On Monday, the day after this photo was taken outside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston where nine people were gunned down last week during a prayer meeting, Gov. Nikki Haley called for the Confederate flag to be removed from the Statehouse grounds. In the days since, legislators have agreed to discuss the flag in two weeks in a special session that includes work to override vetoes. According to The Post and Courier, more than two-thirds of state senators and almost the same number of House members say it needs to come down as times have changed. (Photo by Andy Brack.)
NEWSBy Bill Davis, senior editor
JUNE 26, 2015 | South Carolina’s legislature will likely be in a no-win situation when it likely returns to vote on removing the Confederate battle flag from Statehouse grounds in two weeks.
Consider that the casket bearing the body of slain former state Sen. Clementa Pinckney (D-Ridgeland) travelled in view of the flag on its way to being laid in state in the main second-floor of the Statehouse.
Despite international interest and widespread pressure, including President Barack Obama coming to Charleston on Friday to deliver Pinckney’s eulogy, the legislature did not hold a crucial vote to address the issue.
“We’re good, but we’re not that good,” said state Sen. Larry Martin (R-Pickens) at the time. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Martin is one of the leaders in the Senate.
Conversely, the legislature took only two days earlier this session to pass a bill giving millions of dollars in tax breaks to help bring a new Volvo auto plant to South Carolina.
Gov. Nikki Haley this week laid out a timeline whereby she would recall the legislature, already meeting under a special session extension, if members didn’t handle the issue this summer. Standing Monday near the spot where Pinckney’s casket would be lie in state two days later, Haley said ideally the flag would be down by July 4.
Hailed by some as a genuine act of respect for her slain colleague, the timeline also allowed some political cover, giving legislators tacit approval to return home and let the issue cool some.
Statehouse brass in both chambers has stretched the timeline to July 6. In the Senate, Finance chair Hugh Leatherman (R-Florence) told other senators that they wouldn’t be asked to return unless Haley issues a large number of serious vetoes to the $7 billion state budget bill package that the legislature passed this week.
A compromise bill brokered by then Sen. Glenn McConnell in 2000 required a two-thirds vote of the “present and voting” legislators to take down the flag. The “present and voting” portion of the law provides some political cover for legislators facing reelections next year who live in districts where sentiment for the flag is split. That’s because it means some members may abstain from voting or “take a walk” by stepping into the lobby during the vote.
The Senate vote count
Nose counters in the Senate said there are “easily” enough votes in that chamber to pass a bill removing the flag. The count got a lot easier this week when state Sen. Chip Campsen (R-Charleston) wrote an impassioned opinion column calling for its removal.
Campsen is a sometimes-member of the conservative “William Wallace” caucus in the Senate, which is made up of more Libertarian and tea party-leaning members. With him on the side of removal, moderate members of that grouping are expected follow.
Additionally with Campsen taking the position he did, the chances a filibuster from that caucus is likely reduced, as his vote could likely be counted on to end a similar Senate floor drama.
House of drama
Several House members said this week’s 103-10 vote to include a flag-removal bill to the July special session was a forecast of what would happen in that chamber.
After the 103-10 vote, House Speaker Jay Lucas (R-Hartsville) said: “I have spoken with and heard from almost every single one of you in this Chamber. It is clear that a majority believes a conversation should begin and the General Assembly should debate the placement of the Confederate soldier flag on the State House grounds.”
That’s not to say there won’t be “harsh political debate” on the floor of the House on the issue, according to a House member, speaking on background.
One GOP state representative, Republican Bill Chumley of Woodruff, already has been excoriated nationally for comments he made that seemed to blame some of the victims of the “Mother” Emanuel AME Church slayings that took Pinckney’s life. Chumley apologized publicly for the comments hours before bumping into a train of Pinckney’s family as they filed out of a back Statehouse room, with the senator on view less than 50 feet away.
State Rep. Doug Brannon (D-Landrum), who was the first Republican who said he would offer a bill to take down the flag, has taken some heat, too. Earlier this week, Brannon said he received a threat that a flag-supporter was going to have ISIS torture and kill a member of his family. Brannon also said he was told the message’s sender quickly received a visit by officers of the State Law Enforcement Division.
Brannon’s turn on the hot-seat may not be over, as he said some of his party-mates weren’t pleased with having to take a public stand on such a sensitive issue.
