Category Archives: Midlands

Well, I got two out of three

As some of y’all already noted, I got two of my three wild guesses right on the finalist list for USC president: Harris Pastides, and a woman. (Do I get extra points because there are two women?)

Andy Card* was apparently no one the trustees ever wanted. Apparently, the talk about him was generated by the wishful thinking of politicos — or somebody.

Of course, the fact that wild guesses were in order reflects the failure of USC trustees to conduct an open process that would allow stakeholders (i.e., the people of South Carolina) to vet the candidates before the decision is made.

But that’s par for the course, isn’t it?

Of course, if Pastides is the winner of the contest, we’ll have had plenty of opportunity to assess the new guy. And the impression I’ve formed over the years has been quite good. He’s been at the forefront of the most critical initiatives the university — indeed, all three of the state’s research universities — has been engaged in, and is well-positioned to continue the push.

At this point — thanks to the trustees’ secrecy — going forward with either of the other two candidates will seem like stepping off blindfolded into a void. Maybe they’re great, but we haven’t had the opportunity to decide that.

One worry I have if it is Pastides (and if it isn’t, he sure made the wrong call putting all his eggs in this basket), what will he be able to accomplish that Andrew Sorensen could not? I’ve never been satisfied with the official explanation, that Dr. Sorensen and the board suddenly realized he was about to turn 70, and there’s this multi-year fund-raising push coming up, yadda-yadda… Didn’t he ALWAYS have a future full of fund-raising? What was new?

My worry takes this form? If for some other reason the board had become disenchanted with the charismatic Sorensen, how will a quieter member of the same administration succeed? Or is "low-key" what trustees are looking for?

Who knows? I don’t. I just want the next president to be successful, because so much is riding on this for South Carolina. I think Harris Pastides can do the job, if the string-pullers will let him. As for the two ladies? I have no idea…

* Did I ever mention my almost-connection to Andy Card? I’ve never met him or anything, but he was supposed to be my uncle’s roommate at USC. They had been randomly matched up, but at the last minute my Uncle Woody roomed with someone else. Yes, Andy Card is of my uncle’s generation. I’m that young — haven’t you seen my picture at left? … Actually, Woody is my Mama’s way-younger brother — he’s only six years older than I am.

USC president: They’re doing it again

As you saw in today’s paper, the USC trustees might, if they feel like it, tell us who their three "finalists" for president of the university are. Then they plan to make their final selection Friday.

In other words, they’re presenting us with the next thing to a fait accompli, with virtually no time for the community (and in this case, "community" includes the state of South Carolina) to react and offer input.

As it happens this is precisely what we told them not to do in this editorial on our June 22 editorial page.

Could it be that they ignored us, again? Naaahhhh….

Since we’re all being kept in the dark, here are my predictions of who the three will be. We’ll see how many I get right (probably none, but I have no money bet on this, so who cares?):

  1. Harris Pastides
  2. Andy Card
  3. A Woman. No, I don’t have a name; I’m just saying one of the three will be a woman.

Yeah, I got the first two from today’s story. Of course, they’re the two who’ve been most often mentioned in the past. But the very fact that we all think we have reason to believe those two are finalists probably means that they were long ago eliminated from consideration, just because the trustees want to rub our noses in just how much in the dark we are, and what little regard they have for us and what we think we know…

Charlotte’s success with light rail

The Charleston paper this morning has this story about Charlotte’s initial success with light rail. Note this excerpt:

The Lynx is an electric light-rail system that started running in
November and quickly exceeded ridership predictions. Near many of the
15 stations along the 9.6-mile line, new condominiums and other
buildings are under construction, and property values are rising fast.

Those of you who believe in the market as arbiter of all things should note that last bit: "property values are rising fast." That’s the mark of success. Me, I’d call it a success if they’d just extend it out to that mess around Lake Norman and relieve it just a little, so it doesn’t feel like I spend half the drive to Pennsylvania dragging through that part. You don’t actually escape the gravitational pull of that hyperdense mass until you’re 50 miles into North Carolina.

Hey, if Charlotte builds on this, and Charleston imitates it, can my Midlands Subway System be far behind?

I keep dreaming the dream anyway…

Energy Party: Mayor Bob says don’t forget hydrogen

My latest Energy Party column has been well received, but a common complaint is that not EVERY plank of the platform was mentioned or elaborated upon. This from Mayor Bob Coble of Columbia:

Brad you should add a plank in your Energy Party Platform calling for research and production of hydrogen energy including hydrogen fuel cells. I know you wrote in your Sunday column that a higher gas tax after 9-11 could have been used to accelerate "…the development of hydrogen, solar, wind, clean coal, methanol-from-coal, electric cars, mass transit…" but alternate energy should be a major part of your platform.

