Category Archives: South Carolina

Where’s the Pork?

7 Replies

Dang! Talk about your disappointments. I read on S.C. Politics Today that Dr. Oscar Lovelace was…

…flying around the state in the company of pigs named Integrity,
Passion, Goodwill and Servant Leadership. Servant Leadership, he said,
is the dominant member of the group.

So I got pretty excited, and searched the AP wire for pictures of said pigs. When they didn’t materialize there or in the Saturday paper, or on the good doctor’s Web site, I put in a call to his campaign coordinator, Blake Wilbanks. I reached him by cell just a few moments ago, as he was riding somewhere on the campaign bus. He broke the sad news to me that the pigs in whose company the candidate was traveling were "figurative."

No pigs? No. No cardboard cutouts of pigs?  Nope. Anything I could post a picture of on my blog? Nada. Just a bunch of rhetoric about Dr. Lovelace’s virtues in comparison to the governor, who famously carried real pigs to the lobby outside the House, and held them before the press while they pooped all over the carpet.

Dr. Lovelace may have integrity, passion and goodwill coming out the ears, but he sure doesn’t know how to do a pandering photo op. Makes you wonder whether he’s got the fire in the belly to win this thing, you know. Sort of reminds me of a candidate we saw four years ago, who we also thought was above cheap tricks. Guy name of Mark Sanford.

Lovelacedebate
           Loads of integrity, but no swine.

Circular reasoning

6 Replies

Bauerheel
Hey, it’s good to hear Andre Bauer’s surgery went OK. (That’s an actual X-ray of his newly repaired heel Dr. Kyle Jeray is holding up there.)

Which reminds me of my post from last night.

I’ve never known quite what to make of the fact that you’ll sometimes hear lawmakers defending Mr. Bauer on the basis that he’s doing a good service with the Office on Aging.

There seems to be
some circular reasoning involved. Old folks were being served by that
agency before. Lawmakers, searching for something to give Andre
that he could take credit for, arbitrarily moved it to his office. Once
they moved it there, Andre went around letting old folks know what a
great job the people who now worked for him were doing for them, and
they praised him for it.

Lawmakers then started giving Andre credit for it all, thereby self-fulfilling a prophecy.

Anyway, that’s the cynic’s view. Andre claims all sorts of
restructuring and reform of the agency and its service, plus a greatly
expanded budget this last round, and says it’s all due to his
"leadership." Whether it is due to his efforts or not, I don’t know.

But my new boss did ask an interesting question when Andre was
talking about that in his Wednesday interview with us: Is the Office on
Aging now enjoying an advantage over equally vital and worthwhile
agencies, just because it has a high-profile advocate — one with every
motive to have his own area of influence grow, I might add — wielding
the gavel for it in the Senate?

Andre allowed as how he didn’t think that was the case. OK, then: If
it isn’t benefiting from that relationship, to what extent is his
position over the Office of Aging doing anything for his clients that
wouldn’t get done by that office anyway? Circular reasoning again.

All I can tell is that the lines of accountability are now muddier than before.

Cindi’s ‘Pink Pigs’ column

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Pink_pig
Generic pink propaganda:
‘(Fill in the blank) is a big fat pig’

By CINDI ROSS SCOPPE
Associate Editor

THE CUSHY pink pigs were stuffed illegally onto mailboxes, necklaced with flyers crying that “State Spending is Out of Control” (“up 10 PERCENT THIS YEAR ALONE!”) and asking: “Why is our legislator, Bill Cotty, voting to spend millions of our tax dollars on beach sand, an arts festival and a football game?”
    A better question might be: What is “Conservatives in Action,” and why is it making this stuff up?
    Rep. Cotty is the one member of the House who by no stretch of the imagination could be tied to that spending. He recorded the only vote against this year’s final budget bill (after you click on the link, search for the third time the words "record for voting" occur), which contained the money for beach renourishment and the football game and the arts festivals and the 10 percent increase in spending. He also was one of eight House members who voted against the House’s version of the budget, and one of two members of the Ways and Means Committee who voted against it in committee.
    This suddenly ubiquitous little group followed up the pigs with post cards showing a stack of cash ablaze and urging voters to call Mr. Cotty and “tell him that you’re tired of him spending your tax dollars like he’s got money to burn” and “tired of him voting against Gov. Sanford and for ‘pork barrel’ projects.” Huh?
    Apparently the group not only forgot to check Mr. Cotty’s voting record or notice that he did more than anyone except maybe the speaker to push through this year’s $180 million tax cut. It also forgot to check with its fellow libertarians at the S.C. Club for Growth. Their web site shows that only 27 of the 124 House members voted to sustain more of Mr. Sanford’s 2005 budget vetoes than Mr. Cotty — and just four sustained more of his 2004 vetoes.
    “Conservatives in Action” is based in Greenville, and it’s targeting a half-dozen Republican House members statewide.
    That explains why it’s running a generic campaign that has nothing to do with how Bill Cotty actually votes. The pigs — and the same cut-and-paste mailings — also showed up in the districts of Lexington Rep. Ken Clark and Upstate Reps. Becky Martin, Gene Pinson, Adam Taylor and Bill Whitmire.
    What it doesn’t explain is why the group is targeting him — and the others — at all.
If you just read what it says, you’d think “Conservatives in Action” was going after the worst of the tax-and-spend crowd. But that’s clearly not the case.
    Fourteen House Republicans are on the ballot next week, and 11 of them have voted with the governor less than Mr. Cotty. (The other two both voted for this year’s sand-and-festivals budget.) Yet “Conservatives in Action” gave a pass to six of those anti-Sanford, pro-sand Republicans.
    The group’s other target is education superintendent candidate Bob Staton, and the only issue on which he and Karen Floyd differ is tax credits for private schools: He’s against them; she’s for them.
    Sure enough: The six un-pigged Republicans all voted for last month’s effort to send public money to unaccountable, private schools. The six Republicans on the hit list voted against it.
    Welcome to our second consecutive primary election featuring an anti-public schools group that’s hiding behind less controversial issues to lob misleading attacks at GOP legislators who don’t ask “How high?” when it shouts “Jump!”
    We first saw this M.O. when Michigan-based “All Children Matter” came after anti-voucher candidates in the 2004 GOP primary. It, too, was careful to focus on such “issues” as their refusal to sign a blood oath to creepy puppetmasters
in Washington swearing to never ever vote to raise a tax so help me God. No mention of vouchers, which don’t poll nearly as well as “State Spending is Out of Control.”
    Up until a couple of weeks ago, it looked like the baton had been passed to the ironically named “South Carolinians for Responsible Government,” which had taken over as the face of the voucher/tax credit movement after it became clear that voters weren’t comfortable with a Michigan multi-millionaire trying to dictate school policy in South Carolina. The ostensibly local group started out this spring’s round of attacks on Reps. Cotty, Clark and others by focusing on their alleged attempts to raise taxes or their alleged opposition to the governor’s vetoes.
    But then the State Ethics Commission ordered the group to obey the state ethics law, and report its activities.
    Suddenly the “Conservatives in Action” name started appearing on the kind of cookie-cutter junk mail that had been coming from SCRG.
    The slick little post cards just keep coming. Last week’s piece charges that (fill in the blank) “has developed quite an appetite for spending your money.”
    It’s bad enough that the attack dog du jour, like its predecessors, is working hard to hide the fact that its only real goal is to install a voucher-friendly Legislature.
    And trying to mislead voters into thinking legislators raised taxes, when in fact they cut them.
And recycling the governor’s bogus 16 percent figure to make spending look like it’s spiraling out of control. (Mr. Sanford admits he’s leaving out some spending when he compares this year’s budget to next year’s; he sees nothing wrong with comparing apples to pineapples to produce a growth number that’s several points higher than reality.)
    Such deception has, unfortunately, become commonplace among political operatives.
    But in the case of Mr. Cotty — the man who voted against spending any tax money on anything because he thought his colleagues were spending too much of it — even the sleaziest of sleaze-masters couldn’t defend the attacks.
    Why do they think they can get away with such obvious lies? Mr. Cotty has a simple explanation: “They’ve targeted us because… they think we’re stupid.”

