Category Archives: South Carolina

Another primary opponent for Graham: Bill Connor

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Bill Connor is still playing it rather coy with his Facebook peeps:

Friends, I have a major announcement to make on Monday, but this weekend I plan to focus on military obligations (spending time with my Citadel teaching team) and spending the other time with my family. I appreciate that many calls and texts, and e-mails and will be in touch with everyone next week. In the meantime, I will make a special request for your prayers for my family. “The Lord is my Shepherd” and I follow Him.

But The State reports that he’s actually already filed:

Orangeburg attorney Bill Connor, who lost the 2010 Republican runoff for lieutenant governor to Ken Ard, has filed to run against U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in next June’s Republican primary, according to federal election documents.

Connor becomes the fourth Republican to oppose Graham in the primary, joining state Sen. Lee Bright of Spartanburg, Easley businessman Richard Cash and Charleston public-relations executive Nancy Mace…

When I saw him a couple of weeks back, Lindsey Graham indicated that as far as he was concerned, he loved having three opponents.

But four could be one too many. Also, i think he has a little more reason to worry about Bill Connor than about the others who have previously jumped into the ring.

Bill Connor

Bill Connor

He’s a somewhat more traditional conservative than his opponents — more the values-voter, God-and-Country type than the SC-should-print-its-own-money-again sort. Or at least, in the statements I’ve seen so far. He’s paid some dues in the party, currently serving as the 6th-District chairman. He’s got a solid military record, having served in a combat role in Afghanistan. He’s run a statewide primary race before (losing the lieutenant governor nomination to Ken Ard). And he’s just gone out and had new portraits taken of his family. (I still remember how deeply impressed John Courson was when Mark Sanford sent out family portraits as Christmas cards before running for governor: “Fine-looking family — Kennedyesque… Kennedyesque!” You have to imagine it in Courson’s distinctive voice and accent.)

Lt. Col. Connor could be a more likely vote-getter. That doesn’t mean the incumbent’s in trouble. But it does make things a little more interesting.

Cindi’s thoughtful piece on SC chief justice contest

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Someone was praising Cindi Scoppe’s column today on the contested election for chief justice of the SC Supreme Court, and I agreed: “Yes — Cindi’s probably the only journalist in SC who knows enough even to have the idea of writing it.”

You may be disappointed after that buildup to find that there’s no hard-hitting, simple editorial point in the piece, and she certainly doesn’t take sides between incumbent Jean Toal and challenger Costa Pleicones. The overall point is to lament the system we have for picking justices, and the lack of transparency in it after that one, brief, qualification hearing — which everyone knew that both of these exceptional jurists would pass with flying colors.

What she does is provide perspective on the court and its place in our, um, unusual system in South Carolina.The piece should be required reading for legislators, who will be the voters in this particular election.

The piece does a number of things. First, she explains that this is yet another chapter in Jean Toal’s precedent-breaking career, and I don’t (and she doesn’t) mean that in the facile sense of trailblazer for women, yadda-yadda:

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Jean Toal

But things never have been normal where Jean Toal is involved, and by that I’m not referring to the fact that she was South Carolina’s first female justice and chief justice.

In 1988, she became the first non-judge elected to the high court in more than three decades. That happened after ethics questions derailed the candidacy of Circuit Judge Rodney Peeples, who entered the race with more than enough votes sewed up to win.

Eight years later, Mrs. Toal became the first sitting justice since 1893 to be opposed for re-election, when Circuit Judge Tom Ervin challenged her amidst anti-tax groups’ absurd efforts to paint her as a liberal; her support was so overwhelming that he dropped out of the race less than two hours after legislators were allowed to start making commitments.

Now she’s the first chief justice since at least the 1800s to be opposed for re-election…

Clearly, the Legislature will break precedent if it elects Mr. Pleicones. But even if it re-elects Mrs. Toal, the status quo already has been interrupted, making it much easier for lawmakers to break with tradition and skip over Mr. Pleicones and, who knows, perhaps skip over Mr. Beatty, possibly even select a chief justice who isn’t on the court….

In future SC history books, there will likely be quite a few footnotes devoted to Jean Toal.

As I said, while this piece may be interesting to other readers, it should particularly be read by lawmakers. Cindi takes it on herself a lot to put things into perspective for legislators. Someone needs to.

One key thing she explains — and these days we have more and more lawmakers who need this explained — is that there are important issues at stake here, but they have nothing to do with notions of left and right, Democrat and Republican, the way those things are force-fed to us today out of the Beltway:

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Costa Pleicones

Some Republicans in the Legislature — and lots outside, particularly of what we now call the tea-party variety — have been grumbling for years about having a court full of former Democratic legislators.

I suppose it’s understandable that people would be confused about the role that partisan politics plays on the S.C. Supreme Court — none — given the diet of hyperpartisan Washington politics on which a frightening number of South Carolinians feed, forming not only their world views but their state views.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court is in fact composed of two well-defined ideologies, you’d be hard-pressed reading state Supreme Court decisions to guess the partisan or ideological inclinations of the justices. So I was a little disappointed when Justice Toal, asked about complaints that she’s too “political,” dismissed them by noting how well she has gotten along with the Legislature and governors, even as their politics have changed.

The political temptation Supreme Court justices face has nothing to do with party or ideology. It is the temptation to kowtow to the Legislature, whatever the Legislature’s partisan leanings or political philosophy. It’s to look the other way when the Legislature tramples on our state constitution. It’s to pretend that the laws say what the Legislature meant them to say rather than what they actually say.

That temptation must be greatest for the chief justice, whose dual role as chief executive officer of the entire judicial branch of government brings with it the heavy burden of convincing the Legislature to fund the courts adequately, and keeping lawmakers from exacting retribution, financial or otherwise, when court decisions go a way they don’t like…

It is for this reason that Cindi laments that “Justice Toal, asked about complaints that she’s too ‘political,’ dismissed them by noting how well she has gotten along with the Legislature and governors, even as their politics have changed.”

And of course, in SC, things get very personal, as Cindi suggests in suggesting an apparent reason why Associate Justice Pleicones is making this extraordinary challenge to his old friend:

… one of the themes of criticism that Justice Toal received in anonymous surveys from lawyers stemmed from what Justice Pleicones has called her broken promise to retire when her term ends next year, which would give him an extra year and a half as chief justice….

In the end, the main concern expressed is that from here on, we won’t know what these candidates are saying to individual electors: “For the mind reels at where even the most honest and well-intentioned justices might be tempted to go when they meet behind closed doors with legislators who have votes to provide them — and requests to make of them.”