Several years ago, former House Speaker Bobby Harrell’s leadership position was threatened after an abortion debate broke out on the floor. Several House Republicans were not happy then that he was unable to corral the issue before it got into the public domain.
This week, several House members said they worried that Lucas, Harrell’s replacement, did not have the skills to handle the coming brouhaha. One member described Lucas as “conflict adverse.”
Lucas did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Today, he is expected to attend Pinckney’s service.
Bill Davis is senior editor of Statehouse Report. He can be reached at: billdavis@statehousereport.com.
NEWS BRIEFSLawmakers send budget to governor
South Carolina is not going to run out of money before July 1, thanks to a continuing funding resolution passed this week that will keep the government open.
But also this week, state lawmakers also passed a state budget bill package for the 2015-16 fiscal year and delivered it to Gov. Nikki Haley for her consideration. Haley has until midnight Monday to issue any vetoes. Any line-item of the budget not vetoed will become law immediately, which means the state will not be running on empty (money-wise).
The legislature is expected to come back during the week of July 6 to deal with vetoes. It also is poised to return sooner if there are major vetoes to big, important pieces of the budget. But no one expects big vetoes from Haley this year, especially in light of the somber mood pervading the Statehouse following the murder of state Sen. Clementa Pinckney (D-Jasper), who lay in state in the building’s main second-floor lobby on Wednesday.
The budget total this year for all revenue sources is close to $25 billion, with some $7 billion coming from the state General Fund, and the rest coming from federal pass-through dollars and the “other fund” category, which includes fees, tuition and the like. One of the budget-related bills that passed this week increases the state’s Capital Reserve Fund to $128 million. And the other, a supplemental appropriations measure , contained close to $400 million with the lion’s share going toward road-building projects.
Obamacare victory brings sigh of relief tens of thousands in S.C.
More work to be done to get coverage for almost 200,000 more
More than 154,000 South Carolinians who have health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act will keep their health insurance following Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court verdict that validated tax credits for Obamacare consumers.
The S.C. Appleseed Legal Justice Center sent a victory email to folks that urged lawmakers to fully implement the health care law. So far, South Carolina has refused to set up its own marketplace or expand its Medicaid program to allow 194,000 uninsured, poor South Carolinians to access the program.
“Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, instead of trying to undermine the law, opponents of health reform in Congress should accept that health reform is here to stay and stop putting forth misguided proposals that would undermine its success,” the Center said. “Policymakers should recognize that health reform is working, abandon efforts to undermine it, and instead take advantage of the opportunities that health reform offers to improve lives.
“States that have expanded Medicaid have seen large gains in the number of adults with health insurance, and they are saving money in their budgets. Hospitals in expansion states are treating fewer uninsured patients, and the amount of “uncompensated care” they are providing is declining steeply.”
More governors say the flag should be removed
Four former governors issued a joint statement today, as highlighted in a Facebook post by Gov Jim Hodges (1999-2003):
“As former governors of this great state, we support the call by Governor Haley and state and federal elected leaders to remove the Confederate Flag from the statehouse grounds. Last week’s tragic events at Mother Emanuel AME Church have reminded us of the important bond we share as South Carolina citizens. We should fly only the United States and South Carolina Flags on our Statehouse grounds- flags that represent us all.”
– Governors Ernest F. Hollings, Richard W. Riley, David M. Beasley and James H. Hodges
In an explanatory paragraph before the statement, Hodges wrote this on Facebook:
“Below is a statement put together by a group of former governors on the Flag issue. Great work by citizens, community leaders and elected officials in moving this issue forward. Most importantly, thanks to the family members of the victims for showing such grace during the tragedy. They make me proud as a South Carolinian, and are an inspiration to all.”
Former Gov. Mark Sanford, now a U.S. congressman, called for the flag to come down in this statement following Monday’s press conference by Gov. Nikki Haley to take down the flag:
“Rather than having on the State House grounds something that divides some of us, I think we would be wise to take the wisdom of the Apostle Paul there in Corinthians. We should indeed look to build on the unity I have witnessed since the tragedy of Wednesday night, and I believe what the governor has proposed would be a consequential step toward doing so.”
COMMENTARYConfluence of factors driving momentum to take down flag
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher
JUNE 26, 2015 | The S.C. General Assembly put the Confederate battle flag in a place of prominence on the Statehouse grounds. Now after nine deaths in the horrendous Charleston church shooting, the legislature must take it down.
