In Henry’s position, I’d have said “yes,” but would have gone on to say I would need to educate myself more to feel persuaded that there were conditions nothing else would cure. It seems couterintuitive that would be true, given the huge variety of pharmaceuticals available in the world — but I had heard repeatedly that it was uniquely effective and I was at the “I need to learn more” point.

Doug Ross doesn’t need that, being a libertarian. So he supported our campaign, based at least in some part on that position. I very much appreciate that support. But I’m not a libertarian, and have no problem with the government saying “no” to people when there’s a reason. And to me, the reason has always been that I need to be persuaded that an intoxicant that is currently illegal needs to be made legal. I might be halfway there in this case, but not quite all the way.

But I might have been closer to a conclusion back then if I’d seen what Mandy retweeted the other day. This was impressive…

I saw this around the time I cosponsored the medical cannabis bill in the SC House. It doesn’t help w/ everything, but the issues it works for, it often works wonders. The more leaders learn about its medicinal properties, the more they come around to supporting such legislation. https://t.co/gfd2WnFljS

— Mandy Powers Norrell (@MPowersNorrell) November 15, 2023

Joe Cunningham says he’ll run for governor. Huh…

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As I said, I ran into him a couple of times. This was the last Saturday night of the 2018 election.

… which is my way of saying I’m not sure what I think about it yet. Might have to ponder for awhile.

Of course, I’m very interested in having someone other than Henry McMaster be our governor. I spent more than four months of my life working very long, hard hours trying to bring that about not long ago, but as Mark Twain would say, we got left.

So there’s that.

There’s also the fact that I don’t have anything against Joe, which is something I can’t say about all that many people in politics. So that’s good. And it seems like Joe would have a better shot than most Democrats who might run. And it will have to be a Democrat — you can’t rely on Republicans to come up with anyone more desirable than Henry. They tried hard in 2018, and nearly did it. But I didn’t see anything good to say about the options offered then, and in the Year of our Lord 2021, I look around and think that if they ever managed to dump their incumbent, it would most likely be with someone Trumpier than he is.

I think Henry sees that, too, which is why he runs about saying such stupid things.

On the other hand, I don’t know of much to say for Joe, because he’s so new to public life. In fact, I just watched his announcement video, and when he started talking, I didn’t know it was him. I thought it might be one of those commercials that come up on YouTube before your video. Then I realized it was him, and right after that, I realized I was completely unfamiliar with his voice. I ran into him a couple of times in 2018 (see the pics above and below), but I don’t remember hearing him speak. And as y’all know, I don’t watch TV, and I don’t remember hearing him on NPR.

At my age, 2018 — when I first heard of Joe — feels like about five minutes ago, if that. And when I saw in the Post and Courier that he was planning to run, I got to thinking — what do I know about him before that? Well, not much. So I checked Wikipedia, which has a page about anyone who has served in Congress. Here’s what it said:

Cunningham was born in Caldwell County, Kentucky, and grew up in Kuttawa, Kentucky.^[2] He graduated from Lyon County High School in 2000. Cunningham attended the College of Charleston for two years before transferring to Florida Atlantic University in 2002, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science in ocean engineering in 2005.^[3]^[4]^[5]

Cunningham became an ocean engineer with a consulting company in Naples, Florida, and was laid off after about five years.^[3] He spent some time learning Spanish in South America,^[4] enrolled in law school at Northern Kentucky University‘s Salmon P. Chase College of Law in 2011, and graduated in 2014.^[3]^[5] He then worked as a construction attorney for Charleston firm Lyle & Lyle and co-owned the Soul Yoga + Wellness yoga studio with his wife before campaigning for political office.^[6]

And then, in 2017, he announced he was running for Congress.

So he graduated law school in 2014. And to think, I had thought James Smith was young. Cindi Scoppe wrote about this in 2018:

The three of us chatted about the race, and the family, and I wrote a few paragraphs about it for the next day’s paper. It was the only time I actually referred to Rep. Smith in print by the nickname his now-communications director Brad Warthen and I used privately throughout Brad’s time as The State’s editorial page editor: “young James.”…

After he was elected to the House in 1994, during my first year on the editorial board, I did call him that for quite a few years. Young James was such a kid in those early days — but we watched him grow as a lawmaker, and liked what we saw. (By the way, as James has many times reminded me, we did not endorse him in that first run. We liked him, but we went with his opponent, who was also his first cousin — Republican Robert Adams.)

And no, I didn’t call him that while I was his press guy. Maybe I should have. Maybe we would have won.

We certainly should have won. James had distinguished himself during his 24 years in the House, where he was the minority leader for awhile. Also, he was a war hero, with an amazing backstory. There’s no such thing as a perfect candidate, but he came awfully close. And among the many people who knew him, Republicans as well as Democrats and independents, he was far better respected than the do-nothing Trump lover, Henry McMaster.

But here’s the awful thing about politics: As widely known as you may be, and as deeply respected, that large number of people is a tiny, infinitesimal percentage of the number of people who vote — most of whom don’t know you or much else. They vote more and more by tribal loyalty, and Henry had the imprimatur of the dominant tribe. So that was that.

So would Joe fare better? I dunno. I’m looking for evidence of that, which will give me hope. Of course, conventional wisdom would hold that yes, because “He won on the same day that your James Smith lost.”

Yeah, but I’m not that impressed that he won the 1st District that day. We won in that district, too. So which was it? Did we help him, or did he — and the upswing across the country that day for moderate Democrats running for Congress — help us? I can see good arguments either way.

But I’m going to be looking for signs that Joe can win. Looking eagerly.

The Post and Courier reports that “he plans to fight for policies such as expanding Medicaid, raising the minimum wage and passing police reform.” OK, well, we ran on the first one. The other two have become popular since then — among Democrats. Who are, as you know, a minority in our state. Of course, I’m not crazy that he also promised to pursue term limits, and promises, as George Bush did in 1988 (before reversing himself in office) not to raise taxes.