Cindi doesn’t mean to besmirch either candidate. She notes in particular how Jean Toal’s tenure has been characterized by a “steady move toward judicial independence, toward calling out the Legislature when it needs to be called out.”

But moments such as this create enormous potential for undermining that kind of essential independence. And that is indeed disturbing.

Hmm… Does Graham WANT Christie to campaign for him?

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Graham, consoling the family after Lee Bandy's funeral.

Graham, consoling the family after Lee Bandy’s funeral.

This morning, the national buzz is all about Chris Christie having positioned himself so well for the presidency in 2016. The talk is so far along that I couldn’t resist joking:

rigmarole

But the very qualities that make Christie attractive as a general-election candidate (Republicans are fairly swooning over his getting 51 percent of the Latino vote) get him in trouble with the national GOP base. Most of it is silly, symbolic stuff, such as his making nice with President Obama (you know, the guy who was rushing billions in aid toward his state) after the hurricane. But you know how the base (in each of the parties) can be about the silly, symbolic stuff.

In fact, the reservations harbored by many of the people who, had they been in Virginia, would have voted for Ken Cuccinelli are such that I find myself wondering about this:

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) re-election bid will evidently get a lift from one of the most popular governors in the country and a top 2016 contender….

According to the Times, Christie informed Republicans in South Carolina he intends to go to bat for Graham, who is facing a GOP primary next year.

A poll released last week showed Graham’s approval rating taking a big hit in South Carolina, including a steep drop among GOP voters. …

Yeahhh… that’s the thing. The GOP voters who are mad at Graham are likely to be the ones least charmed by Christie.

So, I ask — is Christie coming here a plus or a minus for Graham? Thoughts?

Have YOU been harmed by the DOR hacking?

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Or do you know anyone who has?

I raised this question, sort of indirectly, earlier — I was questioning the value of Vincent Sheheen trying to get everybody outraged over the hacking, which broke a year ago, when we don’t know whether anyone has been harmed. I was reacting to this passage in an AP story:

It’s unknown if anyone’s identity has been stolen because of the hacking. A Federal Trade Commission attorney has said the selling and trading of stolen information makes it virtually impossible to trace an identity theft case to any particular security breach.

But since that was Friday afternoon, and things I post on Friday afternoons tend to drift off into a vague place, only a few comments were offered, none of them answering the question above.

So, let me know, straight up — do you know of anyone who has good reason to believe he or she was in any way harmed by the breach?

I know someone who has had a terrible time from having her identity stolen, although it happened well before any of this, so I don’t think it’s related.

Someone filed false tax returns for 2011 using my next-to-youngest daughter’s Social Security number and other info. It was a huge hassle getting it all straightened out.

Then, just over a week ago, she got this seriously threatening letter from the IRS saying that she had ignored their previous notices (she had received no previous notices) and that if she didn’t pay more than $7,000 RIGHT NOW her property was going to be seized.

There was no way she had at any time owed the IRS $7,000.

Supposedly, that is now straightened out, also. A guy at the IRS named “Mike” — no surname that I know of — said just to tear up that letter; it was all a mistake. OK, so we’re, um, somewhat reassured. (I assume that if there are any more threats from the IRS, we’re just supposed to say, “Fuggedaboudit. Mike says it’s cool….” We’re counting on Mike being the guy behind the guy.)

I don’t know whether that particular incident is related to the earlier theft or not. I think it is. I’m somewhat confused by the fact that my daughter was out of the country last month, and her purse was stolen — with passport, driver’s license, everything. She had to get a provisional passport from the embassy to get back into the country.

Oh, yes; one other thing — last week I got a notice from Adobe saying that when I bought PhotoShop Express from them several months back, my information was stolen. They want me to sign up for monitoring on their dime, I believe. I guess I’d better get on that; I’ve been busy the last few days and had managed to shove that to the back of my mind…

Unfortunately for Vincent Sheheen, I don’t blame any of these incidents on Nikki Haley.

My point is, people’s identities do get stolen, and it does lead to hassles. So has anyone had any such hassles that they know or merely suspect were related to the Department of Revenue hacking?

And if not, isn’t that sort of odd?

The big weakness in Sheheen’s hacking-outrage strategy

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To mark the anniversary of the hacking scandal (remember that? turns out that most South Carolinians had their identities stolen due to the fecklessness of the state Department of Revenue), Vincent Sheheen put out a press release giving incumbent Gov. Nikki Haley hell about it:

The hacking was a horrible and preventable disgrace. First, under Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s Department of Revenue failed to enroll in the most basic protection services available that act as a first step in protection for other agencies and states around the nation. Second, a key cyber security director position at her Dept of Revenue was left vacant for a year while Governor Haley rewarded her campaign staff with other jobs they had little experience for in the administration. Third, the person in the cybersecurity position had quit prior to the hacking due to frustration that his repeated warnings about the vulnerability of the Dept of Revenue went unheeded by Nikki Haley and her closest advisers.
The hacking was a tragedy, and it was preventable. With different leadership and real accountability, we will do better. South Carolina could have been better prepared to withstand the hacking attempts, like other states, and not become a target because of the major holes in our cyber security that were ignored by the Haley administration despite multiple warnings.
By covering-up the hacking for 16 days, Nikki Haley failed the test of leadership. After learning that millions of people in our state had been exposed to great risk under her watch, Nikki Haley’s first instinct was to cover it up. She waited more than two weeks, hired a lawyer, lined up her public relations firm, and covered her tail before deciding it was the right time to let the people she was elected to serve know they were at risk. Then, when she did finally break the news, the story was ever-changing as she flip-flopped back and forth trying to paint a rosier picture. First she said nothing could have been done to prevent it. That wasn’t true. Then she said that no businesses were affected. That wasn’t true. Then she said no children were affected, that wasn’t true. …

And so forth. The State called Sheheen’s letter on the subject “scathing.” Chris Haire of the Charleston City Paper called it “devastating.” (Of course, he also said there’s no way Sheheen is beating Haley next year, which would mean the gov is likely to be less than devastated.)

But there’s just one problem with this strategy for tapping voter ire on this subject — I’m seeing a distinct lack of voter ire.

Maybe y’all have seen something else; I don’t know. If so, report in. Let me know about it.

But my impression is that most of us have been waiting around for a year to see whether this thing is going to have any impact on our lives.

We’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or maybe even for the first shoe to drop, depending on how you read the metaphor.