Imagine the feelings of thousands who had to pass the flag Wednesday in Columbia to pay their last respects to state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, the slain Jasper County Democrat and pastor of the historically black church
It’s time to take it down, as Gov. Nikki Haley said earlier in the week. But a governor can’t take it down. The legislature, however, can. In early July when it debates budget vetoes, it must take swift action to remove the symbol that increasingly has become a divisive icon of hate.
The battle flag apparently first got put on the Statehouse dome in 1961 as part of a centennial to commemorate the Civil War, according to a 1999 story in Point. The flag kept flying until passage of a legislative resolution the following year. Such resolutions apply only to the legislative branch, which controls what happens in the Statehouse buildings and grounds. Despite attempts at revisionist history by some conservative columnists, then-Gov. Fritz Hollings did not raise the flag because governors do not have approval or veto authority over legislative resolutions.
The move to fly the battle flag prominently was pushed by Aiken Rep. John A. May, a legislator so enamored by Confederate heritage that he reportedly wore a Confederate uniform around the Statehouse. As time passed, the flag became more controversial. Although there were several attempts in the 1990s to remove it, including a march on Columbia from the Lowcountry led by Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, a compromise in 2000 put the flag in its current location.
Fast forward to today. In the time since the tragic, senseless shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, momentum surged to remove this Civil War flag that represents Southern heritage to some, but something far worse to others.
Over the weekend, pressure increased. Haley could no longer ignore the flag, despite bypassing the issue through the years by saying CEOs interested in the state never brought up the flag. (The state, of course, obviously didn’t inquire. )
So how did this public reversal happen so quickly? Consider these pressure points:
Unified voices. The governor attended three large gatherings over four days with hundreds of people united in their outrage and pain over the shootings. Such emotional experiences had to shatter any notions that she could continue to overlook the flag issue.
Political power. It surely was no coincidence that the chairman of the Republican National Committee was part of the bipartisan Monday news conference during which Haley announced she thought the flag should come down. Party leaders surely don’t want 2016 presidential and other candidates constantly asked for their position on the flag. So they looked to Haley to get rid of the political problem for them — with the carrot of future political roles to speed change.
Business demands. South Carolina has worked hard to attract global companies — Michelin, BMW, Boeing and, now, Volvo — that want to do business, not stain their reputations with a political issue as divisive as the Confederate flag. Calls by the business leadership certainly had an impact on shifting state leaders’ position on the flag.
Religious reactions. Because the shooting occurred in a church, a place of sanctuary, black and white people of faith united in reactions of shock, horror and anger about the murders. And then when the victims’ families publicly forgave the shooter during a bond hearing last week, more momentum built for change.
South Carolina has been tested over the last 11 weeks, first with the shooting of an unarmed black man by a white cop in North Charleston, and then with the Charleston slaughter. But unlike other places in America that erupted in violence after their challenges, South Carolinians united. It helped that a suspect was caught quickly. But this confluence of pressures, perhaps fueled by different motives, generated a tidal wave for something big to be done.
It’s pretty clear South Carolina has turned a big corner. As a state, we’ve still got a lot of healing and talking to do. But now, the legislature needs to catch up and finish the job.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. He can be reached at: brack@statehousereport.com.
NOTE: This commentary is an updated version of one that was posted Wednesday.
MY TURNMemorial in Charleston
By Jack Bass
Republished with permission
JUNE 22, 2015 | The only time I sat in what is known in Charleston as Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church was in the early nineteen-sixties, when Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a sermon. I was a reporter at that time, and I remember King speaking not as a civil-rights leader but as a preacher, with call and response to his message coming back from the congregation.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Published originally by The New Yorker; republished with the permission of the author.
A few years ago, though, I met Mother Emanuel’s pastor, the Reverend Clementa Pinckney. Interested in getting to know him, I called one day to ask if we could meet, and he offered to come to my office. We visited for almost half an hour, talking about current issues before the state legislature. Pinckney was murdered at his church on Wednesday, along with eight members of his congregation. Now I regret not recalling more of our conversation.
For eighteen years, Pinckney was also a Democratic state senator, representing parts of five rural counties. He rarely spoke on the House floor in Columbia, but when he did, his tall stature and deep baritone voice were commanding. Pinckney’s service as a state representative wasn’t unique in the A.M.E. Church. During Reconstruction, Richard Cain, one of South Carolina’s eight black congressmen, served as pastor at Emanuel, and he established many A.M.E. churches in South Carolina. Today, there are five hundred and fifteen.