But I can agree with him completely when he says:

“Gov. McMaster has spent the last year checking off his partisan wish list instead of tackling the real problems in our state. South Carolina desperately needed a strong leader over the last year, but all we had was a weak politician with messed-up priorities.”

We said things like that, too, of course. Anyway, I’ll be watching, listening and hoping I see and hear good things going forward…

Here was the other time I remember — the day the OTHER Joe campaigned with us in Charleston, Oct. 13, 2018. By the way, there’s at least one other person in these pictures I’d RATHER see run. But you can’t always get what you want.

I guess actual humans never even glance at these things before they go out

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Why isn’t this site performing better, Jessica?

I get a LOT of unsolicited emails from people offering to help this blog perform better.

Usually, they start with some nonsense about how the sender has been looking at my site, and finds it utterly fascinating, but could help me make it better for a very reasonable price. Then, it always, always, fails to give me any reason to believe that the sender has ever so much as glanced at the blog.

Sometimes I get one for some other site to which I have a connection. Today, I got this one:

Hello Jamessmith.com Team,

I would like to have a discussion with you regarding the web promotion strategy for your website Jamessmith.com. We wish to work out a proposal to strengthen the online presence of your website, via a strategically planned web promotion campaign. In today’s online era, you should be focusing on the new revolutionary ways of generating traffic (and subsequently, leads).

We are curious to know if you are aware that a few issues bugging your website and sorting out these will help you get the best returns out of your website.

1. Your website seems to be attracting traffic, but this traffic is almost stagnant and limited, which affects potential sales as you move forward.

2. Your website doesn’t feature in Google’s first search page for some of the major keywords in your niche, which affects visibility and your business.

3. Your website has been diagnosed with On-Page and On-Site issues, which affects the ranking.

4. Your backlinks profile is not efficient enough to help your search engine visibility.

5. Your website is currently not being properly promoted online according to Google’s new guidelines (after latest Google Panda & Penguin update), which is affecting your marketing strategy and goals.

6. Your presence in the social media platform is minimal. This is depriving you of a huge market of prospective referral clients.

7. Your website may be penalized by Google.

8. Social media profiles are not updated regularly.

9. A low number of internal and external quality links present on your website.

10. Not updating fresh contents for your website and blogs as per the latest Google guideline (Penguin & Panda).

And many more…

We are expert in running a promotional online marketing campaign for websites. We have a host of ethical services and techniques, which you can utilize to improve your website’s performance.

Also, let me update you that our service prices are very affordable and cost-effective which will come up within your budget.

We are also doing website designing and redesigning at affordable cost and fast delivery within 2 weeks. As we are familiar with search engine guidelines, so the website will be search engine friendly and technically sound. Also, we are giving 3 months of free website maintenance service.

If there is/are any bad reviews regarding you/your website, our ORM campaign will help you to push down the bad reviews from 1st page to 3rd page within 45 days of the campaign.

If my proposal sounds interesting for your business goal, feel free to email me, or can provide me with your phone number, Whatsapp number or Skype Id and the best time to call you.

I would be very glad to hear back from you.

Best Regards,

Jessica
Search Engine Consultant

These things crack me up. I mean, look at all those specific suggestions, meant to give me the impression that ol’ Jessica has been burning the midnight oil studying jamessmith.com with great zeal and intensity. She knows all about it! And she’s an expert! She’s going to fix it!

Of course, if an actual human being with a modicum of experience on this planet — or on the Web, for that matter — had looked at the site for 30 seconds, she would have concluded that:

This site is defunct, and has long stopped performing its original function. The homepage is a shell from which all links lead to empty pages without content. Which disappoints me because sometimes I’d like to refer back to those releases I put up during the campaign, but they’re gone.
This is not a site aimed at “sales.” It’s a political campaign site.
The campaign was in 2018. That datum might not be on that page, but a few seconds on Google would tell you right away. Which is a step any human wanting to know anything about this would take, long before sending anyone a 456-word email in an effort to make a “sale.”
“Your presence in the social media platform is minimal.” Say what?!?!? Assuming that this is 2018 — which is what you seem to be assuming — I’m pumping out social media like a madman! Social media is one of several full-time jobs I’m killing myself doing, day and night! Oh, wait… I had a little flashback there. You almost made me forget for a second that this is 2021….

And so forth…

Pretty much every bullet point can be dismissed with, “Yeah, that might be interesting if this were October 2018…”

OK, I know you’ll say, “Then why don’t you take down the whole site?” Well, first of all, I don’t have that job any more. I’m not even sure I have the access.

I don’t know why that shell is still operating. I don’t much care. It’s not bothering anybody. Maybe I’ll ask James next time I run into him (which doesn’t happen often, because pandemic). Or maybe I won’t. This isn’t a question likely to stay in my head long. For that matter, I have no particular reason to think he even knows that homepage is still up.

I have sympathy for Jessica, assuming there is a Jessica. Back during my newspaper career, I thought that having to sell something to people would be the hardest thing in the world (the people in advertising always had my pity). I had it slightly wrong. The hardest thing in the world is selling by way of cold calls. Mind you, this isn’t the worst kind of cold-calling — that would involve actually talking to busy people, in person or on the phone. But it’s still a thankless task.

Sympathy aside, though, this is ridiculous…

Now I’m giving money. Not much, but technically money

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filthy lucre

I mention this because to a lot of people, giving money is a big deal.

It’s not so much to me, because I don’t find money very interesting. Which is a big reason why I don’t have much of it. I’m even less interested in lucre than I am in football.