The end of Seanna Adcox’s story for The Associated Press sort of explains why we’re not all seizing pitchforks and torches and marching toward the governor’s mansion:

Sheheen touted his work in helping create an Identity Theft Reimbursement Fund in the state budget. The largely symbolic program calls for the state to reimburse expenses that an identity theft victim incurs because of a state breach. Someone seeking money would have to apply to the state treasurer’s office.

As of Tuesday, no one had, according to Treasurer Curtis Loftis’ office.

It’s unknown if anyone’s identity has been stolen because of the hacking. A Federal Trade Commission attorney has said the selling and trading of stolen information makes it virtually impossible to trace an identity theft case to any particular security breach.

Yeahhhhh. OK. Well….

If a bunch of us start feeling the effects of this ID theft, and think we have reason to blame it on negligence by the Haley administration, then maybe the Democrat will have some resentment to tap into. But so far, not so much.

So what’s Sheheen’s plan B?

Graham: Mace partnership with Folks ‘might come up’

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Lindsey Graham pays respects to Mary Bandy and other members of the family on Saturday.

Lindsey Graham pays respects to Mary Bandy and other members of the family on Saturday.

I’m writing this as a tribute to Lee Bandy, because if he’d been there and heard this, funeral or not, he’d have jumped on it.

As Aaron Sheinin related in an earlier post, Lee would wait until people like me got done with the wonkish, nerdy political stuff, and ask questions about the horse race — such as the one that irritated John McCain so much…

Anyway, I mentioned standing in line with Lindsey Graham for a considerable time at the reception after Lee’s funeral, and we talked about a number of things, including the horse race stuff that was always Bandy’s meat.

I mentioned his three primary opponents, and he expressed his great satisfaction that he has three opponents. That number, he said, seems just about right for his purposes.

He seemed to marvel particularly at the great gift of having Lee Bright running against him. He said he doesn’t have to do much more than mention how it just might put a crimp in business in South Carolina if we were to abandon the U.S. dollar.

I mentioned something about Nancy Mace’s longtime partnership (just ended) with Will Folks in FITSnews, and the senator said yeah, that association might come up in the campaign.

“You mean, you might bring it up?” I asked.

Not exactly, he said. Just… it might come up.

Yeah, I guess it might…

Actually, I’m not entirely sure that would be a bad thing for Nancy with the voters she (and Bright, and Richard Cash) is going after. There are probably a lot of Will’s loyal readers in that demographic. Others, however, may be put off by the fact that news stories about the site tend to say something like this in the lede: “a website whose editor, Will Folks, said GOP Gov. Nikki Haley had an affair with him, a claim Haley denied.” Because a lot of those same voters they want love the governor, and consider that whole thing to be some kind of liberal media conspiracy to hurt their Nikki.

So, for Nancy Mace, her association with Will could be a wash…

Steve Morrison, a man of great intellect, passion for justice

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Steve Morrison during his campaign for mayor, 2010.

Steve Morrison during his campaign for mayor, 2010.

The news being reported by The State today is a terrible shock:

A prominent Columbia attorney who fought for equity in the state’s public education system and left his mark on the community through extensive service to organizations championing the arts, education and South Carolina’s disadvantaged, has died.

Stephen “Steve” Morrison, 64, a partner with Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough in Columbia, became ill and passed away unexpectedly sometime between Saturday night and early Sunday morning, said Jim Lehman, the firm’s managing partner.

Morrison was in New York attending a board meeting when he passed away….

This is a great loss for this community, and for South Carolina.

Steve may be best remembered for leading the legal team that fought in court for two decades to try to get the state to bring poor, rural schools up to par, so that the quality of education a child received wouldn’t be so dependent on the accident of where he or she happened to be born.

I never saw him in court during that lengthy case, but I heard him give presentations on the critical issues involved in speeches to community groups. He was always deeply impressive — not only for the intellectual force of his arguments, but for the passion and commitment that he exuded.

He exhibited these qualities in everything he did. And he did a lot.

By the way, here’s a footnote I wrote in 2010 about my own relationship with Steve:

Finally, a disclaimer — aside from the fact that Steve Morrison and I served together on the Urban League board, he has quite recently served as my attorney. Not a big deal, but I thought you should know. Aside from that, having known him for years, I’ve heard him give quite a few quietly compelling speeches, and asked him why he didn’t run for office. He always shrugged it off — until now.

I wrote that in the context of covering his candidacy for mayor. But back to Steve…

The bottom line is, the cause of justice for all in South Carolina has been set back.

Democrats’ poll says it’s 44-40, with slight edge for Haley

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Emphasis on the “slight,” according to the Democrats. Just about the same as the 3.53 percent margin of error:

COLUMBIA — S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley holds slight edge on Democratic challenger Vincent Sheheen in their 2014 gubernatorial rematch, according to a poll done for the Democratic Governors Association.

Haley, a Lexington Republican, leads 44 percent to 40 percent, according to the poll from Clarity Campaign Labs.

Sheheen, a Camden lawyer, is within the margin of error of plus or minus 3.53 percent of tying the race. He lost by 4.5 percentage points to Haley in 2010….

They’re pretty excited about it. I ran into James Smith this morning, who said this is where the 2010 contest was just before the general election, which as you recall, Gov. Haley won with only 51 percent of the vote, and that in the big year for the Tea Party, her natural base.

The thinking, among Democrats, is apparently that if Vincent Sheheen had had just a little more time to keep gaining in 2010, he could have won. And this time, he’s got the time.

Sheheen campaign manager Andrew Whalen lost no time touting the poll in a fundraising email:

This is big! Earlier today, a poll released fantastic news for our campaign. This race is essentially tied.

Now we have proof of what we knew all along: we are poised to win this race!

Vincent is neck-in-neck with Haley, and Nikki Haley’s approval numbers are deep into the incumbent Danger Zone at only 40% statewide…

I think he meant “neck and neck,” but you get the point.

Rep. Smith said he felt like this was as good as it’s going to get for Haley.

Well, we’ll see. She’s quite a campaigner, and in SC, any member of her party has a sort of home-field advantage. But if this poll is at all reliable, it looks like it will be competitive.

We’ve lost Lee Bandy, the dean of SC political journalists

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The word went out Thursday afternoon that our old and dear friend Lee Bandy was on life support in intensive care at Palmetto Health Baptist. His family was gathering.

Within an hour or two, his other family — the one that had had the privilege of working with him during his long career as South Carolina’s pre-eminent political writer — had started gathering in a message thread on Facebook.