On July 14th the Board of the National Hydrogen Association will meet in Columbia in preparation for their convention in March, which will bring to Columbia the international hydrogen and fuel cell industry’s largest companies.  Becoming part of the hydrogen economy is an important economic strategy for Columbia and South Carolina.  In 2008, we will build the first public hydrogen fueling station in the Southeast.  Millennium Cell, a world leader in hydrogen battery technology, is moving a subsidiary company, Gecko Technologies, to Columbia.  USC has the nation’s only National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Fuel Cells.  The Savannah River National Lab and Clemson’s International Center for Automotive Research are centers for hydrogen research.

Every facet of society stands to be impacted by hydrogen generated energy. A major source of global warming could disappear as well as America’s reliance on foreign oil.  Our strategy is to see that Columbia is the site for much of the commercialization of the hydrogen economy. 

Additionally, Innovista, which of course will promote a number of different areas of research, will be Columbia’s greatest opportunity to create jobs and increase our per capita income. According to a recent survey, 90% of City residents support the research campus and these efforts. The Association of University Technology Managers recently ranked USC number 11 out of 114 public universities in the number of start-up businesses created.

Finally, we are trying to connect our citizen to the knowledge economy. Over 8,000 students graduate from Columbia institutions of higher education each year.  The Columbia Talent Magnet project is designed to keep these bright minds in the Columbia region by connecting them to existing community initiatives. Also, the USC Columbia Technology Incubator has assisted 63 companies and created 554 new jobs including 142 minority and female jobs. 

The Energy Party should aggressively promote all alternate forms of energy particularly hydrogen.

Of course, hydrogen has been mentioned in earlier Energy Party documents, such as this original column. An excerpt:

Another is a Manhattan project (or Apollo Project, or insert your favorite 20th century Herculean national initiative name) to develop clean, alternative energy. South Carolina can do hydrogen, Iowa can do bio, and the politicians who will freak out about all this can supply the wind power….

Sales tax polar opposites (heads-up, Paulistas: This post mentions Ron Paul!)

One of our regulars sent this from out of town (I’m not identifying him for now on account of his being out of town):

Brad,
    We’re up in New Hampshire visiting my mother.  Thought you’d be interested to  hear what I have observed — in four days of driving around the small towns of NH, I’ve yet to see a yard sign for McCain.  But I’ve seen at least ten for Ron Paul.  No Obama’s either. 
    And I don’t know if you’ve ever been up here but it’s a somewhat unsettling experience to go into Wal-Mart and buy $99.75 worth of stuff and pay ZERO sales tax.   And on top of that, NH has no income tax either.   How do they manage to survive without taxing everything?  (yes, higher property taxes but with much less government also).  If it weren’t for the snow, I think my wife and I would consider retiring here.   I hate snow almost as much as I hate taxes.

This message reminds me of something I meant to pass on from my recent trip to Memphis, which is the polar opposite of New Hampshire when it comes to sales taxes.

The first day we were there, I was driving to the new home of one of my wife’s kinfolks — way out past Collierville, I believe, to the very limits of suburban development, which if you know Memphis means way out East — and traversing all that sprawl caused me to work up a powerful thirst. So we stopped at a new Kroger (right across from a new Starbucks, of course), and I got a bottled water, and a diet Pepsi for my youngest daughter.

It got my attention when the total was exactly $3.00, so after I fed the three ones into the self-checkout apparatus, I looked at my receipt: Yep, 22 cents of it was sales tax. (See the receipt below.)

The reason Tennessee has such outrageous sales tax rates is that the state has no income tax, and none on the horizon (when ex-Gov. Don Sundquist tried to get one enacted, he had his head handed to him). We do have an income tax, but we are hard on Tennessee’s heels when it comes to sales tax. If Richland County manages to pass the penny for local transportation needs, we won’t be far behind.

The reason, in our case, is the severe restrictions placed by the state on local governments’ ability to raise revenue through other means, combined with South Carolina’s utter failure to come to grips with road construction needs at the state level. In the Volunteer State, local governments have wheel taxes and the like to fund roads and other transport needs and wants. (Also, local governments build and maintain far more of Tennessee’s roads; the state of South Carolina reserves to itself the right to mismanage most of our roads.) Or at least they did back when I lived there. If someone has more up-to-date info, it will be welcome.

Memphis_sales_tax

 

Jeanette McBride’s underwhelming endorsement interview performance


W
eek before last, I posted video from our interview with the other local runoff candidate who should not have won but did — Gwen Kennedy. If you’ll recall, I said at the time that getting her to provide a rationale for her candidacy was "like pulling teeth."