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.

Debating the debate debate

35 Replies

Whatmeworry
Some of my loyal readers are missing some fairly obvious points. Or maybe I am (see, I’m not so arrogant). Anyway, here are three points I’d like to raise in response to feedback so far on the GOP gubernatorial debate that the governor is ducking:

  1. Nathan, are you really "sure" that I would like to see the governor packing up and moving out of Columbia? Don’t be so sure. Look at the field up against him. Why is it so hard to understand that I would hold someone I support, or have supported, to a high standard? Do you expect me to be like the partisans, who give "their" guys a pass on anything and everything, and automatically despise anything the "other" side does. I am made of very different stuff, and so is this blog. A lot of people remain convinced to this day that I "hated" Jim Hodges. My problem with Hodges was that I had respected him so much as a House member, and I KNEW he was capable of so much more. But he denied his own instincts and values, and rejected counsel from a lot of good people around him, choosing instead to follow the advice of a guy who was recently indicted in North Carolina in connection with something very similar to what he did here — promote lotteries. I didn’t hate him. I just held him to a higher standard than he did himself. Oh, and remember Bob Coble. Was I trying to get rid of him when I insisted there be a debate on his performance?
  2. People keep mentioning that I wanted the three "also-rans" in the superintendent’s race to fade to the background so that we could concentrate on comparing the two viable candidates — Karen Floyd and Bob Staton. It is suggested that I apply the same logic to the gubernatorial debate. OK, Dave, let’s do that. Let’s get that "also-ran" Oscar Lovelace out of the way so that we can concentrate on the contrasts between Gov. Sanford and his actual opponent, ummm… you know, the guy running against him. Uh … oh, yeah: Oscar Lovelace.
  3. I keep hearing the argument — and correct me if I’m hearing it wrong — that goes like this: The governor should cruise to victory in the primary without ever facing his opponent, or mentioning his name, because he can. He can get away with it. Not that it’s right, or decent, or intellectually honest to do so, but because he’s the $6 million man. Is that right, Doug? If so, it’s wrong. I expect better from Mark Sanford than that, and other voters should respect themselves enough to do the same.
  4. Back to Nathan: If I’m the governor, and Mary Rosh is the only person facing me for renomination, and a bunch of people have gone to the trouble of setting up debates for statewide candidates, and all the other statewide candidates have shown up (is any of this sounding familiar), yeah. I’d debate her. I’ll go further than that — and you may consider this the first unpromise of my uncampaign: If I am the nominee of the Unparty for governor, and it’s the fall, and Mark Sanford and Tommy Moore are both willing to show for the only statewide televised debate of the election, and I’m invited (a lot of ifs, huh?), then you bet I’ll show up. With bells on. Or a suit, anyway.

Sanford’s evasion pathetic, inexcusable

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OK, the governor’s evasion of a face-to-face, televised meeting with his primary opponent has now officially reached the point of being pathetic and inexcusable.

This release just came out, even as I was writing my last post:

Columbia, SC… On Wednesday, June 7 at 7 p.m. ETV and The State
Newspaper will present an exclusive, hard-hitting interview with Oscar
Lovelace, the Republican gubernatorial candidate for governor.
    "Those who tune into ETV or ETV Radio that night will find a
program that offers crucial information as Election Day approaches,"
said Catherine Christman, vice president of Communications for ETV. "We
are pleased that Mr. Lovelace will be in our studios on Wednesday,
though disappointed that the governor won’t be able to participate in
the debate, since it would have been the only statewide opportunity for
citizens to hear both men’s thoughts on issues of importance."

The governor still has time to extract some dignity from this farce — for himself, his opponent, his party and the S.C. electorate. But he doesn’t have a whole lot of it.

Governor’s arrogance tinged with fear?

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You probably saw this item Saturday — along with this one.

I just haven’t had a chance to rant about any of it yet. So here goes.

The governor owes it to three parties to show up for Wednesday night’s debate on S.C. ETV, in ascending order of importance:

  1. His opponent, at the very least.
  2. His party, to a greater extent.
  3. Most of all, to the voters of South Carolina.