By the time the inevitable word came this afternoon that Lee had passed away, that exchange of memories had turned into a virtual wake among 248 people who treasured his acquaintance. It included current and former alumni of The State, veterans of the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, family members, and many others he had touched along the way.

For those of you who didn’t know him, let me try briefly to explain…

Leland Bandy first went to Washington during the Kennedy administration. Early in his career, he did some radio reporting — he had the voice for it — but he was primarily known for his 40 years with The State, most of it as the newspaper’s Washington correspondent.

After Knight Ridder bought The State in the late 80s, Lee officially became part of the KR Washington Bureau, but he never gave up his prestigious desk in the Senate gallery. He was a rare asset for the bureau, and not just because he was one of the only two or three people in the bureau who got tickets to the Gridiron show (he was a regular performer in the shows, as well as a loyal member of his church choir). Lee Bandy had access to people that no one else had. I remember in particular the way editors in the bureau hung on every word he had to share, after he and I had been over to Lee Atwater’s office at the RNC on one of my trips to Washington.

When Atwater was dying, Lee was the only journalist he or his family would have anything to do with. It was a pattern we’d see repeated when Carroll Campbell was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and when when Strom Thurmond died.

Everybody, including the politicos who despised all other journalists, loved and trusted Lee Bandy. Why? For the simplest of reasons. He was a good man. He treated everyone not only with fairness, but with kindness and generosity. It was quite a potent formula. More journalists should try it.

As his editor for a brief portion of his career — 1987-1991 — I have my own Lee Bandy stories to tell. But I was deeply impressed by some of those told in the outpouring of love on Facebook.

Here’s a sampling…

From Aaron Gould Sheinin, formerly of The State, now with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (and here’s something Aaron wrote about Lee for The State):

I’ll go then. During the 2004 presidential campaign John Kerry came for an Ed board meeting. After Brad and Cindi and Mike and Warren finished their wonk nerd questions there was a pause. And Bandy pipes up, “So, John did you get Botox?” Kerry, his face devoid of emotion, says, “No, Lee, I didn’t.”…

Same year. Lee and I are at Crawford Cooks house to meet Bill Richardson, then governor of New Mexico who is thinking of running for president. Just the four of us. Richardson gives his opening spiel. Bandy clears his throat and says “So, I hear you got a bimbo problem.” Richardson, his face impassive, says “No, Lee, I don’t.”

Neither became president….

Oh man. So Bandy is at the Gridiron in 2001. Bush’s first year. Lee Makes his way up to the head table. Bush sees him and says Bandy! Like everyone does. Bush says I want your speaker of the house to be my ambassador to Chile.

bandy says ok. And comes back and tells the editors

He calls David Wilkins the speaker who denies all knowledge. We decide that since the gridiron is supposed to be off the record that Lee needs to call the White House press office

Lee calls and tells them what he’s writing. They get all indignant. No way. Who’s your source?

Bandy: Your boss.

The press aide: Ari Fleishcer?

Bandy: No the president.

Press aide: oh.

Long story: Wilkins turned down the job an later took the canada job.

Angelia Herrin, who represented the Wichita Eagle (which was where I first worked with her, before I knew Lee) in the KR bureau:

We are so sad, reading this and yet, George turned to me and said, can’t you hear just lee bandy laugh? And we both laughed and cried a little. Because my god, Lee Bandy could make you laugh when you were just in the middle of the worst stupid day in Washington. Because really– that’s just the right reaction on the worst stupid day on Capitol Hill.

Jeff Miller, formerly of The State and now with an advocacy group in Washington:

I cut my teeth covering politics during the 1988 GOP presidential primary, the first to come right before Super Tuesday, and Poppy Bush needed to win. I was so far out of my comfort zone that crazy month. In hindsight, I needn’t have worried. I had… Bandy, who knew everything and everybody, to coach me through it. Greatest professional experience of my life. Bless you Lee. A legion of young, impressionable reporters owe you so much.

Megan Sexton, formerly of The State, now working at USC:

My favorite: Bandy interviewing Strom Thurmond Bandy: “Strom, have you tried that Viagra yet?” Strom: “Bandy, I don’t need it.”

Wayne Washington, formerly of The State, now of the AJC:

Lee, who was a reporting giant when I was in elementary school, was the first person to call me and tell me how much he was looking forward to working with me when I was hired by The State. I was speechless. Great sense of humor. Great generosity. Class.

Kay Packett, a sometime commenter on this blog, who explains in her stories how she knew Lee:

I am heartbroken. I met Lee when I was a brand-new press secretary in Washington and I avoided him assiduously because my previous boss — Mont Morton at the SC Department of Education for you old-timers — had told me Lee would have me for lunch. Then he called one day at the end of a very bad day and suggested a Bloody Mary, and I have loved him every minute since. He taught me everything I know about working with a real reporter, and he made me learn it the hard way! But we had a lot of fun along the way. My thoughts are with his family and I am so sad for all is us who loved him….

That truly was Lee’s gift — doing his job well and fairly and keeping his friends at the same time. I remember once when Carroll Campbell had instructed me to yell at Lee over an unflattering column, and I called to tell him I had to yell at him, and he said, “Good. Meet me at Yolanda’s.” So we had a couple of scotches and laughed. I wonder what questions he’s asking Campbell now.

There is a hole in my heart. Thanks, everyone, for sharing your memories.

Doug Pardue, formerly of The State, now with the Charleston Post and Courier:

A true journalist’s journalist, hard-hitting, and a truly nice guy. I remember when one young reporter from The State went to Washington and got in a cab. The driver asked him where he was from and he replied South Carolina. The cabbie then asked him, “Do you know Lee Bandy?”

Valerie Bauerlein Jackson, who used to sit next to Lee in The State‘s newsroom and went on to work for The Wall Street Journal:

I could not guess how many stories Bandy wrote about Carroll Campbell and Strom Thurmond–hundreds, maybe, and many, many of them critical. I think Bandy was the first to question whether Thurmond was still fit to hold office, and he certainly broke the story that Strom was living at Walter Reed. But when the Campbells were ready to let the world know that the governor had early-onset Alzheimer’s, they called Bandy. And when Strom died, the Thurmonds called Bandy….

… he also said, “In many of our newsrooms today, we have too many people living a life of journalism for journalism. There’s nothing else. Well, I would like to suggest there is something else. That there is something more to life than being a journalist. And that is being a human being.”

Bandy was one of the best human beings I’ve ever known.