It was a bigger deal to me to actually start choosing and endorsing candidates back in 1994, my first year in the editorial department. That took some serious rewiring of my head. And then getting the point of putting out yard signs for candidates, as I started doing in 2018. And when I went to work for James and Mandy that same year.

To me, saying “I support you” is a bigger thing than “Here’s some money.”

But I know that makes me kind of weird, so I’m telling y’all — so you can make of it what you will — that one night last month, I actually, deliberately made a financial contribution to a candidate, in response to this appeal:

Please donate $20.20 by midnight to help hardworking ⁦@MPowersNorrell⁩ meet her #matchingmoneyMonday match (every dollar donated is $8!) so we can keep her in the SC House!

Mandy Powers Norrell — Donate via ActBlue https://t.co/jo5aErFk7Q

— Marie-Louise Ramsdale (@mlramsdale_law) September 21, 2020

So I went to the ActBlue link and gave.

Yeah, I know. Twenty dollars and twenty cents ain’t much. I wish I could give Mandy a lot more. But still, it was technically money, and therefore kind of a step for me.

And as long as we’re talking technically, I guess it wasn’t my first. Several days earlier, my wife had made a contribution to Jaime Harrison. She mentioned it so I’d know, because my name’s on the account. So I was on the books as a donor. Which I thought was great — I’d been thinking about making a contribution to Jaime, but as I tend to do with money, I had repeatedly forgotten about it. So I was a donor, and I didn’t even have to do anything (like fill out a form or something, which I hate with a passion). Which is awesome.

But technically… I had made a contribution earlier in the year, to Joe Biden. I had reached out to folks I knew on his campaign, back before the primary, to ask if they’d like a free ad on the blog. They said yes, so I filled out an in-kind form (see how much I love you, Joe?), and put up the ad. I liked seeing it there so much that I left it up for awhile after the primary was over, but finally made myself remove it.

So I guess that was my first “financial contribution.”

I did it again a week or so ago. And reached out to Jaime Harrison’s campaign and did the same for him. You can see both ads in the rail at right. (And I’d put one up for free for Mandy if I thought it would help her up in her district — I don’t know how many actual readers I have there.)

So I’ve just been giving like crazy to these campaigns. Sort of. And now you know…

Noah Barker: ‘Make the president Christ-like again.’

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Noah may love Joe almost as much as I do. That's him in the white shirt and no jacket, very excited to be right next to the ex-veep the day he came to campaign for us in 2018. That's me in the middle in the back, next to Campaign Manager Scott Hogan.

Noah may love Joe almost as much as I do. That’s him in the white shirt and no jacket, a 17-year-old pretty excited to be right next to the ex-veep the day he came to campaign for us in 2018. That’s me in the middle in the back, next to Campaign Manager Scott Hogan.

Today I called my young friend Noah Barker, fellow Smith-Norrell veteran, to talk about yard signs. He’s the one who got me some Biden signs for my neighbors, as related earlier.

Noah, who’s now a student at USC, happened to mention an opinion piece he had written for Medium — a website I had not been familiar with, but which seems to have been around for several years now. He wanted me to take a look at it and see what I thought.

I got a little panicky when I saw the headline, “Make the president Christ-like again.” I thought, whoa, Noah — we both love Joe, but let’s not go overboard! But almost immediately after that, I knew what he meant, and it worked. I could tell that from the photo with the piece: There was Joe with his head humbly bowed standing with his mask on among fellow worshipers — as human as you can get. (It would have gone well with that Facebook post I cited awhile back from Sister Nancy Hendershot — which you should go read if you haven’t.)

I read on, and saw that Noah had done a good job. Here’s his piece:

I don’t often write about my faith. I usually refrain from these types of writing because of two different lessons that I was taught as a child.

The first one was a favorite saying of my grandfather, Wilson Bryan, who would say “Preach the Gospel; if necessary, use words.” He believed that you shouldn’t have to utter the words “well, you know, I’m a Christian.” The way you treat others should show folks that something is fundamentally different about your life.

The other lesson was from Jesus, who according to the Book of Matthew said, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners… But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen” (6:5–6).

However, I’m breaking this rule to write this essay. After watching the Democratic National Convention this past week, I couldn’t keep these thoughts to myself any longer.

It has been hard for me to watch fellow Christians continue to support a man like Donald Trump. He lies, he cheats, he steals. He spews hatred and breeds bigotry. He makes fun of others and he is never hesitant to give an opponent of his a childish nickname (see “Slow Joe” or “Pencil-neck Adam Schiff”). He never forgives and he never asks for forgiveness.

Sometimes, when I am listening to him rant and rave I’m reminded of the words of Paul the Apostle. In his letter to the people of Galatia, Paul outlines the Fruit of the Holy Spirit. In case you haven’t walked by your old Sunday school class and seen that poster in a while, these nine attributes are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I think of these nine attributes because I have never witnessed Donald Trump show any of them in his public life. Now, this has nothing to do with me being a Democrat, which I am. I saw these nine attributes present in the life of George W. Bush, a man that I almost never agreed with. They were also present in the lives of almost-presidents, like John McCain and Mitt Romney.

This is not about politics. It’s not about policy. It’s not about the Supreme Court or abortion. This is about character.

Now, let me say, I am in no position to question whether someone is a Christian or not. Donald Trump has said that he is and that is between him and God. Full stop.

However, when it comes to electing a president, I want someone who shows me that they are Christian, not tells me. I want a leader who isn’t just a Christian, I want someone in the Oval Office that acts Christ-like.

I don’t mean performing miracles or being perfect; we all fall short of the glory of God.

But, I at least want someone who tries.

Who tries to be kind.

Who tries to be honest.

Who tries to heal the wounds of our nation.

I want a president who uses love to unite us.

Who loves his enemies and prays for those who persecute him.

That’s not Donald Trump. That’s not his story. It’s not his life.