As I noted last week, Oscar Lovelace was one of many people who voted for Mark Sanford four years ago, only to become disillusioned. Don’t you think that the governor could have the decency to show up and tell the guy who is disappointed enough in him to run his own campaign for governor why he’s wrong?

Not convinced by that? OK, try this.

Mark Sanford’s greatest detractors tend to be Republicans — the ones who know him and have had to work with him in office, as opposed to the ones who know little about him that they haven’t picked up from his TV ads. (Cindi Scoppe’s column Tuesday documents that further. Be sure to check it out.)

In fact, a lot of his fellow elected Republicans think a whole lot more about Oscar Lovelace than they do the governor, judging by the wild, standing ovation Dr. Lovelace got when he visited the House last week. What do they know that the electorate doesn’t? And why won’t the governor face the man who seems so much more popular than he among the knowledgeable members of his own party?
I certainly don’t care about party unity, in this or any other party. But why doesn’t the state’s chief elected Republican care any more about it than I do?

Finally, while the governor is indeed busier than the Gov Lite — he has an actual full-time job, afterSanfordbudget all — his excuse that he doesn’t have time to debate his GOP opponent is nearly as bogus as Andre’s claim that his schedule is so hectic he has to do three digits on the public highways. As the accompanying story makes clear, he has time to politick. He’s just choosing to use his time bashing his fellow Republicans in the Legislature and playing favorites among GOP candidates for other statewide offices (all of whom showed up for their debates, mind you).

Everyone assumed, when the governor threatened to keep lawmakers after school, that he was doing so in order to be able to bash them (most of whom are Republicans, remember) over his vetoes, few of which they are likely to uphold if the past is a guide. So lawmakers decided overwhelmingly to repudiate that naked political opportunism, and kept him from doing that to them. So how did he respond? By deciding to take to the hustings and bash them anyway. Nothing like sticking to a game plan. That’s much more important than appearing on a statewide televised debate, even though all the other candidates for statewide office have had enough respect for the electorate to do so. Right? Right, sez the gov. So far.

Surely, while he’s busy telling us why Mr. Ryberg is preferable to Messrs. Quinn, Ravenel and Willis, and why we should all back his personal choice for superintendent of education over a better-qualified rival, he could take an hour to tell us why voters should choose him over Oscar Lovelace. Does he not owe that to the voters? Is he so arrogant in his electoral advantage that he doesn’t have to explain why he should get his party’s nod a second time, after a miserable performance over the last four years.

I say he does. What say you?

Personally, I expected better than this from Mark Sanford. He’s always set himself apart from political stereotypes. But what’s he acting like now? The standard arrogant incumbent who knows he’s on his way to victory, so to hell with respecting the opposition.

OK, so he’s arrogant. But I find myself wondering, as I look back over what I’ve written here, is he also scared? Scared of poor little country doctor Oscar, who’s never run for public office before in his life? As absurd as that may seem at first glance, think about it: As long as Joe Average never sees them together, he votes for Sanford. But more savvy Republicans seem to like Dr. Lovelace better. Is the governor actually afraid of the average voter out there having a chance to make a direct comparison and reach a similar conclusion?

Yeah, I’m baiting him. But he deserves to be baited.

Go ahead and blow off your opponent, Governor. And dis your party all you want. But you owe something better than that to the rest of us.

Steak-vs.-Sizzle column

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Choosing the steak over the sizzle

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

KAREN FLOYD is the sizzle; Bob Staton is the steak.
    Carve it any way you like, that’s what you end up with in the GOP race for superintendent of education.
    Mr. Staton proposes (yawn) to push ahead on the sweeping, fundamental reforms that he and other business leaders initiated. The ones the education establishment’s defenders fought so hard.Staton The ones that are working.
    They proposed to set some of the highest standards in the state (which South Carolina has done), to test every child to make sure the schools teach those standards (which South Carolina is doing), and to bring the schools where kids aren’t meeting those standards up to snuff (which South Carolina has hardly begun to do).
    Continue pulling the schools up to high standards? Sounds like a lot of hard work, doesn’t it?
    Mrs. Floyd says things people like to hear. She’s a lawyer, but seems born for sales. As was said in the Charleston Post and Courier, she “has polished her presentation to a bright shine.”
    She is very open-minded. One of her best, most sizzling lines goes like this: “Given the state of education in South Carolina, it would be irresponsible to prohibit any reasonable idea, any possible solution from consideration merely out of a fear of change.”
    Sure. But what’s “reasonable”? There’s the rub. Mrs. Floyd is really reluctant to draw that clear line. When she finally does, she draws it in the wrong place.
Floyd_debate_1    Look at last week’s ETV/The State debate. I asked Mrs. Floyd whether her endorsement by Gov. Mark Sanford — whose one big idea with regard to public schools is to pay people to pull their kids out of them — meant that she was “completely in sync” with his education agenda.
    “I am absolutely a free thinker,” she said, noting that “there’s a wide spectrum” of views among her supporters … .
    But would she have voted, given the chance, for the governor’s proposal to give tax credits to private school parents, a plan called “Put Parents in Charge”?
    “You know, I purposefully have never discussed the PPIC legislation.” She would pull together all the stakeholders, and “put together a ‘choice’ program that would fit the needs of the state of South Carolina….”
    “But you didn’t really answer the question,” host Andy Gobeil objected.
    She said PPIC was “a moving target constantly,” with 42 amendments. She hadn’t wanted to “anchor” herself to what “may not be the final position.”
    I tried again: “But in the end, there was an amended — much amended — piece of legislation, and lawmakers did have to vote on it. And they had to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ So on that one that was finally voted on — this year, let’s say; let’s be specific: Yes or no?”
    She stopped sizzling: “The piece of legislation that was voted on this year, the last piece of legislation, was one that I would have supported, yes.” She had not wanted to answer that.
    “I did not support PPIC,” Mr. Staton answered. He went on to say we have to focus on improvingStaton_debate_1 our public schools, and that the problem with South Carolina is that every time we undertake a reform we abandon it before we’ve fully implemented it, and… I cut him off. I had my answer.
    Why the big deal on this one thing? You might just as well ask Mrs. Floyd that, since she was the one dodging it, but I’ll provide the answer: This is the one substantive point on which Mrs. Floyd and Mr. Staton differ. They both know that. To the extent that this race turns on issues of any kind, that point is the pivot, the fulcrum.
    And the stakes for South Carolina are incalculable.
    This is why the governor — who fundamentally does not believe in public schools — endorsed Mrs. Floyd last year, long before he could have known who else would be competing for his party’s banner. It’s why out-of-state anti-public school interests have pumped loads of money into the campaigns of not only Mrs. Floyd, but of anyone who will run against any Republican lawmaker who has had the guts to stand up and vote “no” to their proposal.
    For them, it’s the end-all and be-all. It is for our schools, too. And it is for you, whatever your political affiliation.
    If you’re a Republican, a vote for Bob Staton is a vote for South Carolina’s right to determine its own future. To vote for Mrs. Floyd is to side with out-of-state extremists who have vowed to take out any Republican who dares disagree with them.
    If you’re a Democrat, and you actually care about improving public schools (as Democrats always say they do), you’d better vote in the Republican primary for Bob Staton, rather than wasting your vote deciding whether Tommy Moore or Frank Willis will lose to the governor in the fall. This is the one that counts.
Floyd    And if you are an independent, this is your chance to step in and say that the public schools belong to you, too — not just the ideologues of various stripes.
    Mrs. Floyd is an intelligent, delightful, charming woman who is open to all sorts of good ideas. But she’s also open to one horrendous idea that undermines all the rest. It takes all the gloss off her “bright shine.”
    Mr. Staton doesn’t glow. He sweats, doing the heavy lifting of making all of our schools better.
    It’s not a very shiny proposition, but it’s a meaty one.