Michelle Davis, formerly of The State:

He was the only person from The State to ever come visit me in the far-flung Camden bureau when I was 23 years old. He treated me to lunch at The Paddock and actually took me seriously when I said I wanted to go to Washington someday like he did. And then he helped me get there.

Danny Flanders, formerly of The State:

I’ve been reading this all day, and it didn’t hit me until tonight when I first truly encountered Lee. As a new night editor at The State in 1990ish, one of my Friday night duties was helping with weekend copy. (Unless, of course, someone set fire to Rockaways) On my first Friday night on the job, I was told to “keep an eye out” for Lee’s Sunday column when it came in. Oh, God, no. I would be charged (in my early 30s) with editing Bandy, whom I read for years? So when he called me to tell me he’d filed (Remember all of that?) he introduced himself and we chatted for an hour about life, not the business, before he said, “Change anything you like, Danny.” I thought, Was he buttering me up to protect his copy, was he calling from a phone booth at happy hour, or is this guy really that nice? Yikes!. So I made a few nips and tucks, then held my breath as I called him to read it back to him, and he thanked me profusely for, he said, making him “look better”. Whew!…

thanks for the vote of confidence, Lee. Godspeed.

Brigid Schulte, whom I hired to “replace” Lee when he moved from Washington to the Columbia office in the early 90s. She is now with The Washington Post:

Lee Bandy. You can’t say the name without a smile. And perhaps a bit of a chuckle, remembering something he said, or did, hearing his own frequent chuckle after saying something a tad irreverent but always spot on. I had the great, wondrous and intimidating privilege to follow Lee Bandy as the State’s reporter in Washington after his long, illustrious stint when he’d decided it was time to go home. Bandy ferried me around the Capitol, expertly ducking in and out of offices, secret passageways, waving to just about everybody along the way. He was gracious, generous, supportive, hilarious, kind and just great fun to be with. He even snuck me into a Grid Iron rehearsal after we’d had a long, breezy, gossipy lunch that stretched into the late afternoon. We both giggled at the thought of Strom Thurmond referring to me as “that nice little girl from the State Newspaper.” My heart goes out to his family. I wish him not just peace, but dearly hope he’s sitting somewhere with his feet up, celestial newspaper open, a tinkling glass by his side, regaling fellow angels with irreverent, and spot on commentary on the doings in the world below. He was a peach of a man. He’ll, no doubt, make one hell of an angel.

Joseph Scott Stroud, formerly of The State, now political editor with The Tennessean:

Thanks to all for the sustaining thoughts through all this. Lee’s life showed us, and has reminded me this weekend, that you can be a constructive critic and observer of public life and still have a generous heart. Mary, I hope you and the family are blessed with a sense of why Lee is so loved by the rest of us — because of his good, kind heart and buoyant spirit. He won’t be replaced, but we all carry him with us in our hearts

And finally, one more from Valerie Bauerlein:

I love you, Lee Bandy.

She is far from alone in that.

Joe Wilson couldn’t bring himself to be part of the solution

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Lindsey Graham was pictured on the front of the WSJ this morning (at least, the iPad version), presumably because he was part of the solution. Joe Wilson was not.

Lindsey Graham was pictured on the front of the WSJ this morning (at least, the iPad version), presumably because he was part of the solution. Joe Wilson was not.

This release came in last night from Joe Wilson:

16169_200233014414_5107578_nPrior to and during the government shutdown, I voted in favor of multiple pieces of legislation to keep the government functioning and protect our fragile economy from default. I am disappointed that I could not support tonight’s legislation because it did not reflect my core beliefs of limited government and expanded freedom.  Congress has a long road ahead of us in the coming months and I remain committed to fighting for a better future for all of the constituents I have the privilege of representing in South Carolina’s Second Congressional District.

In other words, he happily voted for a number of purely symbolic pieces of legislation that had zero chance of becoming law, and which helped to precipitate this crisis which nearly threw the global economy down the stairs. But when he had the chance to vote for something that would end the crisis and move forward, he “could not support” it.

He just wanted to make sure you knew that…

Sheheen campaign objects to use of governor’s mansion

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Mansion

I got this release from Andrew Whalen with the Sheheen campaign today.

Of course, if you “sign the petition” expressing your indignation at Nikki Haley using the governor’s mansion for fund-raising, the Sheheen campaign will have your contact info. So they can solicit you for campaign funds. And stuff.

Anyway, here it is:

Nikki Haley is at it again. She and the South Carolina GOP are shamelessly selling access to the Governor’s mansion grounds. This time literally. That’s just wrong.

In a few weeks, Nikki and her friends will be opening the gates and hosting an “exclusive reception” on the grounds — not for official business, but to raise cash to support her re-election.

Listen, if this doesn’t sit right with you, you’re not alone. Seems to me that using the Governor’s mansion grounds for a campaign fundraiser, at best, violates the spirit of the state’s ethics laws. If you agree, add your name to our online petition and tell Nikki Haley that you are tired of her using government property for campaign purposes. Add your name here >>

This isn’t the first time Nikki has blurred the lines of what’s legal in South Carolina – flying campaign staff on state planes, using state vehicles to pick up out-of-state campaign cash, hiding income. The list goes on and on. We deserve better. South Carolina deserves someone who doesn’t have to cover things up or blur lines to preserve their political career.

If you agree it’s time for new leadership in South Carolina, add your name to our online petition right now.

Thanks for standing with us,

Andrew

Campaign Manager
Sheheen for South Carolina

Also, there’s a blue “contribute” button at the bottom of the email. Just in case…

Lee Bright attacking Lindsey Graham for making sense

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… which is pretty much his whole campaign strategy, near as I can tell.

Anyway, here’s the release from the challenger:

Becoming Obama’s Top Spokesman on ObamaCare, Shutdown

Lindsey Graham went on Fox News yesterday to continue undercutting Ted Cruz and other conservatives on their strategy to defund and delay ObamaCare, and force the President’s hand on the budget. Graham stated that stopping ObamaCare was “unrealistic” and “a bridge too far”.

Lee Bright, the upstate Senator challenging Graham in the 2014 Primary, quickly responded, saying, “Lindsey Graham’s time in Washington is a career too far. He is so astonishingly out of touch with American conservatives, and he obviously has no idea how the leadership of Ted Cruz is playing outside the beltway. He and John McCain are the best friends of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda, and it’s time we bring Graham home, and leave McCain to surrender to the Democrats by himself.”