Today — a bit late to do any good, but then I wasn’t able to accomplish much with Ms. Kennedy even though it was ahead of time — I provide a similar clip of Jeanette McBride, who just ousted longtime Richland County Clerk of Court Barbara Scott. Here’s what I had to say about that outcome in my Sunday column:

    In the primary on June 10, we endorsed incumbent Barbara Scott,
since — and we saw no clear evidence to the contrary — she was doing an
adequate job running the courthouse, collecting child support payments
and overseeing the other routine duties of the office. She was judged
clerk of the year by the S.C. chapter of the American Board of Trial
Advocates, which surely knows more about the quality of her day-to-day
work than we do.

    Before making that decision, we considered endorsing Gloria
Montgomery — who had worked in the clerk’s office for years and seems
to understand it thoroughly (certainly better than we or most voters
do) — or Kendall Corley, who offered some interesting ideas for
improving service.

    But we never for a moment considered endorsing Jeanette McBride.
That’s not because Mrs. McBride is married to former state Rep. Frank
McBride, whose political career ended in 1991 when he pleaded guilty to
vote-selling in the Lost Trust scandal. We didn’t consider her because
she offered us no reason whatsoever to believe that she would do a
better job than Ms. Scott. She didn’t even try. She did not display any
particular interest in what the clerk of court does at all.

    She said, quite simply, that she was running because she thought
she could win. She did not explain what went into that calculation, but
so what? She was right.

    Her victory will inevitably be compared to the defeat of Harry
Huntley — regarded by many as the best auditor in the state — in
Richland County in 2006. And it will be suggested that both of these
incumbents were the victims of raw racial politics. Mr. Huntley and Ms.
Scott are white; Ms. McBride and Paul Brawley are black. A candidate
who can pick up most of the black votes in a Democratic primary is
increasingly seen as having an advantage in the county.

    I hope voters had a better reason than that for turning out
qualified candidates in favor of challengers who seemed to offer no
actual qualifications. In fact, I’m wracking my brain trying to think
of other explanations. Ms. McBride, in her interview, didn’t help with
that. And Mr. Brawley didn’t even bother to talk to The State’s
editorial board, so I have no idea what sort of case he made to voters.
I hope he made some really compelling, defensible argument. I just
haven’t heard it yet.

Mrs. McBride was somewhat more forthcoming in her interview than Ms. Kennedy was, but still rather vague. She seemed to be going through the motions with fuzzy observations about the clerk’s office having poor communication, or not being "inclusive" enough. One was left with the distinct impression that she was running, not because she had any clue how to run the courthouse better, but because she believed she could win. And of course, she was right.

Note how, at the end of the clip, she brightens considerably as she explains, with a contented shrug, that "I think the people will elect me." And that seemed to be what really motivated her.

A mixed day for democracy in the Midlands

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

TUESDAY’S primary runoffs produced encouraging results on the state level, but what happened in Richland County was downright disturbing.

    Voters in the Midlands soundly rejected the governor’s efforts, financed by out-of-state extremists, to use South Carolina as a lab rabbit to test their pet ideologies.

    That’s what was at stake in the runoffs between Sheri Few and David Herndon in the state House 79 Republican primary, and between Katrina Shealy and Jake Knotts in Senate District 23. It would be hard to imagine this newspaper endorsing Sen. Knotts under any other circumstances. But things being as they were, we did. We believed that if the governor and his allies managed to take him out as they were trying to do, it would have intimidated other lawmakers into doing their will — even though the lawmakers and their constituents know better. So the governor needed to lose this one. Fortunately, the voters agreed.

    That would lead me to say that Tuesday’s voting demonstrates the unmitigated wisdom inherent in our system of democracy — if not for what happened, on the same day, with the Richland County clerk of court and the same county’s council District 7.

    Of course, we have insisted for years that it makes little sense to elect the clerk of court — or auditor, or coroner, or any office that is highly technical and has nothing to do with setting policies. It would be far better to let county administrators — who report to the elected councils — hire people to do highly technical, ministerial jobs, based on experience and demonstrated competence.

    The result in the clerk’s race reinforces our point.

    In the primary on June 10, we endorsed incumbent Barbara Scott, since — and we saw no clear evidence to the contrary — she was doing an adequate job running the courthouse, collecting child support payments and overseeing the other routine duties of the office. She was judged clerk of the year by the S.C. chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates, which surely knows more about the quality of her day-to-day work than we do.

    Before making that decision, we considered endorsing Gloria Montgomery — who had worked in the clerk’s office for years and seems to understand it thoroughly (certainly better than we or most voters do) — or Kendall Corley, who offered some interesting ideas for improving service.

    But we never for a moment considered endorsing Jeanette McBride. That’s not because Mrs. McBride is married to former state Rep. Frank McBride, whose political career ended in 1991 when he pleaded guilty to vote-selling in the Lost Trust scandal. We didn’t consider her because she offered us no reason whatsoever to believe that she would do a better job than Ms. Scott. She didn’t even try. She did not display any particular interest in what the clerk of court does at all.