Correction: It was just the opposite, partly

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Altman
I now have a firsthand report, and the previous one was exactly backwards on the second point. If you follow me.

Apparently, what Rep. Altman actually said about editors at The State was that we can’t get anything for free at any stores — even temporarily. More specifically, he is said to have said that the newspaper’s owners won’t let us get so much as a box of paper clips on credit, on account of how we’re such terrible business people.

With regard to myself, I must endorse the representative’s remarks on this score. I am not a businessman, terrible or otherwise, but if I were I’d probably be a lousy one. And while the paper clip thing may be a tad hyperbolic, he’s caught the gist of what it’s like working with Knight Ridder. I can get the paper clips, but then we have to go through all sorts of gyrations to get the expense processed.

There are many reasons why we’ll all be glad to be owned by McClatchy soon.

As for the other — well, my first source seems to have gotten it right. Of my having called him a "jerk," he seems to have observed that "that is the extent of his erudition."

So, bottom line: John Graham Altman is still a jerk, but that doesn’t mean he’s always wrong.

Don’t be coy, Mr. Sanford

17 Replies

Sanford_laugh
Governor should show up, debate Lovelace

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

MARK SANFORD has disappointed a lot of people who supported him four years ago. He shouldn’t disappoint us again on June 7.
    So far, the governor hasn’t told the folks at ETV whether he’ll show up to debate GOP challenger Oscar Lovelace that night (and no, I’m not a panelist on this one; I just want to see it happen). He said he’d make up his mind when the Legislature goes home.
    Well, lawmakers are going home today, so it’s time for an answer — past time, really. It needs to be an unequivocal “yes.”
    This coyness is most unbecoming in a guy whom many of us have respected because he supposedly doesn’t like playing political games. And a secure incumbent dodging a debate with a challenger in order to avoid risk is one of the gamiest of such games.
    Of course, that’s not the reason given. It never is, whether with cheesy politicians or with Mark Sanford. The reason given, by Sanford campaign manager Jason Miller, is that “Gov. Sanford takes his day job very seriously.” In other words, he’s just too busy to decide whether he’ll have time to spend a critical hour defending his performance a full six days after lawmakers are gone.
    Yes, I know he takes his vetoes very seriously, and it’s one of the things I admire about him.
    But he promised — as part of his unseemly effort to rush lawmakers (see the editorial at left) — to have his vetoes done by Monday. That leaves him time to prep for the debate, as long as he’s not too busy grandstanding about the Legislature’s failure to follow his schedule. (Lawmakers, you see, understand that they need to go home and justify themselves to the voters. The governor could learn from that attitude.)
    Note that I referred to his being a “secure incumbent.” One of the great ironies here is that a governor who has pleased so few remains secure; that’s a testament to the shameful reluctance of better candidates to challenge him.
    “Better” in terms of political viability — as in, “threatening.” If we’re talking character, intelligence or understanding of the issues facing South Carolina, Oscar Lovelace is a good man. Whether he is a better man by those standards is, ahem, debatable.
    Dr. Lovelace is certainly better at making his case than the governor is — so far. When he talks about being a product of the public schools who actually cares about the public schools, for instance, you find yourself wishing that this guy had a chance. At the very least, he deserves a chance to talk it over with the governor, in front of the rest of us.
    The challenger is one of the 578,841 South Carolinians who voted for the governor in 2002.
    Govbikerim042_1After Mr. Sanford was elected, the family practitioner from Newberry County was proud to be appointed to his task force to recommend health care policy. He was surprised that the governor only showed up for a brief press conference. He was shocked that there was no follow-up.
    Since then, Dr. Lovelace has learned that people who labor in other vineyards — law enforcement, education and the like — have been similarly let down. He has tried to address such matters with the incumbent in ways short of running against him.
    He tried “to get his attention” by riding alongside the governor in one of his celebrated bicycle treks. He tried bringing up substantive topics by running with him in a footrace (not an easy forum, in case you haven’t tried it).
    So now he’s trying this. Here’s hoping he, and TV viewers, can get the governor’s attention without the huffing and puffing.
    It’s not like the governor has all that much to lose, even if he were the sort to value re-election over doing the right thing.
    Shrewd political observer that I am, I believe Mark Sanford is going to be governor for the next four years. And yes, he has done us the honor of sitting down with my colleagues and me to discuss his re-election for a full two hours.
    Surely he can spare half that time for Dr. Lovelace, and for the 578,840 others to whom he owes his office. Many of them will vote for him anyway, but Mark Sanford should not be satisfied with that. He should stand up and give them a reason to do so.