On the other hand, Joe Biden isn’t perfect, and unlike Donald Trump, Joe would be the first person to tell you that. He’s not the second coming and he’s not the Messiah, and he certainly doesn’t act like he is.

We’ve all heard the countless stories of Joe Biden comforting those with a sick loved one, helping those with a stutter, or just being kind to the people that are around him.

I believe he is a fundamentally decent man, warts and all.

I don’t agree with Joe Biden on everything, but I believe it is our job as voters to choose the better person and in this case, the better man.

That choice is clear to me.

This November, I’m voting to make the president Christ-like again.

Noah describes himself at the end as “78th Governor of Palmetto Boy’s State | Son of Lugoff, South Carolina | UofSC’23 |”

Good to see my friends connecting on Twitter

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Wonder what Doug Ross is up to during his year without blogging (due to a New Year’s resolution that he has impressed us all by keeping)?

Well, he’s doing pretty much the same stuff, only on Twitter.

I had to smile today at the exchange pictured above in a screenshot.

It’s nice to see two of my friends getting together to work on issues on Twitter.

Of course, as I reported earlier, Doug is also a contributor to Mandy’s re-election campaign. So, good for him there, as well.

As for the issue itself, of course… I’m kinda “meh” on it. Either way, whatever. I sort of get the impression Mandy feels the same way. I can’t remember whether I’ve ever discussed it with her.

I know I’ve discussed it with James, though. In fact, I went and dug up a statement I put together for him about it during the campaign. It’s not something we ran on. But a reporter in Charleston was doing a story about it, and asking various pols for statements. I wasn’t crazy about commenting on things we weren’t running on — I had ambitions of imposing message discipline — but we didn’t turn our noses up at it the way we did stupid “have you stopped beating your wife” questions like “Do you want to abolish ICE?”

Anyway… here’s what I put together on it. I have no way of knowing whether we actually put it out like this. It’s just in a random Word file, not a release or anything. So James might have had me change it before giving it to the reporter:

I’m for regulating it and getting the revenue that the state is missing out on now.

I’m not pro-gambling per se. But this is a matter of common sense, and an example of what I mean when I say it’s not about big government or small government – I’m for smart government.

As everyone knows, people are already betting on sports in South Carolina, big-time. But it’s happening in the shadows, and its an invitation to crime.

We need to regulate it, and keep criminals from controlling and profiting from it.

And the state of South Carolina can certainly use the revenue. I’ve seen figures that estimate Rhode Island could net $25 million from sports betting. If that’s correct, South Carolina would easily see quite a lot more, since we have five times the population. That’s money we could really use, for schools, for infrastructure, for healthcare, for public safety.

So, you know, we were for regulating it if you really wanted an answer. Assuming that was the official statement. I don’t think anyone but that one reporter ever used any of it.

McMaster’s position, by the way, was that he was dead set against it, as his mouthpiece said: “It flies in the face of everything South Carolina stands for.” Highly debatable, of course, but you knew where he stood.

We were much more definitely for medical cannabis, which if if I remember correctly was one of the reasons Doug not only gave to our campaign, but voted for us. Not an issue I would have chosen to back our ticket over, but then I’m not a libertarian like our friend Doug….

The super-cool art of Kirkland Thomas Smith

If you voted for James Smith — or any of these other top SC Democrats — then you should be voting for Joe Biden

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Joe Biden campaigning with us in October 2018.

In some very important ways, the Joe Biden campaign for president in South Carolina is, in my view, a continuation of the James Smith for governor campaign.

It’s not just that James himself is supporting Joe, as Joe supported him. At the recent Biden event at 701 Whaley, I was struck by how many of our key people from the 2018 campaign were continuing the mission by supporting Joe. It’s something I’d been aware of for some time, but hadn’t really thought about for a simple reason — it just seemed the most natural thing in the world.

At the top, you have Kendall Corley — who was our political director in 2018 — heading up Biden’s campaign in South Carolina. And Biden’s state political director is Scott Harriford, who was James’ driver and “body man” in 2018, and held the title of deputy political director. Scott was the first person James hired for the campaign, back in the summer of 2017, and was right there at his side from then through Election Day. (I thought I had an intense, whirlwind experience those last eight days on “the bus,” but Scott had been doing it for way over a year.)

Smith campaign alumni Ashley Medbery Floyd, me, and Noah Barker at a Biden event on Feb. 11.

At the 701 Whaley event I ran into Noah Barker, who assisted me with social media in 2018. Noah, who I think has reached the ripe old age of 19, is now working for the Biden campaign while attending college.

And while she’s not actually working in the Biden operation — she’s helping Jaime Harrison run against Lindsey Graham instead — Ashley Medbery Floyd, our finance directer in 2018, was at the 701 event, too. She and Noah and I marked the occasion with a selfie.

All this is natural because, well, there is such a bond between Joe and James. Their shared values are such that I don’t see how anyone who really believed in James in 2018 — and as his communications director, I certainly did and do — could possibly do anything but support Joe.

One of the things that drove me nuts back during the campaign was the way the political reporters went ape over anything having to do with 2020 presidential candidates coming through the state. They’d call me and ask what we’d be doing together with so-and-so on his or her swing through the state, or what we had to say about it, and it would put me in a bind. We didn’t want to say anything unkind about these national Democrats, but at the same time, we couldn’t have cared less about their visits. They were here for themselves, not for us.

But not Joe. Joe was our guy, and we couldn’t wait to see him. We knew he was coming, and we were really disappointed when he had to postpone his initially planned event because of complications related to the hurricane. But finally, on Oct. 13, he came down to Charleston to do a fund-raiser for us, and it was possibly the best day of my time on the campaign. And I could tell it was a high point for everyone else. (It was such a big deal that upon arriving in Charleston, Campaign Manager Scott Hogan went to a shop on King Street and bought himself a suit, and wore it to the event. You have to know Hogan to get what a big deal that was. He normally dressed like a guy about to go out and mow the lawn.)