    She said, quite simply, that she was running because she thought she could win. She did not explain what went into that calculation, but so what? She was right.

    Her victory will inevitably be compared to the defeat of Harry Huntley — regarded by many as the best auditor in the state — in Richland County in 2006. And it will be suggested that both of these incumbents were the victims of raw racial politics. Mr. Huntley and Ms. Scott are white; Ms. McBride and Paul Brawley are black. A candidate who can pick up most of the black votes in a Democratic primary is increasingly seen as having an advantage in the county.

    I hope voters had a better reason than that for turning out qualified candidates in favor of challengers who seemed to offer no actual qualifications. In fact, I’m wracking my brain trying to think of other explanations. Ms. McBride, in her interview, didn’t help with that. And Mr. Brawley didn’t even bother to talk to The State’s editorial board, so I have no idea what sort of case he made to voters. I hope he made some really compelling, defensible argument. I just haven’t heard it yet.

    In council District 7, race was not the factor. Both runoff candidates were black. That one seems to have been a pure demonstration of another poor reason to win an election: name recognition. Voters went with Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy, a name they’d heard before, over the young and unknown Kiba Anderson. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten that the reason they’d heard the name was that she was one of the council members they booted out of office after she wasted their tax money on a junket to Hawaii.

    In our interview, Ms. Kennedy was like Ms. McBride in one respect: For a former council member, she showed a startling lack of knowledge of, or interest in, issues before the council.

    Mr. Anderson was an unknown quantity, to be sure. But at least we didn’t know he would be a bad council member, which Ms. Kennedy was.

    The optimist in me says that the voters no doubt had some really great reason for sending her back to the council. It’s just escaping me so far.

    That’s the bad news out of the runoffs. I’ll end on a cheery note.

    Before I do, I’ll state as I always do that our endorsements most certainly are not an attempt to predict election outcomes. They are about who should win — and the reasons why — not who will win.

    But several election cycles back, I got tired of our detractors spreading the lie that “our” candidates generally lose, that we are out of touch with the voters, that our endorsement is the “kiss of death,” yadda-yadda. So I started reporting our endorsees’ “won-lost” record after each election.

    The results of the primaries, now that all the recounts and runoffs are done, were as follows: We endorsed 24 candidates. Of those, 19 won. That’s a batting average of .792. So there.

Yo! City council? WHO do ya think MADE it ‘fail?’

Finally, some folks in this community are trying to revive the comprehensive approach to solving Columbia’s homelessness problem, two years after city council arbitrarily killed a similar effort that was well on its way.

Of course, the leadership is coming, again, from the private sector. A broad coalition including the United Way, the Salvation Army, business leaders, and an interfaith consortium, with $5 million from the Knight Foundation, are trying to get the one-stop-shop for dealing with the various pathologies that lead to homelessness. (FYI — the Knight Foundation is an organization that was once upon a time associated with the corporation that owned The State. That corporation doesn’t exist any more, but the Foundation has maintained its commitment to Columbia — which is slightly amazing.)

So what’s the city’s reaction? According to The State‘s Adam Beam, "Council members said they would be hesitant to fund an idea that has failed in the past."

Say what?!?!? The idea didn’t fail. You killed it. And it ranks as possibly the most outrageously irresponsible thing the city has done in the past 10 years, which is no small feat. The city’s feckless efforts toward homelessness since then — the "Housing First" program that addresses only a thin sliver of the problem, the sequel emergency winter shelters, just adds to the insult to all the good-faith efforts the city scuttled. ("Emergency" because each year there for awhile it seemed like a shock to the city that such a shelter would be needed — "What? It’s going to get cold again?")

Here’s some video of some of the members of the new coalition talking to the editorial board about their effort — which is admirable and encouraging, but doomed to fail if the city doesn’t get its mind right and follow where the private sector is leading.

Updating how our endorsees fared

Here’s the final count on how candidates we endorsed did in the primaries, now that the runoffs are over. You’ll recall that I wrote right after the primaries June 10 that, depending on how runoffs and recounts went, between 66 percent and 88 percent of our preferred candidates won their parties’ nominations.

In the end, the official count is 19 out of 24, or 79 percent. As usual, here’s my disclaimer: Endorsements are NOT predictions. They are about who SHOULD win, not who WILL win. But since there are critics out there who persist in saying erroneously that our endorsees tend to lose because we’re "out of touch" with the voters, and because there are others out there who are merely idly curious, I’ve started doing these counts the last few elections years. So there you go.