Lovelace_debate

And I didn’t get him a thing. Or him, either

Leave a reply

Willis_brochure_1
More news you can use!

In case you didn’t get this slick brochure from state Treasurer candidate Jeff Willis, I want to pass on part of its contents, included along with the urgent admonishment to "Put Me On Your Refrigerator!"

Here it is, with misspellings and stylistic inconsistencies included:

Important Dates to Remember
2005
Nov 19 — Carolina/Clemson Game
Dec 05 — Sen. Strom Thurmond’s Birthday
Dec 20 — Cong. Henry Brown’s Birthday

2006
Jan 30 — Vice President Dick Cheney’s Birthday
Feb 14 — Cong. Gresham Barrett’s Birthday
Feb 29 — SC GOP Chairman Katon Dawson’s Birthday
Mar 20 — Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer’s Birthday
May 27 — Atty Gen. Henry McMaster’s Birthday
May 28 — Gov. Mark Sanford’s Birthday
Jun 13 — Primary Election Day
June 27 — Runoff Election Day
Jul 06 — President George Bush’s Birthday
Jul 09 — Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Birthday
Jul 24 — Gov. Carol (sic) Campbell’s Birthday
Jul 31 — Cong. Joe Wilson’s Birthday
Sep 02 — Sen. Jim DeMint Birthday
Oct 11 — Cong. Bob Inglis’ Birthday
Nov 7th — 2006 Election Day

I’ll let you guess which party’s nomination Mr. Willis is seeking (and no fair looking at the little elephant!).

… and here are MY initial thoughts

83 Replies

Supt_debate
While you’re making up your mind, here are my first, no-looking-at-notes impressions of the candidates from the debate tonight:

  • Karen Floyd was pretty much as "Mr. Hatfield" described her: She presented herself well — generally remembering to address the camera (which is either being real mindful of you folksFloyd_debate at home, or rude to those with whom she is conversing, but the ETV professionals say it’s the thing to do) — but very slick. As I’ve said before, she’s smart. She knows what she wants to say, and what she doesn’t want to say. What she wants to say is that she’s open to public schools, private schools, good proposals from anybody, Mom, the flag and apple pie. What she doesn’t want to say is anything that will locate her specifically and precisely on the issue of whether tax money should go to rebates to parents who send their kids to private schools. You’ll notice she did finally say "yes," which she says sent her aide into a tizzy. Anyway, overall I think anyone scoring this thing would say she did quite well.
  • Bob Staton did a good job, too. He also remembered to keep talking to the camera. But he did more than that. I think anyone watching without any other knowledge of the candidatesStaton_debate would have come away seeing him as the solid and trustworthy. The issue for him is whether that’s going to be enough. Mr. Staton was the one person in the studio with extensive experience with education reform. For the past eight years, he’s been helping lead the process begun by the Education Accountability Act of 1998. Trouble is, the governor has the bulliest pulpit in this state, and he has accomplished one thing in the education arena — he’s managed to fool a lot of people into thinking that anyone who won’t abandon accountability altogether by throwing public money at private schools is somehow a mossbacked defender of the status quo. Those who have been doing the heavy lifting of implementing accountability in spite of the education establishment’s resistance have apparently been too stunned to offer an effective rebuttal to that. I’m not sure Mr. Staton gained much ground in that regard tonight.
  • Mike Ryan was of course the only actual educator in the room. His bestRyan_debate moment was when he cut in to refute the oft-repeated canard that with the PACT, teachers are just "teaching to the test." I was glad to hear him say (for the second time; he had also shared the observation with our editorial board) what is obvious to anyone who understands what the EAA is about: The teachers are teaching to the high curriculum standards that the EAA demanded. The test — which the teachers don’t get to see ahead of time — is merely a device to find out whether the kids are learning to those standards.
  • Elizabeth Moffley is earnest and I believe sincerelyMoffley_debate concerned, but I don’t think she made any further progress in letting me — or anyone else — know exactly why she’s in the race. I blame myself for a weak answer on her part in one case, though. When I had spoken with her before, she had rather forcefully made the point that private schooling for kids with special needs can well cost upwards of $20,000, making the subsidy provided by PPIC pretty laughable, even for those lucky enough to live in a metropolitan area that would attract such schools. I launched into the question thinking to remind her of that, and then got lost trying to ask it without telling her what her answer had been (thereby negating the need for her to speak at all). Considering how screwed up the question was, she recovered quite well.Wood_debate
  • Kerry Wood continues to have much the same problem. I fail to see why he wanted to be so cautious on some of the answers. If I had as little chance as he does to get into the runoff, I’d feel free to opine agressively on every point, not worrying about what anybody else thought about my opinions.

Frankly, if candidates Ryan, Moffley and Wood had bowed out, we could have had a really pointed, detailed discussion of the critical accountability-vs.-tax credits issue between the chief spokespeople for those positions — not to mention, the two most likely candidates to get into the runoff.

No, I’m not saying people who don’t have a chance don’t have a "right" to run (so hold the huffy comments about that). I’m just saying that debates such as this would be a lot more informative if they didn’t. You can’t get very far with five candidates in an hour. You can nail down a few critical issues with two, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of both PACT and choice. (And yes, there are things to be said for and against both, things that I fear most voters haven’t had time to examine in sufficient detail to be choosing the person who will oversee a larger part of state government than the governor does.)

Thoughts on the superintendent debate?

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Feedback time.

Did you see the superintendent of education debate tonight? If you didn’t, that’s no excuse. Here’s the link to the streaming video.

If so, please sound off here. What did you think?

I’ll come back and share my thoughts, but I thought I’d give you a place to get started. I’m a little behind at the moment, as when I went to the debate, I had left our kitchen sink — faucet, pipes, etc. — in pieces on the kitchen floor. I had to finish that job before getting to this.

By the way, I got ‘er done. No leaks (so far).