Anyway, I could go on and on about the way one campaign flows into the other, but I have a point to make here, and it is this: If you voted for James, if you believed in James, you should believe in Joe Biden, and vote for him. I don’t see how you work it out any other way.

James is not authorizing me to say this (I haven’t asked him). I’m saying it myself.

As communications director, I think I have as good a grasp of what the Smith campaign was about as anyone does. It was a campaign for all the people of South Carolina — black, white, old young, male, female, Democratic, Republican and independent. It was a campaign that would Leave No One Behind.

And Joe is running the exact same kind of campaign for the soul of the nation.

One more point, an elaboration on that one: Maybe James Smith isn’t your favorite Democrat. He should be, but maybe he isn’t.

Still, if you are a Democrat, or someone who frequently votes for Democrats, you should take note that pretty much every Democrat you have nominated and/or voted into statewide office in the past 20 years and more is supporting Joe Biden for president. And for good reason.

I’m talking not just James, but Vincent Sheheen, who was your standard-bearer twice.

And Jim Hodges, our state’s last Democratic governor.

And Dick Riley, the last Democratic governor before Hodges. (And speaking of great public servants with that name, the greatest mayor of his generation in the country, Joe Riley.)

And Inez Tenenbaum, the last superintendent of education who was (and still is) a Democrat.

Now, Jim Clyburn — the current highest-ranking Democrat in the state, and one of the most powerful in the country — has joined that list. And it’s a long list. The Post and Courier put most of it together a few weeks ago, before Hodges had come out for Joe.

These are people who embody the heart, the core, of what it means to be a Democrat in South Carolina. No one could be more in touch with what South Carolina Democrats care about.

Still speaking to Democrats and people who sometimes vote for them here (let’s call you DAPWSVFTs for short)… These are all people you have believed in in the past, in whom you have placed your trust. Scoff at endorsements all you like, but I’m telling you these are smart people who know these candidates, who know the country and its needs, who know South Carolina, and they are for Joe. They’re putting their reputations out there in support of him, and you might think that’s a small thing, but it isn’t.

These people know what they’re about, and they’re for Joe. And most of you DAPWSVFTs have indicated your respect and support for these people in the past. These are people who share your values.

So it makes all the sense in the world that you would join them in voting for Joe Biden for POTUS on Saturday.

That’s Smith campaign veteran Kendall Corley whispering in Joe’s ear as he works a crowd on MLK Day in Columbia.

No, I’m not. I’m something else, and Joe speaks to that

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John Lewis

Having made all sorts of virtual connections as James Smith’s director of communications last year (no, wait — it’s now the year before last!), I’ve grown used to emails such as this one, ostensibly from John Lewis, who as you know is very ill:

Brad,

My team flagged you as a Top Democrat, so I need to you to take my most important survey yet. Will you give your Democratic input in this personalized survey?

Your team is wrong. Their database is wrong. I’m not a top Democrat. I’m not a bottom Democrat. I’m not an in-between Democrat. And Lord knows that in this era, I’m no Republican.

I’m just this guy, you know. A voter. One who looks at teach candidate in each race and does his best to discern whether he or she would do the best — or the least-bad — job in the office in question. I’m a thing undreamt of in your philosophy.

But I’m not unusual, even though so many people involved in politics (and so many who cover politics) act as though I were. There are a lot out here like me. That’s something Joe Biden understands, which is why he says sure, he’d consider a Republican running mate.

Which is an indication of why he’s the one guy running who speaks my language. Just as James Smith was in 2018. James ticked off some Democrats when he picked me to be his spokesman. I hear some Democrats are ticked off now at Joe’s openness to running with a Republican — and by the way, that’s all he said: that he’d be open to it.

James’ openness was an invitation that not enough independents or Republicans took him up on — which was their, and our, loss.

But some of us yearn for that openness, because framing everything as us against them is a dead end for the country. If any of you Democrats doubt that, reflect on the fact that that way of thinking is the main reason Republicans have thrown principle to the winds in their defense of Trump.

What this country desperately needs right now is some open-mindedness among Republicans. That may be too much to hope for right now, but at least there’s a Democrat willing to show them how that’s done…

Yes, Pete: By all means, let the press into your fund-raisers

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The event in Greenville on Sept. 17, 2018.

This takes me back to my own campaign experience last year:

Presidential contender Pete Buttigieg announced Monday that he would open his fundraisers to journalists and disclose the names of people raising money for his campaign, the latest step in an ongoing skirmish over transparency with Democratic rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Reporters will be allowed into Buttigieg’s large-dollar fundraising events starting Tuesday, and the South Bend, Ind., mayor will release a list of his “bundlers” — those who funnel large sums of money to campaigns — within a week, according to Buttigieg campaign manager Mike Schmuhl.

“From the start, Pete has said it is important for every candidate to be open and honest, and his actions have reflected that commitment,” Schmuhl said in a statement….

In the earlier days of my time on James Smith’s campaign, I found myself turning press away from fund-raisers, because that was what the staff wanted to do. I thought it was a rule — one I did not like.

I hated not having the press at these events, sometimes more so than other times. For instance, there was the big event in Greenville on Sept. 17 that had been put together in part by some folks who usually backed Republicans. It was a tremendous event under any circumstances. It was even more important because it was our first event after taking a hiatus because of the hurricane, and it would have been enormously helpful at that moment to have coverage of such an enthusiastic crowd gathering for us in the heart of Republican country.

As it was, an Upstate reporter did a story on the fact that the event was happening, and that caused some positive buzz for us, briefly. But it would have been so much better if we’d had actual coverage, with pictures.