Here’s the recap:

WON — We endorsed Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who won easily.
LOST — We said Michael Cone was slightly preferable to Bob Conley. Conley won — slightly.
WON — GOP Rep. Joe Wilson. 
LOST —  We favored Democrat Blaine Lotz in the 2nd District, but he lost to the less experienced and less knowledgeable Rob Miller.
WON — Democratic state Rep. John Scott seems to have squeaked by Vince Ford.
WON — Democratic Sen. Darrell Jackson will keep his seat.
WON — Asserting that the pro-voucher/anti-government groups
that are trying to intimidate our Legislature would claim credit if so
powerful an incumbent as GOP Sen. Jake Knotts were defeated, we reluctantly backed Jake for the first time ever.
WON — Richland County Council Chairman Joe McEachern wins the Democratic nomination for the seat Mr. Scott is vacating (District 77).
WON — Michael Koska was much more knowledgeable than his opponent for the Republican nomination in District 77.
WON — Republican David Herndon survived his runoff.
WON — Democratic Rep. Joe Neal’s
(District 70) depth of knowledge in education and health care is
impressive, to us and to the voters.
WON — Democratic Rep. Jimmy Bales’
(District 80) work as a high school principal gave him the real-life
understanding of the challenges of educating poor children that most
legislators lack.
WON — Democratic Rep. Chris Hart
beat back an attempted comeback from the incumbent he beat last time in District 83.
LOST — Republican Mike Miller seemed to us slightly preferable to the incumbent in District 96.
WON — Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott,
a Democrat, won easily.
WON — Ditto with Lexington County Sheriff James Metts.
WON — Democratic incumbent Damon Jeter has the experience in Richland County Council District 3.
LOST — This was a double loss — first Johnny Bland in the primary, and then Kiba Anderson in the runoff. But it’s a bigger loss for the voters in Richland CountyCouncil District 7.
WON — Republican Val Hutchinson was the better candidate in Richland District 9.
WON — In Richland District 10, Democrat Kelvin Washington will keep his mother-in-law’s seat in the family.
LOST — Richland County Democratic Clerk of Court Barbara Scott lost in the runoff to perhaps her LEAST qualified opponent.
WON — Richland County Coroner
Gary Watts (Democrat)
WON — Lexington County Republican Auditor Chris Harmon
WON — Lexington County Republican Clerk of Court Beth Carrigg.

5 minutes, 28 seconds! Can I bleed or WHAT?

Looking back, that’s probably not the best headline for persuading you to give blood. But at least it got your attention, right?

I went to donate at the Red Cross last night, it having been at least 112 days since the last time I gave double-red cells (called the "Alyx" process) back in February. I was prepared to do that again — it’s a really cool process (quite literally, in that they take out your blood, remove the red cells and pump it back in mixed with saline that is a tad cooler than the blood, and the coolness spreads from your arm across your body; but maybe that’s more than you want to know). And, don’t ask me to explain this, but they actually use a smaller needle somehow.

But they had moved the bar on me. See, you have to have a certain amount of iron to do the double-red thing, more than just to give a pint of whole blood. I had been taking iron pills so as to avoid past humiliation, but they used a new test. On the old test, I had to have a "40." On the new one, you need a "14," and I only scored a 13.2. But that was plenty for whole blood, so they took me for that.

Here’s where the bragging comes in. I always try to accelerate the process of giving whole blood by clenching my fist more often than necessary. There was this guy who had started at least 10 minutes, maybe 15, before I did. Once they got started on me, about 2 or 3 minutes later, one of the technicians looked at my receiving bag and said "Whoa! He’s already ahead of him" — indicating the guy next to me. This encourages me to go into my "kick" for the home stretch, and I finished off my pint at five minutes, 28 seconds. The other guy was still going.

This was great, because in the past I’ve taken as much as half an hour for whole blood (Alyx takes longer, but then you have to wait twice as long before giving again), and even as many times as I’ve done this, I’ve never completely lost my dread of it (as I wrote in a column once, for me, giving blood was my Room 101). So I like to get it over with quickly. The secret of my success? Eat and drink (especially water) SO much the day of the donation that you feel like you’re about to pop — the higher blood volume makes a difference. That, and the fist-pumping.

Here’s hoping this doesn’t gross you out, because my point in writing about this is to say YOU should give, too. There’s a great need here in the Midlands, as always. If you can give (not everyone is qualified), and you won’t, then you’re a wuss. So there.

Promising sign at the bus stop

Go ahead and accuse me of racial profiling (or class profiling, or whatever), but I noticed something promising on Assembly Street this morning.

It was a young white guy, in a crisp shirt and tie, conservatively groomed (at a distance, you might have mistaken him for Brian Boyer), sitting on one of the benches at the big bus stop between Gervais and Lady streets. He was sitting like an athlete on the bench waiting to go into the game — elbows on knees, hands clasped, head up and looking around expectantly.

In other words, he appeared to be waiting for a bus. An encouraging sign, in Energy Party terms. Like people ditching SUVs, or John McCain changing his mind and advocating drilling off the coast. Another sign that maybe we’re starting to make choices that don’t prop up petrodictators.