Let’s hear it for Henry

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… McMaster that is, not my new boss who started work yesterday. In fact, we should all hope Henry Haitz turns out as well as The State‘s new publisher as Henry McMaster has as S.C. attorney general.

To go into a bit of awkward history, Mr. McMaster was not our first choice for that post four years ago. He was not our second, either. He wasn’t even… well, we’ll just stop there.

It was nothing against Henry in particular — I always liked the guy — but he had just spent the last few years being chairman of the S.C. Republican Party. And as long as there were other qualified candidates (in the Republican primary, the runoff and general election), we preferred not to go with anyone who had been on such consistent public display as a partisan’s partisan.

His opposite number, Dick Harpootlian, would have had the same trouble with us. We actually had endorsed Dick for attorney general — eight years earlier, when his opponent was Charlie Condon. But in 2002, after we’d become accustomed to Dick and Henry trying to outdo each other in silly partisan statements every day (and Charlie outdoing them both, and then some), we were looking for something a little different in the state’s top lawyer.

In Henry, we got it. Henry has been more than a breath of fresh air after the Condon years. He has gone out of his way to do the right thing, even when it was not at all helpful to him or his party (although often it was; I’ll never give up on the idea that good policy, and upholding the law, make for good politics).

If only he had primary opposition this year, we could give him a rousing endorsement.

Anyway, his opinion Monday that the House GOP caucus is a public body that must meet in the open is not calculated to endear him to his fellow partymen. Sure, it applies to the Democrats, too. But so what? The Democrats can’t decide matters of law while hiding in their clubhouse. The Republicans, being the majority, can. (And one can only smile at Jim Merrill’s assertion that they don’t take binding votes in caucus. If they do the difficult hashing-out in private, under circumstances designed to shape measures that are more likely to help a party than the state of South Carolina, what possible difference does it make to us that they make the formal vote in public? It’s not that they’re being civic-minded; that’s just a technicality they must go through in order to pass the bill.)

Sure, lawmakers can change the rules so that they CAN meet in private. They’re the Legislature; they make the rules.

But making it legal won’t make it right.

How did it go?

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Treasurer1
OK, for those of y’all who saw it — how did the debate with the GOP treasurer candidates go? Dave and Lee have already started off with their impressions on this post, but I thought I’d make the invitation more explicit — and share some of my own thoughts — with this one.

Here are my initial impressions from the inside:

  • Thomas Ravenel seemed to haveRavenel dusted off some leftover speeches from his Senate race. Most of what he said was fairly generic, one cliche after another from the libertarian wing (which now calls itself "conservative") of the Republican Party — time to stop the gravy train, they do nothing but spend, smaller government, etc. And excuse me, but how is he not a politician? Just because he hasn’t been actually elected to anything yet? He’s coming in for his interview Wednesday, but this initial impression of him as a treasurer candidate wasn’t great.Quinn
  • Rick Quinn seemed to be there to fight with Thomas. Or rather, Thomas seemed to be there to fight with Rick. Whatever. There’s some kind of feud going on between the Quinns and the Ravenel-Andre Bauer cabal. I think. It’s confusing. Beyond that, Rick was the second most relevant and businesslike guy there. His experience in the Legislature, working with the nitty-gritty of how tax and spending policies are made, showed in his performance.
  • Jeff Willis was the only guy who thought this job should continue to beWillis elected rather than appointed, and for me that’s a problem. But at least he wants the comptroller general to be appointed (the opposite of Rick’s position). He also likes the Budget and Control Board; his only beef is that they don’t get along well enough. So interference by the legislative branch in executive decisions would be OK as long as there was total collusion? I like his repeatedly bringing up Home Rule — somebody needs to — but I’m not sure what it has to do with the treasurer’s office.
  • Greg Ryberg was the winner of this one in my book — and not just because, as one of the ETVRyberg guys remarked afterward, he remembered that most of the people watching this were at home, and he actually addressed them. He gave the strong impression — accurate, as far as I’ve been able to tell — that he’s given more thought to the responsibilities of the office, and his own qualifications for that office, than any of the others. He came across as the grownup in the room.

Oh, I should add — when I ran into Mr. Ryberg in the makeup room, he told me he said billions, not millions, last week in terms of the money S.C. lost in getting into the stock market too late. That was a reference to the end of my column this morning. Fair enough.

And did anyone else go, "Say What?" when Mr. Ravenel said he supported "PPR… Put Parents In Charge?"Treasurer2

Watch me on ETV tonight; I’ll wave

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Well, it’s time for me to head to the office and do some cramming, because in a couple of hours I’m supposed to be on live TV.

Endorse_023I’ll be on S.C. ETV at 7 p.m. with host Andrew Gobeil and the Republican candidates for state treasurer. That would be — hang on and I’ll get links — Jeff Willis, Rick Quinn, Greg Ryberg and Thomas Ravenel. (And why do I have pictures here of the first three, and not Mt. Ravenel. That’s easy — the first three have been in for their interviews; Mr. Ravenel has not. But here’s a bonus link to his Myspace site; he was listed as one of Andre Bauer’s friends at his site.

We elect the state treasurer in South Carolina, you ask? Yes, we do. I don’t think we should, but we do. We also elect the state comptroller. I could see one or the other of these financial types being elected, as a check on the rest of the executive — but both? I don’t think so. I’m not convinced weEndorse_029 need to elect either.

Yet every four years, if there’s a contested race, I’ve got to act like I understand all that stuff about investing state money, and the state employee retirement system, and our credit rating, etc. You know what’s worse? You have to figure out how to vote on this race, and you’re not even paid to do it. Ya poor saps.

It’s hard enough just remembering the difference between what the treasurer and comptroller general do. One of them looks after the state’s money, and the latter spends it — writes the checks and stuff. I think. Hey, why do you think I need to go to the office and bone up first?

Endorses_149Of course, I could just act all knowledgeable and ask the candidates what the job is about — like I’m testing them. Maybe I’ll do that.

Anyway, if you’ll  watch, I’ll try to remember to wave at the camera.

Candidate sighted in natural habitat

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"Hey, Mr. Warthen!"