We needed that bounce at that moment. I don’t know if it’s right or not, but there’s a school of thought (to be more specific, one very smart person said it to me shortly after the election, and I think she may have been right) that our week-long pause for the storm — during which we went dark, while Henry was constantly on live TV in a leadership role — killed our campaign. Before it, we were within the margin of error of a tie in polling (and rising, or so it felt); after it we had lost ground and never recovered.

There had been previous events where I’d wished we’d had coverage — including some reporters had specifically asked to cover, and I’d turned them away at the behest of colleagues. But after the Greenville event, I decided to try to change the rule. And when I brought it up to the candidates themselves, James and Mandy immediately said yes.

(Editor’s note: Before posting this, I sent a copy of it to James. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t saying anything about the campaign that made him uncomfortable. His response was, “If the press was excluded that was done without our knowledge. Those were great events and I liked having the press there.” So did Mandy, he added. I guess I should have mentioned my beef with the policy earlier, now that he points that out. I didn’t know he didn’t know.)

Now let me be clear: This is not a case of Brad Knows Best, or if only they’d listened to me…

In fact, on this thing they did listen to me, and we lost anyway. If anything, it looks like I’m to blame for not challenging this “rule” sooner, since it turns out James and Mandy were unaware of it, and agreed with me. So Brad should have gone with his gut to start with.

Why didn’t I? Remember that I was the amateur in this campaign, and before I came on board the staff was operating according to rules that a lot of professionals see as best practices. And from what I gathered, not letting media in to fund-raisers fits into that category. I’d seen it enough in other campaigns. I’ve never fully understood the rationale; maybe it was because of horror stories like Mitt Romney’s 47 percent debacle. (Of course, that’s only a problem if you have a candidate who will say stupid stuff like that.)

But my fellow staffers were the pros, and I respected that. The only professional qualification I had was experience as a journalist covering campaigns (and as an editor supervising people who covered campaigns). And the way the press was covering our campaign made me want to bang my head against a wall. Just one story after another about staffing and strategy and ad buys. I wanted to change the subject to why people would want to vote for James and Mandy, so I wanted reporters at events full of people who could and would eagerly speak to that. Also, I wanted the reporters to feel the vibe in the room. Maybe, just maybe, some of that would creep into the coverage.

Anyway, all that is to say that I think Pete is right to open things up. I applaud it. Of course, my man Joe was already letting the press in…

Where am I going to put my Joe Biden bumper sticker?

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The above picture, which I posted randomly a couple of days ago, reminds me:

I need to figure out where to put my Joe Biden sticker when I get one. Which I expect will be soon. A couple of weeks back, I ran into my friends Sally and Mark Huguley. Mark was pulling up to the curb in front of St. Peter’s after Mass to pick up Sally, and Sally told him to pull up a few more feet so I could see the Biden sticker on the back of their vehicle.

I was, of course, envious. I need to reach out to Kendall Corley or Scott Harriford, two Smith campaign alumni who are now running the Biden operation in SC, to see if they can get me one. And a yard sign, when they’re available. Time’s a wastin’!

But then I look at the back of my truck, and think, where should I put it? I mean, it’s going to spoil my perfect bipartisan symmetry. All through the campaign, I had my James Smith sticker and my Micah Caskey sticker. And while I was a bit self-conscious parking it at HQ at first, that wasn’t my target audience.

My idea was this: Our single greatest obstacle to winning — and in the end, this is what defeated us probably more than any other factor — was that most white voters in the state have some kind of disability, a mental block. They are incapable of conceiving of voting for someone with a D after his name. They don’t think it’s a thing that a person can do.

If I could just get ONE voter, driving behind me, to think, “Whoa! This guy who votes for Republicans just like I do is also voting for James Smith. I wonder why,” then it would be worth any dirty looks I got from Democrats.

Oh, and if you think people don’t have thoughts like that, you’re wrong. Humans are hugely suggestible. Maybe they shouldn’t be, but the Bandwagon Effect is one of the most reliable factors in politics (as ridiculous as I think that is). If people see that other people are voting for someone, they are at least slightly more likely to do so themselves.

I know that some people noticed. The first time I had occasion during the campaign to meet with Democratic Party Chairman Trav Robertson, I mentioned something about my bumper stickers, and he said, “Yeah, I’ve heard about that.” And I thought, Yeah, I’ll bet you have. I knew by that time that there were some Democrats who didn’t like that James had hired someone like me, and it wasn’t surprising that some of them would have brought such a detail to Trav’s attention.

But again, Democrats weren’t my target audience. I was trolling for persuadable Republicans. (And yes, that’s a thing. Here’s one of our Republican endorsements, and a video to go with it.)

Anyway, now I have to figure out where to put my Biden sticker. My first thought is to put it right in the middle, but then my tailgate will be 2/3 Democratic. Which is not the effect I’m going for. But then, does that matter, since Joe is running in the Democratic Primary? I mean, what do I care what Republicans think in this context? Worrying about being perfectly bipartisan is more about worrying about what people think of ME, isn’t it? And that shouldn’t be a factor.

I could put it over the Smith sticker, since the campaign’s over and all, but I won’t do that. My experience last year is something I’m proud of, and I’m going to continue to wear it on my sleeve. Or tailgate.

Anyway, look how shiny and new it still is. It looks good. By contrast, Micah’s sticker has faded considerably.

Of course, being focused on the Democratic primary, I could just cover Micah’s sticker until after Feb. 9. But I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to abandon my representative, even for a short while. He’s got re-election next year.

So… I’m thinking the Biden sticker needs to go in the middle. And I need to get with Micah to get a fresher sticker sometime between now and next spring…

Let’s celebrate a belated win for solar energy and SC

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The unanimous vote in the House on Thursday.