That was the good sign. The bad sign was that this young white-collar guy was still sitting there, still waiting, when I came back 40 minutes later. That indicates that if he was trying the bus as an alternative today, he might not try it tomorrow.

This underlines the need to improve our transit system to the point that it is a rational and attractive choice to people who do have choices, and not just a last resort for those who have no options.

Of course, maybe the guy wasn’t waiting for a bus at all. In which case, never mind.

Like pulling teeth: Interviewing Gwen Kennedy

Trying to get Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy to provide a rationale for her Richland County Council candidacy was like pulling teeth. She basically could not provide any good reason why voters should elect her back to the body she left under a cloud a decade ago.

Ms. Kennedy is best remembered for a taxpayer-funded junket she and another council member took to Hawaii. And that’s about it, really. To get further details, I had to search the database, and came up with this editorial from our editions of Dec. 8, 1997:

We should have known Richland County Councilwoman Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy wouldn’t leave quietly after her failed re-election bid.
    At her last regular meeting, Mrs. Kennedy and three of her children were up for appointments to county boards or commissions. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. This is the same councilwoman who took a $3,000 jaunt to Hawaii on county money to a conference for Western counties only to return with nothing constructive to share. Then, faced with a runoff bid she wouldn’t win, she had a change of heart and admitted the trip wasn’t a good idea.
    Mrs. Kennedy obviously is intent on having a lasting impact on Richland County by getting family members appointed to boards. Sadly, other council members didn’t see the folly in it all and appointed two of Mrs. Kennedy’s daughters to positions. Kim Kennedy and Fay Kennedy were appointed to the Music Festival Commission and the Building Board of Adjustment, respectively.
    The lame duck council, four of whom are on their way out, might have selected Mrs. Kennedy and her son, a Richland County sheriff’s deputy, to a position had the two not withdrawn their nominations after they were challenged. Mrs. Kennedy had applied for a spot on the county Planning Commission and her son, Theodore Kennedy Jr., had applied for a position on the Building Board of Adjustment.
    This was an obvious attempt by Mrs. Kennedy to try to stack county boards with herself and her family members as she leaves the council. Council members should have known better and left all of these appointments to the next council.
    Shame on them all. It’s these sort of shenanigans that have residents angry over the way the county is operated. The new Richland County Council, the membership of which will be completed in tomorrow’s election, can’t be seated soon enough.

The good news is that the new council was somewhat better. No trips to Hawaii, anyway.

But the truth is that bad candidacies are frequently marked by the lack of good qualities as much as bad ones. And the things that strikes me as I review video of our interview back in April with Ms. Kennedy is her utter inability to articulate why anyone should support her.

Please excuse the length of the above interview. I just included a lot of unedited footage (except for transitions between my camera’s three-minute-maximum clips) so you could see — if you were patient enough — just how far you can go in giving a person every possible opportunity, without that person rising to it. It’s tedious, but telling. In fact, some of you who are accustomed to the contrived theater of TV interviews will wonder, "Why were you so patient and easygoing with this woman?" The answer is that, contrary to what many of you believe, we really do try to go the extra mile to allow candidates a chance to make their case in their own way — particularly the candidates who come in with apparently little chance of gaining our endorsement. Some candidates make the most of the opportunity, and are impressive — an example of that would be Sheri Few, who didn’t think we would endorse her but to her credit wasn’t about to make that decision easy on us. Ms. Kennedy made the decision very, very easy.

Unfortunately, Ms. Kennedy managed to squeeze past a couple of more attractive candidates to make it into a runoff next week. One nice thing about runoffs — it gives me time to present you with more info about the candidates that I was able to do during the crowded initial vote.

If you don’t have the patience to make it through the long video above, here’s a shorter and more interesting one. After having given her every opportunity to deal with her checkered past — a simple, "I did wrong when I was in office before, and have learned my lesson" would have been good — we finally had to confront her (politely, of course, that being Warren’s style) about the incident that lost her the position on council.

Basically, once she was specifically asked about "The Trip," she tried lamely to deflect. She tried to allege that the controversy was over her husband going, and that wasn’t at taxpayer expense. She noted that she’s been to Hawaii a number of times, and only once at taxpayer expense — as though that established anything other than the fact that she likes Hawaii. She tries to make us believe that she believes that if elected, we would falsely report that the European trip she’s saving up for was on the taxpaper’s dime.

But what am I doing describing it? Just watch the video.

Lawmaker to level charges at police chief

This release struck me as unusual when I got it, but I set it aside because I didn’t have time to blog about it. But when I receive a phone message from a someone making sure I had received the message and knew about the coming news conference, I decided to give y’all a heads-up on this:

SOUTH CAROLINA HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS
Media advisory for June 16, 2008

REPRESENTATIVE TODD RUTHERFORD TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE IN RESPONSE TO THE CLUB LEVEL SHOOTING INCIDENT
    Rep. Todd Rutherford [D-Richland] will hold a press conference in room 305 of the Blatt building.   His remarks will highlight the Club Level shooting incident, and pinpoint precautionary measures that could have been taken by Columbia Police Chief Tandy P. Carter. 