I was out walking in my neighborhood last evening when I heard the call. I turned around and Artie White had stopped and had his window down. He had been driving the SUV that had just passed me.

He was out delivering campaign yard signs. He had a big one on the back seat of the Yukon (I think it was a Yukon; anyway, it was something about that size). He was on the way to place it in the yard of one of my neighbors. He wasn’t sure how to get there, so I gave him directions.

He told me he had raised a little money and was going to have a couple of radio spots, one at regular times on the "Andy Thomas Show."

My wife came up and we talked a while, directing traffic around us. She taught his siblings in Sunday school, or when she was youth director at our church, or both. We talked about his sister’s upcoming wedding.

As he drove off, he said he would send me a picture for the blog, since he saw I didn’t have one. I’ll post it when I get it.

Oh, and Artie, let me know if I got anything wrong above. I wasn’t taking notes.

Fragments from interview marathon

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Highlights and sidelights
from a week of interviews

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
SOME NUGGETS from interviews this past week with candidates in the June 13 primaries:00hart_3

Monday, 8:30 a.m. Surprise: Rep. Joe E. Brown, the retired school administrator who has represented S.C. House District 73 for 20 years, seems to have viable Democratic opposition. Energetic young lawyer Chris Hart calls the incumbent “a true Southern gentleman” who has “become complacent. He’s become ineffective.” Some think that’s why former Speaker David Wilkins found him the one Democrat nonthreatening enough to be a committee chair. Mr. Hart says “every legislator should have to articulate a vision.” Mr. Brown is a quiet man. We’ll see what he has to say in his interview May 22.

00bingham2:30 p.m. Rep. Kenny Bingham, who speaks proudly and often of his service on the Lexington 2 school board, spent a good bit of his interview explaining why he was among the minority who spoke up and voted for the latest attempt to provide subsidies for private schools. He said he didn’t think it would have impact; public schools shouldn’t fear the competition because “they got all the dang money in the world, more than any private school.” He thinks the whole issue is a waste of time, but “when you continue to say ‘no, I’m not going to do it,’” you find you don’t have a “place at the table.”

00mizzell_15:30 p.m. Tony Mizzell, Richland County Council Democrat, belabored a horticultural metaphor in explaining why he wants another term. He’s “planted a lot of seeds” and watered and weeded and so forth, “and things are just starting to grow.” He worked the analogy every which way save one: fertilizer. I wondered at that. Other politicians like to lay on lots of fertilizer.

Tuesday, 1:30 p.m. “This will be a positive 00statoncampaign,” said Columbia businessman Bob Staton, seeking the GOP nomination for S.C. schools superintendent. “I think we’ve beat up public education so much in election cycles” that the electorate is sold on the idea that it’s just bad, and not going to get any better. “If you believe you can do something, you’re going to come a lot closer” to getting it done. “You don’t build up by tearing down.”

2:30 p.m. Oscar Lovelace, quixotic challenger for the GOP nod for governor, is00lovelace more eloquent than the incumbent and knows it: “I just believe strongly that the governor is missing some critical leadership skills” — communication, cooperation and common sense. “Our governor has never been CEO of anything before we made him CEO of South Carolina,” said the family doctor who has built a practice with 38 employees and 15,000 patients. “Our governor has never attended a public school in South Carolina…. I can speak from the bully pulpit. Mark Sanford can’t, because he hasn’t had the real-world experiences.”

00jackson4:30 p.m. Norman Jackson, challenging Mr. Mizzell, was a longtime member of the Richland County planning commission, and has a structural criticism: “I would not want to see more than two members from any one special interest on a commission,” he says. With “two developers, two real estate developers and a lawyer who deals with real estate,” he counts five. “They do a good enough job,” he admits. “I’m just saying….”

00willisWednesday, 10 a.m. “I love the detail,” said Jeff Willis, who describes himself as the only one of four Republicans seeking to be state treasurer with financial experience. “We need a more active, engaged treasurer,” he says, but he thinks the treasurer should continue to be an elective post, and he would keep the unconstitutional Budget and Control Board as is. “If I can do one-tenth what Grady Patterson has done, it would be an honor and a privilege.”
00quinn
12:30 p.m. Rick Quinn, the former House majority leader seeking the same nomination, disagrees. He would ditch the Budget and Control Board and implement a “paradigm change” in the treasurer’s role. “We’ve had Grady so long that people don’t expect the treasurer to weigh in” on critical fiscal issues, such as tax reform. He would.

2 p.m. Two hours with Gov. Mark Sanford covered more than I 00sanfordcan summarize here. The most interesting thing was his emerging advocacy of state funding for education (see editorial above). That came at the very end of the interview, and an aide dragged him away before he could get much into it. More on that later.

5 p.m. Mike Ryan is the only Republican who works in public00ryan education seeking to be education superintendent. After 20 years in the Army (82nd Airborne), he retired as a major. He’s the assistant principal of Wando High School and, unlike many in public education and some in this race, believes in the Education Accountability Act. His is a “no-excuse mentality. Here’s the mission, and how do we get it done?” He corrects those who say we’re just “teaching to the test” with PACT. “We’re teaching to standards, which are on the test.” And in part thanks to those standards, “I honestly believe we’re ready to turn the corner.”

00bushThursday, 11:30 a.m. Retiree Keith Bush wants to be the Republican to take on Billy Derrick, Lexington County Council’s sole Democrat. Mr. Bush says he’s “a great supporter of user fees,” and he isn’t kidding. No checking out books for free at the public library if he had his way. And that’s just the start. “How are colleges funded? Tuition. How are private schools funded? Tuition. How are public schools funded? Taxes.” That makes no sense to him.

00carrigg12:30 p.m. Some interviews range beyond local issues. “For years I’ve driven a Suburban,” said Lexington County Councilman John Carrigg. “The other day I went out and bought a little Saturn Vue.” He gets about twice the 14 miles per gallon that was the best he could do before. “We citizens have a responsibility to stop driving those trucks around.”