And may I add, it’s a win for my erstwhile boss James Smith, even if he’s no longer in the Legislature to share in the celebration.

Last year, James’ bill to lift the cap on solar energy in our state was cruising to victory before the big utilities got the rules changed at the last minute. It was a stunning exhibition of “your oligarchy at work,” as one State House sage described it long ago. Check out my report on that, headlined, “In stunning reversal for people of SC, utilities manage to kill solar bill AFTER it passed overwhelmingly.”

Here’s Sammy’s story on what happened. An excerpt:

As the legislative session ended this week, South Carolina lawmakers approved a sweeping solar energy bill that will keep the state’s rooftop solar industry from collapsing and protect customers who seek to save money by installing sun panels on their homes.

The bill, the result of two years of negotiation between utilities and solar advocates, now needs only Gov. Henry McMaster’s signature to become law. McMaster spokesman Brian Symmes said the governor will sign the bill. The Senate voted for the bill Wednesday and the House approved it Thursday, the final day of the legislative session.

“We had a good deliberative process on some pretty groundbreaking clean energy legislation,’’ said Rebecca Haynes, deputy director of the Conservation Voters of South Carolina. “This saves the rooftop solar industry.’’

This week’s action is significant because it lifts restrictions that threatened to grind the state’s burgeoning rooftop solar industry to a halt. State law capped the amount of rooftop solar allowed in areas served by Dominion Energy and Duke Energy in South Carolina.

The Legislature’s action eliminates those caps, as well as restrictions on solar-leasing programs….

Well it’s about time. Congrats to Peter McCoy and everyone who supported it. Which was, um, everybody…

I keep having these campaign flashbacks

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Yesterday, I was in Rock Hill on a video shoot for a client of ADCO.

When we had some time to break for lunch, Brian and I asked about where we might go eat where yours truly could find something I’m not allergic to. My best way of describing that sort of venue is “a meat and two veg place” — as opposed to a pizza place or a sandwich place, which have nothing on their menus for me. Basically, I need to go to a place that serves food like Mama used to make.

So we were sent to an old-school, down-home joint in an unremarkable strip shopping center. It seemed that Fate was against our ever getting there, as Google Maps steered us completely wrong for awhile.

But Fate was just messing with us, just putting off the big reveal.

Earlier in the day, as we were pulling into town, I had thought to myself, “I know I was here during the campaign, but when, and what sort of event was it?” I couldn’t remember.

Now at lunchtime, as we finally turned into the shopping center parking lot and rolled past the Earth Fare that is sort of the anchor tenant, the lights came on and I said, “Oh. I know where we are.”

After we ordered our food (for me, a hamburger steak with fries and some speckled butter beans — with me, the plainer the fare the better), I stepped into the private meeting room toward the back and took the above picture.

Then I sent it to James and Mandy along with the picture below, saying, “Having lunch at The Little Cafe in Rock Hill, and having flashbacks.”

The below picture was taken at 9:22 a.m. on Oct. 31, the second day of the Saga of the “Bus,” the “Leave No One Behind Tour.”

We zipped in and out of these places so fast that they’re hard to recall now — until Fate decides to mess with me, dropping me into a place apparently at random and then saying, “Remember this?”

The new Henry McMaster (we can only hope)

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I’ve been meaning to write about this, but when it was timely — on Inauguration Day, and when we had the State of the State — I was too busy to blog, and let it slide.

But now I’m thinking about it again, so…

A number of times lately, I’ve thought, Hey, at least one voter out there was listening to us during the campaign: Henry McMaster.

At least it seems that way. Everywhere we went, James and Mandy touted their plan to raise teacher pay and take other measures to make all our schools places where kids were well educated and teachers loved their jobs and didn’t want to quit. And James had a crowd-pleasing line he used with regard to his opponent that went kind of like this: The only thing Henry McMaster has offered our schools is to arm teachers with guns. I want to arm them with better pay, and with the tools they need to be effective.

The line worked, because Henry offered nothing to counter it. He didn’t talk about schools. Any reasonable person could be forgiven for assuming that he didn’t give a flying flip about schools.

Now, he’s all on fire for education reform. Which is why, after the State of the State, Mandy Powers Norrell tweeted this:

Got this text from my awesome husband during the State of the State address last night: Congratulations to the Smith-Norrell ticket for setting the 2019 executive and legislative agenda! #ManyWaysToMeasureAWin

— Mandy Powers Norrell (@MPowersNorrell) January 24, 2019

It’s great. It’s gratifying. But don’t think I think we deserve the credit (and I don’t think Mandy does, either). I don’t flatter myself that Henry is taking his cues from the Smith campaign. I do think he’s taking them from House Speaker Jay Lucas. And that’s a good thing.

(Oops, I forgot to use The State newspaper’s recent style. On first reference, and sometimes even in headlines, it’s always “powerful House Speaker Jay Lucas.” It’s become such a part of his title, I expect them to start capitalizing the “P” next. Back in the old mainframe days when we were on Atex terminals, we would have said, “they’ve got it on a SAVE/GET key…”)

Lucas has been wanting to get serious on helping our schools for several years now. Even though the Supreme Court has backed off on forcing the Legislature to provide all the state’s students with a better-than-minimally adequate education, Lucas really wants to do something about it.

And he’s willing to let Henry get in front of the parade and take credit for it.

And to his credit, Henry for once is acting like a leader and stepping out to do something, to lead, to be a governor.

His first two years in office, we saw no sign of that. In fact, when Lucas and others in the State House tried to lead, Henry lay down in front of their efforts. He only cared about the upcoming election. It was painfully evident that, on a twist of another of James’ campaign lines, Henry would rather keep the job than do the job.