Bright went on to add that “Lindsey Graham really doesn’t understand what a train wreck and an abomination that ObamaCare really is. If he did, he wouldn’t have been on the wrong side of the cloture vote, wouldn’t have taken his office phone off the hook, and wouldn’t have advocated for preferential treatment for himself and his staff. His behavior is just shameful, and yet, I feel like every time he speaks he’s airing an attack ad against his own campaign.”

Bright predicted that there would be continued outrage and backlash against Graham as his Fox News quotes penetrate the internet and talk radio, saying, “Graham may be below 30% in the next re-elect poll. He may be so blinded by the beltway group-think that he believes South Carolina Republicans are like New York or Massachusetts Republicans, but he’s about to find out this is not the case.”

In criticizing Graham for distancing himself from Cruz and Lee, Bright is ignoring this:

Two prominent advocates of the GOP’s strategy to defund Obamacare in a government funding bill, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, have seen their favorability numbers drop in separate new polls.

Lee’s favorability in his home state of Utah is down 10 points since June, according to a new poll from Brigham Young University. Overall, voters see Lee unfavorably, 51 percent to 40 percent. Broken down by degree, 40 percent had a “very unfavorable” view of Lee, and 11 percent had a “somewhat unfavorable” view of him.

In June, the same poll found almost the mirror image, with 50 percent of voters viewing him favorably and 41 percent viewing him unfavorably….

Cruz was the focus of another poll out Thursday from Gallup, which found since June, more Americans know Cruz but they think less of him.

In the poll, 62 percent of Americans knew the Republican enough to form an opinion, compared with 42 percent in June, but his unfavorability has gone up 18 points in the same time frame.

Cruz has gone from being viewed favorably, 24 percent to 18 percent, in June to being viewed 26 percent favorably and 36 percent unfavorably in the latest poll.

Of course, Lee doesn’t care about what the people of Utah, in the aggregate, think of him any more than Bright cares about what the South Carolinians overall think of him. They only care about what a plurality of GOP primary voters think. So they’re paying more attention to polls such as this one.

‘Power Failure’ problems still plague South Carolina

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Yesterday, at Jack Van Loan‘s gathering for Steve Benjamin, the mayor at one point — in talking about the strong-mayor system — invoked “Power Failure.”

He does that frequently when I’m around, which causes me to think he does it to flatter me. But he always does it relevantly. For those who don’t know what “Power Failure” was, a brief description that I put together recently:

South Carolina is different. It took me about three years of close observation to understand how it was different. I realized it toward the end of the incredible summer of 1990, when one-tenth of the Legislature was indicted, the head of the highway patrol resigned under pressure after helping the head of the local FBI office (which was investigating the Legislature) with a DUI, the president of the University of South Carolina resigned after a series of scandals, and… well, there were two or three other major stories of malfunction and corruption in state government, all at the same time. Under my direction, The State’s political reporters stayed ahead of all the competition that summer, and broke at least one story that even the feds didn’t know about. All this fed into my determination to explain just why our state government was so fouled up. There were reasons, and they were reasons that were peculiar to South Carolina, but they were invisible to most citizens.

I proposed to The State’s senior management that they let me undertake a special project that would let the voters in on the secret. They agreed, and turned the resources of the newsroom over to me to use as I needed them for the “Power Failure” project. Over the course of a year, 17 multi-page installments and more than 100 stories, we explained why ours was the state government that answered to no one. And we set out a blueprint for fixing it.

That helped lead, the following year, to a major government restructuring, creating a cabinet system and giving the governor actual control over a significant portion of the executive branch. It didn’t go nearly far enough. Only about a third of the government, measured by share of the budget, answers to the elected chief executive. But it was a start…

As it happens, I had occasion today to look back at a reprint of the series, and I continue to be struck by how relevant it remains.

The series was about much more than the fact that the state’s executive branch was governed by a bewildering array of boards and commissions that answered to no one. It was about more than making the governor accountable. It went into problems with local government, the judiciary, and other aspects of government at all levels.

The sad thing is that while that reprint is old and yellowed, being 21 years old, so much of what it described remains unchanged.

I was reminded of that in this morning’s paper. We see that a Nikki Haley ally is planning to run against Glenn McConnell for lieutenant governor next year. This is portrayed as a sort of dress-rehearsal for 2018, when the governor and lieutenant governor will run together on a single ticket. That is a tiny, tiny movement toward the “Power Failure” recommendation that we stop electing all these constitutional officers separately from the governor.

Meanwhile, the bill to replace the Budget and Control Board with a Department of Administration answering to the governor hovers out there, and maybe, maybe it will actually be enacted in the next legislative session. Nikki Haley has been pushing hard for that since entering office. Rival Vincent Sheheen has been pushing for it longer than that, and he still is doing so. From a Sheheen op-ed last week:

Government restructuring is Job No. 1

BY VINCENT SHEHEEN 

Posted: Thursday, October 3, 2013 12:01 a.m.

Post & Courier·

  • It’s time to take another giant step in reforming South Carolina’s state government to improve accountability for the hardworking people of our state.

Over the last few years, South Carolina has gone backwards in so many areas — we’re now one of the toughest places in the nation to earn a living and achieve the American dream, while our government has failed on its most basic functions. But one of the places where we are moving forward is in modernizing our state government in an effort to improve accountability.

Last year, I introduced S. 22, a restructuring bill to overhaul and reform South Carolina’s legislative and executive branches. I worked across the aisle to ensure the bill speedily passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. Then it was altered and passed late in the session by the House of Representatives.

A conference committee has been appointed to hammer out the differences in anticipation of the upcoming session. So now we have an exciting opportunity to reconcile the two versions and make history for our state….

Actually, you should probably go read the whole thing, at the Post and Courier.

The reprint is old and yellowed, but we’re still struggling along with the same problems. Still, let’s celebrate what we can. I for one am thankful that both Haley and Sheheen back reform, and that maybe this one change is about to happen. Beyond that, there’s a lot more work to do.

Amazing racial comments in House 93 special election

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Wow.

First, I want to apologize to y’all for not reporting this sooner. But apparently everyone else missed it, aside from the Orangeburg T&D.