WHO: Representative Todd Rutherford
WHEN:  Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 17, 2007) at 10:00 a.m.
WHERE: 1105 Pendleton Street, Blatt Building Room 305, Columbia, SC 29201

Kelly S. Adams
Director
SC House Democratic Caucus
P.O. Box 12049
Columbia, SC 29211

Maybe it’s not all that unusual for a state lawmaker to poke his nose into a municipal police matter. But to do so under the aegis of his party’s caucus is weird. To go to such lengths to call attention to it makes it sort of weird squared.

Wow. This police chief just got here, and he’s got this much heat coming down already?

Classy response to defeat

Candidates who lose elections seldom do this sort of thing, so when they do I am favorably impressed. After a fairly bitter campaign that featured mutual character attacks, it struck me that D.J. Carson was moved to send this out:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA ADVISORY

June 15, 2008
    D.J. Carson congratulates Joe McEachern and challenges South Carolina to continue to make public education a priority.…
    Richland Co. – I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Joe McEachern and offer my support to him and all Democrats running for office in November. Though the media has reported our differences on the issues the past three months, we now must come together as a party, a community, and continue to find solutions to the many challenges facing District 77 and South Carolina overall.
    When I started this journey nearly three months ago, I did so on the foundation that our public schools are the single most important factor to making South Carolina a more successful and more productive state. I truly believe there is a direct link between public education, low crime, and economic development. I am pleased to see that through this campaign private school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and home-school tax credits and their negative impact on public education came to the forefront.  These types of misguided solutions would take valuable resources away from our public schools and put our children at a disadvantage. I along with all residents in District 77 challenge Mr. McEachern and the South Carolina General Assembly to champion public schools and public education over the next two years.
    Finally, I offer my sincere appreciation to the educators, parents, volunteers, campaign staff, and most importantly the voters who believe in my message and vision. Though we came short in our ultimate goal, we were able to push the message of supporting public education to the center of the debate. Working together we will bring needed change to District 77 and South Carolina as a whole.

Thank you all and God Bless!

D.J. Carson

Yeah, I know — you can call it just crass "party loyalty" or some such (he doesn’t wish any Republicans or independents well, you’ll notice), or a CYA move to keep his political options open in the future, or both. And yeah, it’s kind of preachy for a congratulatory message.

But when a guy does something more generous than I expected, I tend to want to make note of it. If we don’t encourage good sportsmanship, we can expect it to die out completely.

Nowadays, there are so few classy gestures that I care less about why they are extended; I’m just glad to see them.

Mayor Bob on water restrictions

Going through my e-mail from the weekend, I see this one came in from Mayor Bob Saturday:

    I wanted to update you on the water restrictions for Northeast Columbia. The restrictions will be the same as last year in terms of the even-odd address watering. Additionally we will limit the number of taps to 1700 until June 2009. Only 50% of the taps were used from the same allotment as last year. Any project that does not need water until June 2009 is not restricted.
    Three projects that will expand our capacity to serve the Northeast will be complete by June 2009. Those projects include a 48 inch line that extends eleven miles from the Lake Murray plant to the Northeast, another tank on Old Reemer Road, and a new pumping station on Monticello Road. The Northeast will not have these distribution problems after June 2009.
    The issue with the Northeast is not a matter of a lack of water. The system can now produce 146 million gallons per day. That is an increase of 20 million from last year. All of Atlanta and Raleigh were under water restrictions last summer with the drought. California is under development restrictions now.
    We are asking all customers to voluntarily conserve water. Our program is called "Conserve Columbia." Material is on our website and has been mailed to customers.  Thanks

Thought I’d better give you a heads-up, seeing as how some of y’all live out that way…

Five Points parking project: The position we didn’t take

You may or may not have noticed that we never took an editorial position on the 5 Points South project — the six-story private development that would include two stories of city parking. There were plenty of words on the editorial page on the subject, both pro and con — just not from us. There were letters and op-eds, but no editorial.

This is because we had no consensus on the subject. The problem was me. I didn’t like the project. Why? It just seemed too tall to be right there. It didn’t move me to know that there were other buildings even taller just a block or two away. This would loom right over the heart of Five Points — right over the new fountain forming a gateway at Saluda and Blossom. Besides — and I realize this is purely a personal whim, so I wouldn’t have taken an editorial position on the strength of this; it just didn’t help — I don’t like parking garages. I’ll park half a mile a way and walk rather than get tangled up in a parking garage. Something about the tediousness of getting in and out of them. I like to know I can make a quick getaway, or something. I don’t know what it is.