The way he tried to block leadership on the roads bill was the perfect example. Rather than support the lawmakers in the risk they were taking, he vetoed the bill, and neither tried to offer a viable argument why nor made any effort to get lawmakers to sustain the veto. He knew they would override him. He just wanted zero responsibility for what happened. (Which reminds me of a postwar German phrase: Ohne mich. They could do what they liked, but without him.)

Now that he’s been elected governor for the first time, he seems to have decided he’s going to act like one. For a change.

I worked so hard to get James Smith elected mostly because of my tremendous respect for him, personally. I’d have been for James even if Henry had been a fairly decent governor. But I worked even harder for him because Henry gave no sign of being any kind of governor at all, decent or otherwise. It was an extra spur to my efforts.

And when we lost, we had little reason to hope for anything better going forward.

Which is why it’s so encouraging to see Henry accepting the mantle of leadership that the Speaker has offered him. It’s not as good as having James as governor, not by a long shot, but it’s something.

I applaud this unexpected development. And I’m daring to hope that something good will come out of it. After all, Dum Spiro Spero…

Here you go, Doug…

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I initially used this image when I posted our medical cannabis release on the campaign website. James communicated to me that it wasn’t quite the look he wanted to go with so, ya know, I took it down…

How did we win over Doug Ross back during the campaign (however briefly)? Well, I imagine a number of things went into it, but one think I know played a role was our stance on medical cannabis.

James won’t be around to get ‘er done, but I’m sure Doug will be encouraged by this release yesterday from Tom Davis, the most libertarian member of the Legislature:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:

State Sen. Tom Davis

tdavis@harveyandbattey.com

State Rep. Peter McCoy

peter@mccoyandstokes.com

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina State Sen. Tom Davis and Rep. Peter McCoy released the following statement regarding their intent to file tomorrow, on Tuesday, January 15, 2019, a bill titled the “South Carolina Compassionate Care Act,” in order to legalize in South Carolina the use of cannabis by patients for certain specific medical conditions, subject to a physician’s authorization and supervision, and to legalize in this state, subject to regulation and oversight by DHEC and SLED, the cultivation, processing and dispensing of cannabis for such medical use:

“For the past several months, we have worked with law enforcement, health professionals, grassroots advocates, and other individuals and organizations to draft the most strictly regulated and tightly supervised medical-cannabis program in the country. Poll after poll on this issue confirms what we consistently hear from our constituents – that the overwhelming majority of South Carolinians do want physicians to have the legal ability to authorize the use of cannabis by their patients if those physicians believe it would be of medicinal benefit, but that they do not want to legalize the use of cannabis for recreational purposes.

“Our objective in drafting this bill has been to provide for a medical-cannabis program that reflects South Carolinians’ views on the matter – that is, to draw a bright line between medical and recreational use. We believe the South Carolina Compassionate Care Act, a copy of which is attached, does that. The summary of the act, also attached, breaks down in detail the safeguards put in place to ensure that a medical-cannabis program does not morph into a recreational one. In developing these safeguards, we have looked at what has worked and what hasn’t in the 33 states that have already legalized cannabis for medical purposes.

“We acknowledge that the medical-cannabis program we propose is much stricter than the others; that is intentional. From the tightly defined list of qualifying medical conditions to the level of detail required in the written certifications by the authorizing physicians, from the prohibition against smoking cannabis to the imposition of felony penalties for the diversion of medical cannabis for recreational use, and from the mandatory use of seed-to-sale tracking systems to the testing of medical cannabis by independent testing laboratories, we believe the South Carolina Compassionate Care Act draws the bright line between medical and recreational use of cannabis that the overwhelming majority of South Carolinians want.

“We will have a press conference at the State House in Columbia at 4 p.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, January 14, 2018, to review the provisions of the South Carolina Compassionate Care Act in detail and to answer questions about that act.”

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Tom notes that polls show a supermajority of South Carolinians favor the change. Well, he’d better get a supermajority of votes in the General Assembly, because the guy who won the governor’s race doesn’t hold with it.

If we’d won, he wouldn’t have that problem.

Reactivated for campaign duty, for one brief moment…

1 Reply

I was eating breakfast last Thursday, minding my own business, when the call came from Tom Barton of The State.

He said he thought maybe today was the day for campaign finance reports for Q4, and wondered when we might have our report ready.

I didn’t say “What?,” or “Why are you asking me?” or “Take a flying leap!” After all, whom else was he going to ask? So I shifted immediately back into campaign mode, and gave him the response I probably used the most during those four months: I told him I didn’t have the slightest idea, but I’d check and get back to him.

I soon learned that the deadline was today, although there was a five-day grace period, and that a couple of folks who had handled finance for the campaign were working on completing it.

This led to a flurry of multilateral communications via text that lasted all day and into the night. I just went back and counted: There were 64 of them, involving a total of seven people. Although the main communications involved one of the finance folks, James and Mandy and me. And James didn’t weigh in until the rest of us had things sorted out — which was smart.

In other words, it was just like being back on the trail, except more restful because we were only dealing with this one simple thing, instead of 10 or 20 things that made us want to tear our hair out.

The short version is that one of those texts gave me the figures I needed, I wrote a release, James and Mandy approved it, and after holding it for a couple of hours to see whether we wanted to react to anything in Henry’s report when they filed it (we didn’t), I dug up my campaign media address lists and sent it out to 200 and something media types, at 10:28 p.m.

But first, I texted Tom to tell him it was coming, since he was the one person who had asked.

I haven’t seen any reports on the filing, which is not surprising, because it’s not that interesting. (Perhaps I even DID see such a headline, and My Eyes Glazed Over.) But we did what was required.

It was kind of nice and sort of poignant to be working with everybody again, although on such a low-key level.

That’s probably my last release for the campaign, but who knows? I wasn’t expecting that one…

Hey, guys! A frozen moment from the campaign…

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