I’ve been going back through emails I had set aside to look at later, when I found this one I should have looked at much sooner. It’s 11 days old:

House Democratic Leader Todd Rutherford Calls on GOP House Candidate to Apologize for Bigoted Remark

 

Columbia, SC – House Democratic Leader Representative Todd Rutherford called on Republican candidate for House District 93, Charlie Stoudemire, to apologize today for his incendiary and insensitive comments that were recently caught on tape. Representative Rutherford released the following statement:

 

“I wish we could get through one election in South Carolina without a Republican making a bigoted remark. Mr. Stoudemire got his facts wrong during his rant and insulted the millions of hard working South Carolinians fighting to find or keep their jobs while Nikki Haley and other Republicans stacks the deck against them. On October 29th voters will have a choice between a proven problem solver in Democrat Russell Ott who will support growing jobs from within, or extremist Charlie Stoudemire who wants to pull South Carolina back into the dark ages. I call on Mr. Stoudemire to immediately apologize for his remarks and SCGOP Chairman Matt Moore to do the same.”

VIDEO: District 93 Candidate Charlie Stoudemire’s comment: http://thetandd.com/district-house-candidate-charlie-stoudemire/youtube_44ac72b0-27e9-11e3-ad55-0019bb2963f4.html

Transcript of GOP House candidate Charlie Stoudemire: “…Now the Democratic Party doesn’t want to do that. Why? Because as long as they’re sitting at home waiting on that paycheck, they’re going to vote Democrat. They put a chain around their leg, no worse chain than the chain when they were slaves. Okay? They put a chain around, and they’re holding them to the Democratic Party by giving them that paycheck.”
####

Suddenly, Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks sound like they came from Mr. Sensitivity.

According to the T&D, Mr. Stoudemire was given a chance to walk that back a bit — a chance most politicians would leap at. Not Mr. Stoudemire:

In a phone interview Monday afternoon, Stoudemire said, “I’m sorry that they (Democratic Party) are offended by that, but that’s what entitlements do.”

Stoudemire said if he’s elected, he will support and create “programs that will cut those chains and make them less dependent on the government.”

Stoudemire said there are individuals who are mentally or physically not able to work and it’s one’s “Christian duty” to provide for those in need.

However, Stoudemire also said that there are individuals who “can do better but don’t do better” and are depending solely on income from government subsidies.

“I’m not talking about wiping out food stamps,” Stoudemire said.

He said “entitlements” take away a person’s initiative to better themselves.

“When you give, it binds that person to the person who’s giving,” Stoudemire said.

He said Monday that this is “enslavement.”…

So now you have both sides.

Mr. Stoudemire, a Republican, is seeking to replace Rep. Harry Ott, who is quitting the Legislature. He will face Rep. Ott’s son, Democrat Russell Ott. The vote is on Oct. 29.

Oh, and by the way, for anyone who wants to be obtuse and object to my headline and say that was not a “racial” comment — well, I’m not going to bother to explain to you who the “they” is who used to be “slaves” and is now “sitting at home waiting on that paycheck.” I’m gonna let you work it out.

If speaking ability carries the day, then Haley beats Sheheen

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Gov. Nikki Haley, speaking to the Columbia Rotary Club last week.

Gov. Nikki Haley, speaking to the Columbia Rotary Club last week.

Reports this morning noted that Nikki Haley has amassed three times as much in campaign funds as has her once-and-future opponent, Vincent Sheheen.

But she enjoys another advantage that I suspect could be even more important: She’s a much better public speaker.

She’s energetic, articulate, engaging and sincere. And those things count with an audience. Especially a live one, as I was reminded when I heard her speak to the Columbia Rotary Club last week.

Meanwhile, Vincent is… Vincent. He’s articulate; I’ll give him that. But his comparatively lollygagging presentation keeps him from connecting the way she does. As I’ve said before, he comes across as a good, smart guy whose attitude is, “Sure, I’ll step forward and be governor, if no one better does.”

By contrast, there is zero doubt in the mind of any listener that Nikki Haley wants it. And that counts. Oh, Americans may give lip service to wanting to elect regular folks who aren’t “career politicians,” who can take public office or leave it alone. But they don’t give their votes to candidates who don’t care enough to court them with every ounce of energy they can muster.

And Nikki Haley does this. She certainly connected well with the Rotary crowd last week. I was reminded yet again of how charmed I was by Ms. Haley in her first couple of runs at public office. She makes a very good first, second, and several more impressions. It’s only after awhile that it starts to bother you that she persists in saying things that… aren’t… quite… true.

Henry McMaster, who has established himself as the best sport in South Carolina with his unstinting support of Nikki since she took from him the nomination that likely would have been his without her meteoric rise, gave her a strong introduction at Rotary. He spoke in glowing terms of how much better off he saw South Carolina as being than it was a few years ago.

And there wasn’t much to fault in what he said, beyond the implication that Nikki Haley deserved the credit. For instance… He lauded the fact that the state’s three major research universities work together these days rather than engaging in wasteful competition. And that is a good thing. But it started years before anyone ever conceived of Nikki Haley being governor. It started when Andrew Sorensen was president at USC (and has continued through Harris Pastides’ tenure). Sorensen formed a partnership with Clemson President James Barker and MUSC President Ray Greenberg. They started going to the Legislature together to talk budgets, rather than clawing at each other for funding. Here’s a column I wrote in February 2006 about the then-startling spectacle of seeing Sorensen and Barker meeting with House Speaker Bobby Harrell at the same time.

Anyway, the state of affairs Henry described was accurate, and worth applauding.

But then, when Nikki Haley got up to speak — and as I say, impressed the audience throughout — she twice spoke of her proposal to go to a system of “accountability funding” for higher education. But she suggested that we need this so as to end the current situation, in which each university is funded according to which of them has the best lobbyist.

No. That describes the situation we had a decade ago. The governor’s funding formula might be well and good — I don’t know enough to critique it at this point — but the problem she’s prescribing it for does not exist. The problem in state funding for higher education is that it has been reduced so much that it’s in the single digits, as a percentage of universities’ operating costs.

That inaccuracy seemed to go right by the audience, as did other things she said that sounded good — she always sounds good, to me as well as to everyone else — but weren’t quite as grounded in reality as a serious observer would like them to be.

And if you’re not a “professional politician,” or a dedicated student of what happens at the State House, or someone who works in the complex field of higher ed funding in this particular case, this stuff just blows right past you. She comes across as smart, informed, dedicated and caring.

And until Vincent Sheheen is able to project those same qualities with much greater gusto, he’s going to be left behind.

I tried shooting some video of her speech last week, but the sound was terrible. You can get a taste of her delivery, however, if you turn it way up. If you’d like to hear her whole speech, it’s here at the Rotary site. The governor’s speech starts at 22 minutes in.

No, Mr. Sanford, it’s YOU who chose to do this to us

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I’m sure you’ve all seen coverage of our fellow South Carolinian Chris Cox, who took it upon himself to do yardwork at the Lincoln Memorial.