Galivants Ferry III: Biden column

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06stump_043Biden hopes even ‘red states’ want ‘competent government’

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE AMERICAN people “have written off” the Bush administration, U.S. Sen. Joe Biden told a parking lot full of Democrats Monday at Galivants Ferry.
    “Part of me says ‘good; they figured it out,’” he said. But “In a sense it’s a shame, because we’ve got George W. Bush as our president for the next two and a half years.”
    One woman called out, “No, we don’t!”
    There we have the two-party system, and all it’s done to America, in three words. I don’t know who it was, but I know the voice of a poster child when I hear it.
    It’s obvious, probably even to partisans, that if the guy who’s going to be commander in chief for the next two and a half years is falling apart, it’s probably not a cause for celebration, seeing as how that could be somewhat detrimental to our troops who are laying it on the line overseas. So diehard partisans figure it’s best to deny the situation: No he’s NOT!
    That way there’s no problem.
    But there is a problem, and as Sen. Biden said, “It goes beyond right and wrong…. This administration is not competent.” You can’t just say he’s-wrong-and-we’re-right-so-let’s-applaud-his-failure. The cost of a failed presidency at this moment in our history is too great for us all.
    Some of his speech I had heard — and agreed with — before, such as “History will judge George Bush harshly not for the mistakes he has made… but because of the opportunities that he has squandered.”
    Those include the opportunity to pull the world together on Sept. 12, 2001, to “plan the demise of Islamic fundamentalism,” as FDR or JFK or “even Ronald Reagan” would have done. Or to ask us all to sacrifice and shake off “the grip of foreign oil oligarchs,” instead of giving us tax cuts. “Do you believe anyone in America would have refused?”
    “Rich folks are every bit as patriotic as poor folks,” he said. “They got a tax cut they didn’t ask for.”
    But a lot of what he said was new — he showed me his scribbled notes. And some of what was new, and most welcome, to me was decidedly not the usual fare for a partisan event.
    “Did you think you’d ever live to see the day when we would be defined in terms of red and blue” states? We’re “not that way,” he insisted. He blamed Karl Rove for that false construct, but he also — in a gentler way — bemoaned the fact that “the Democratic Party is different from what I remember.”
    There are Democrats who want to “make our base more angry so that more will turn out.”
    “They may be right; that may be the way to win,” he admitted. But he’s not going that way.
    “The country can be reunited.”
    Later in the week, he confirmed by phone from Florida that he’s decided to pursue “a general-election strategy from the start.”
    “I’m gonna be coming down a lot” to South Carolina, he said. He’s not predicting he could win here, but he’s convinced that to win the White House, a Democrat must “become credible in a dozen or more red states.” By “credible,” he means “45 percent of the vote or more.” He sees opportunities in Mississippi, Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio, Kentucky, Montana and others he rattled off too quickly.
    There’s room for a candidate who believes in America in the 21st century and values doing the job right more than scoring partisan points, he suggested. Across the ideological spectrum, “Americans realize they want and are entitled to competent government.”
    That the Biden message appeals to frustrated independents there can be no doubt. “He talked about sacrifice,” said Paul DeMarco, a Marion physician and thoughtful regular contributor to my blog, at the Monday night event. “I like it when politicians talk that way.” I wondered how many politicians he had heard talk that way since January 1961, but I kept quiet because he was on a roll. “I’m one of the people who got the tax cut,” he said. “And I didn’t really want it.”
    It was a good October 2008 speech. Will Sen. Biden’s fellow Democrats let him get that far? I don’t know. But he got a warm welcome by the banks of the Pee Dee last week. It took him an hour after his speech to tear away from all the well-wishers.
    Of course, these were South Carolina Democrats, and he was the guest of honor, and it was the sweetest weather I’ve yet seen at a Stump, and some of the Styrofoam cups in the hands of Inner Party members contained something that smelled a lot stronger than RC Cola, and I couldn’t head back to Columbia until I’d stood for a moment with hostess Russell Holliday doing nothing more active than frankly admiring the way the razor-cut sliver of moon rose over the piney bottomland in a sky so deep-ocean blue…
    I’ve also been in Iowa in January. It’s different. We’ll see.06stump_040

Youth and inexperience aren’t the worst things in the world

1 Reply

Young Artie White is looking better all the time.

I just got this winpop (sort of an internal instant message) from a colleague:

Kenny Bingham is up arguing IN FAVOR of the revised Edge amendment (revised, I think, to match the bill he introduced earlier this year).

… which is to say, he was arguing in favor of the merely horrendously awful version of Put Parents in Charge, rather than the worse-than-you-could-have-imagined version that Tracy Edge briefly had up.

I asked Cindi — that is, my colleague — whether she was sure. You know that I stop at nothing to ensure the accuracy of anything I put on this blog. Her answer:

yes, he was; I heard only the end of it. he’s done now and we’re on to shirley hinson, who is giving the most BIZARRE speech in defense of the amendment. i think the supporters must be filibustering.

If you hurry, you can go watch it yourself. It’s not every day that you get to see representatives, in real time, deliberately going out of their way to undermine public education. I mean, at least not this obviously.

Governor makes right call

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All hail Governor Sanford for doing the right thing for the right reasons, even though it’s likely to cost him in GOP-vote-rich Lexington County (my home, I always add). His veto message on the subject isn’t posted yet, but when it is, I’ll change this to link to it.

This was a bit of a nail-biter, as the governor could have interpreted "the right thing" two ways. Given his extreme libertarianism (you can tell an extreme libertarian by the fact that they even believe the market works with regard to health care), he doesn’t really believe in the state Certificate of Need process. But as long as it’s the law, he will not allow narrow interests to overturn it.

Now, to the override attempt. I was talking with Rep. James Smith this morning, and he says he expects a vote tomorrow. He’d rather have it today, but he said Speaker Bobby Harrell wants to give it a day.

"There should be no reason that this should not be sustained," he said. After all, the wrong side never had a 2/3 vote in their favor.

But he’s worried because some lawmakers who voted the right way the first time are — scuttlebutt has it — trying to hold up the state Hospital Association (which opposed Lexington Medical’s attempt to subvert the process through legislative fiat) for a little something in return for continuing to vote their "principles."

There will be a lot of phone-calling and button-holing today.