Other members of the board thought the project was fine, but it wasn’t a burning issue to them. That is to say, they didn’t favor it strongly enough to push me on it. And they had their hands full, as did I. We were in the midst of endorsement season, and unfortunately, state primaries come along concurrently with the last few weeks of the legislative session — a doubly busy time for us. So basically, no one had the time to do the research to overcome my objections. So we neither came out for it or against it.

In the last couple of weeks before the city’s final decision (which came Wednesday — it was approved), advocates for the project asked to come in to talk to us. With the pace of interviews we were dealing with (and remember, with our present staffing levels, we all work a full day getting the pages out without any meetings), we weren’t sure whether it would be time well spent, given how far apart we were on it.

But all of that is hard to explain, so Warren and I agreed to meet with the group on Monday. The delegation included Anne Sinclair from city council, our own James D. McCallister (who I believe is associated with Loose Lucy’s — correct me if I’m wrong, Don), Duncan McRae from Yesterday’s, longtime Five Points leader Jack Van Loan, developer Ron Swinson and city and Five Points Association staff.

I asked them all my questions, and I was satisfied with the answers. The parking is needed, not everyone has my aversion to garages, and the setback should avoid looming over the entrance to Five Points excessively. It means a lot that the businesses most likely to be loomed over want it.

James brought up a good point about "Five Points" as a concept being something that some of us react to emotionally and sentimentally. I acknowledged that to me, that wasn’t even Kenny’s, but the Winn-Dixie. And does it really make sense not to have secure parking for patrons and employees because I don’t want a building taller than the Winn-Dixie?

So that leaves, what? Residential neighbors who don’t like it, right? That’s something that should be respected, but does it outweigh the legitimate reasons set out by the advocates?

With the decision coming up on Wednesday, I huddled with Warren and Cindi to see whether they thought we should take a position before the meeting. At the same time, I made the point that while I had been won over, I didn’t like the fact that there wasn’t time left to spend equal time with opponents. (If I had thought they would be that persuasive, we would have tried earlier to make provision for that.) We decided, in light of what we already had planned to say editorially on Tuesday and Wednesday, not to leap to a conclusion editorially at the last moment. Warren did write a column mentioning the project favorably for Wednesday’s paper, but mentioned MORE prominently the smoking ban, which we were already on record as strongly for.

Why a post on why we didn’t take a position, when we take very clear positions on bigger, more controversial issues than this all the time? Well, I just wanted to post the video of James et al., and this provided the excuse.

That makes three of our regulars who have now been featured in picture (and now video) on the blog — Doug Ross, bud, and James.

On this blog, everybody gets famous eventually. And not just for 15 minutes, either — even though this is the future previously referred to.

How Jake became Jake: Knotts on growing up poor in Columbia


T
here have been times in the past that I’ve heard parts of it, but this time, I sat back and listened to Jake Knotts tell his full story of how he grew up in Columbia.

He was offering it as an explanation of his values, a way of telling us why he approaches things the way he does.

Look at it any way you like — as the inspiring story of how a populist rose up from the poorest corners of our capital city, or how hard times made a "rough cop" and bull-headed hard case of a state senator.

Either way, it’s interesting, and worth watching the video. This is from an interview Tuesday morning in our offices. Once Jake had told his story, we of course launched into the usual questions.

Grandmaster Bud of the Irmo High School Chess Club

Bud

A
s promised back here, bud has provided the above photo of himself from back when he was president of the Irmo High School Chess Club. The commentary that he sent with the photo:

That’s me in 1973.  Bobby Fischer was all the rage back then.  Note the wide-band watch and loong hair.

And just to bring you up-to-date, and help you get to know the long-anonymous bud a little better, below is a photo he sent me last month "of me at my daughter’s wedding:"

Budwedding

Sexy chess

Y‘all know what a waste I consider these completely unnecessary Kulturkampf battles to be; we’ve got about a gazillion more important things to be spending our political energies on. So imagine my dismay, and my lack of interest in getting involved, when the latest craziness struck so close to home.

But there was just one thing in the "Irmo High Gay/Straight club" story that I could not allow to pass without commenting. It was this:

    “This group is forming to provide support for the gay and lesbian students,” said C. Ray Drew, director of the South Carolina Equality Coalition, a gay rights advocacy group. “It provides a reprieve of the often hostile environment gay students often encounter. This club is no more sexual than the chess club.”

The chess club? Oh, come on… it’s a little more sexual than the chess club,Chess isn’t it? It would have to be,
unless chess has changed a lot since I was in high school.

Maybe there’s something going on between the queen and the knight that I’ve missed. Or between the knight and the knight, given our context here. And don’t even get started on the bishops; Randy and I are Catholics, and we will take offense…