God bless him for his gesture, especially since he seems to have done so out of a generosity of heart, rather than as implied criticism of anyone:

He said he does not have a political position on the shutdown. “I’m not here to point fingers,” he said. “I only want to inspire people to come out and make a difference.”

“The building behind me serves as a moral compass, not only for our country but for the world.”

“And over my dead body are we going to find trash pouring out of these trash cans,” he said. “At the end of the day we are the stewards of these buildings that are memorials.”

“I want to encourage my friends and fellow Americans to go to their parks, and show up with a trash bag and a rake,” he said. “Show up with a good attitude and firm handshake for the U.S. Park Service.”…

With an attitude like that, I can even forgive him for seeming to be a super-visible example of a certain sort of neighbor. You know, the guy who gets up eagerly on Saturday morning and spends the whole day ostentatiously laboring over his lawn, and acting like he likes it, in an obvious attempt to make other husbands in the neighborhood look bad for wanting to take a nap like a sane person.

I don’t think Chris Cox is like that at all, and I appreciate him.

What I don’t appreciate is what Mark Sanford said in praising him:

“I’m impressed, Chris embodies what it means to be not just a South Carolinian, but an American,” added Sanford. “He saw a job that wasn’t getting done and decided to take care of it. We are not a nanny state, and when government in this case chooses not to do something it’s in keeping with the American tradition to ask, “What can I do to fix the problem?” Chris’s example is one we could all learn from in Washington, and accordingly, I applaud him.”

Let’s review the pertinent part of that. Going right by the nonsensical bleating about a “nanny state,” let’s focus on “when government in this case chooses not to do something.”

Let’s run that again, because it completely blows my mind: “when government in this case chooses not to do something.”

No, Mr. Sanford. Only in the sense that you are the government (because you insisted on running for Congress again) did government “choose not to do something.”

It was you, and your colleagues in the Congress. This is true, obvious, beyond question. Aside from the fact that, contrary to your beliefs, the government is not some alien entity “out there” separate from the people, “in this case,” the guilty parties are unquestionably you and your cohorts.

I’m flabbergasted. It’s just beyond belief that he said that…

NYT: In SC, Obamacare fails to help the poorest, thanks to Haley, Legislature

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Meant to share this sad piece from The New York Times earlier in the week:

A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times.

Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured and ineligible for help. The federal government will pay for the expansion through 2016 and no less than 90 percent of costs in later years.

Those excluded will be stranded without insurance, stuck between people with slightly higher incomes who will qualify for federal subsidies on the new health exchanges that went live this week, and those who are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid in its current form, which has income ceilings as low as $11 a day in some states….

Yep, they’re talking about us, as one of the states who have refused Medicaid expansion.

Doug will point out we’re one of the slight majority of states (26) that have insanely refused to participate.

But even if we were one of 49 states, we’d still be profoundly wrong.

What Sheheen said at the SC Pride Festival

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Corey Hutchins is working out of Charleston these days, but he’s still out there reporting stuff that you might wonder about, but don’t read about elsewhere.

He did a story for Charleston City Paper about Vincent Sheheen’s unheralded appearance at the huge SC Pride Festival in Columbia over the weekend.

Not only that, he managed to get ahold of what Sheheen said at the event, which follows:

Friends, I want to thank you for inviting me here today – not just having me but welcoming me. And I couldn’t help but think of today’s theme: A Part not Apart. To me, being a part means listening, and hearing and sharing and celebrating our differences and also our similarities. I want to be a leader where everyone has a part. That means working together to protect South Carolinians from unfair treatment, bullying at work, at school, wherever it may be for any reason, for you and for anyone. It means working together to make sure workplace protections are in place to ensure people can’t be fired, fired because of their race or their gender or their religion or their sexual orientation. We all know that in South Carolina it’s one of the hardest places to earn a living and be successful. We have one of the highest unemployment rates in America, and we need to work together if we’re going to change that. And we want everybody to be able to work together. We’re not going to agree on everything, but we’ll be honest and listen and work as we strive together to make a better South Carolina. And only together, only together can we be successful. Only together can we salve the wounds that we’ve had in South Carolina for so long. Only together will we move forward. We’ll all be a part. And we won’t be apart. Together we’ll do it. Thank you so much for letting me be with you.

As I read that, it’s pretty consistent with what Vincent has said in the past, and what I had to say about it recently. Basically, what he’s saying overall to the voters in this constituency is that he appreciates and respects them and shares many of their goals, but doesn’t agree with them about everything.

Which people are allowed to do. In fact, I’ll bet not everyone participating in the SC Pride Festival agrees with everyone else who was there about everything, even about what you might call core issues.

I know that in this binary-thinking world, in which everyone is supposed to agree either with every position of the left or every position of the right, that’s hard to imagine. But people are allowed to agree with folks about some things, and not about others.

Sheheen hits Haley on absenteeism, education funding

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Here’s a release that came in from the Vincent Sheheen gubernatorial campaign:

Dear Brad,

When the going gets tough, Nikki Haley gets going…right out of state. 

This week a published report showed South Carolina topping the list of states slashing school spending and hurting public education, specifically citing Governor Haley’s political ideology as a main reason for the dramatic cuts. 

That’s just after the release of a report showing that South Carolina’s middle-class families are struggling even more with falling incomes since Nikki Haley took office. 

The going is getting tough for the people of South Carolina. And where’s Nikki Haley? Out-of-state raising money for the past three days at events she hid from her public schedule. 

Tell Nikki Haley that the challenges facing middle-class families and small businesses in our state won’t be solved by her jetting off to New York and Philadelphia to raise money for her campaign. 

Please donate $250, $100 or $50 today to make her a one-term governor so she can spend as much time as she wants outside of South Carolina. 

Thanks, 

Andrew

Of course, before you click on that link and give Vincent money, you’re going to click on this link and give to our Walk for Life team, right?

Here, by the way, is the report to which the release referred about education funding:

Even in 2008, before the dramatic budget cuts the state has enacted in the past few years, South Carolina spent the fourth-lowest amount on education. As fiscal year 2014, South Carolina primary and secondary students will each be educated with about $500 less than before the recession. The lack of education funding is, in part, due to the political ideals of Governor Nikki Haley. In 2011, she vetoed the state’s budget and included $56 million in cuts to education. In addition, Haley refused to accept money from the Education Jobs Fund — a federal program intended to mitigate budget constraints in schools across the country. South Carolina was the only state that did not seek money from this program.