I learned about the murders at the church just before going to bed on Wednesday, when I got a late-night call from Cleveland Sellers, who was the third-ranking officer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Era. The president of Voorhees College, a historically black institution affiliated with the Episcopal Church, and a long-time friend, he called and asked if I’d heard what had happened. My wife and I stayed glued to local TV coverage until 2 A.M., and learned that a memorial service would be held at noon the next day, at Morris Brown A.M.E. Church, about half a mile from Mother Emanuel, and a center for civil-rights activity since the nineteen-sixties.
More than five hundred people, roughly half white and half black, filled the church, with some standing behind the back pews. Several hundred more stood outside, on the sidewalk, in the ninety-nine-degree heat. They all sang “Amazing Grace.” Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr., who will retire in January after forty years in office, announced that the city of Charleston had created a Mother Emanuel Hope Fund to help the families of the victims. Congressman James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat and the son of an evangelical minister, who was a congregant at Morris Brown decades ago, when he lived in Charleston, addressed the audience. “There is no more solid experience in this country than the black church,” he told us.
At Morris Brown, I sat next to a former colleague at the College of Charleston, who spoke about an event he had arranged this past spring, at which Pinckney spoke, at Charleston’s Hampton Park. It marked the hundred-and-fiftieth-anniversary commemoration of a ceremony in which African-American citizens of Charleston had reinterred more than two hundred Union dead previously buried in a mass grave.
Following a series of events and the singing of “America the Beautiful,” Pinckney had given a homily. He read from the nineteenth chapter of Second Samuel, in which King David mourns the death of Absalom, the son who rebelled against him. Pinckney urged the audience to not only remember the ultimate sacrifice of so many but also to honor their sacrifice, by continuing to work toward the “great task” described by Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address. “Together we come to bury racism, to bury bigotry, and to resurrect and revive love, compassion, and tenderness,” Pinckney said.
Noted historian Jack Bass, co-author of The Palmetto State and author of several award-winning histories, is a native of North, S.C., and now lives in Charleston. More: JackBass.com
IN THE SPOTLIGHTSouth Carolina Hospital Association
The public spiritedness of our underwriters allows us to bring Statehouse Report to you at no cost. This week’s spotlighted underwriter is the South Carolina Hospital Association, the Palmetto State’s foremost advocate on healthcare issues affecting South Carolinians. The mission of SCHA is to support its members in addressing the healthcare needs of South Carolina through advocacy, education, networking and regulatory assistance.
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Time to furl the flag
To the editor:
Excellent piece (above) on the confluence of events that helped South Carolinians — and hopefully a lot more people who treated old South enthusiasts like their dotty Uncle Fred but let them get away with their delusions by ignoring them — to begin folding the flag.
And nice to see one more Brack name in journalism (Elliott and I go back to the dinosaur era).
— John Futch, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
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Lots of thumbs up this week
Thumbs up
Haley. Gov. Nikki Haley spread her leadership wings this week by embracing the sentiment that so many have had for so long — that the Confederate flag should be removed from the Statehouse grounds.
Legislators. State legislators, who sidestepped the flag issue in recent years, are to be commended for supporting, in large part, the bipartisan push to take down the flag. But the devil is in the details and we hope they’ll follow through in two weeks.
McConnell. Former Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell, who brokered the compromise that put the flag on the Statehouse grounds, is also to be commended for moving beyond the 2000 compromise and agreeing the flag should be moved.
Obama. First, thank you, Mr. President, for returning to South Carolina to say the eulogy at the funeral of Sen. Clementa Pinckney. Second, congratulations on a good week in Washington that saw high court approval of Obamacare health insurance subsidies.
Flagmakers. Hats off to Valley Forge Flag company and other manufacturers who said they would stop manufacturing and selling the Confederate flag. Perhaps cutting the supply will help curb some hatred.
In the middle
Stopping the violence, hatred. Seemingly lost in the debate about taking down the Confederate flag is the larger debates about doing something significant to stop gun violence and curb racial hatred. Let’s get the flag stuff out of the way and then focus on promoting unity.
Thumbs down
High temps. Boy, has the heat been something or what? Whew.
Maintenance? We noted that the state put up black curtains over windows at the Statehouse so that mourners paying last respects to slain Sen. Clementa Pinckney wouldn’t have to see the flag. But they had to walk by it. Seems like there was some way bureaucrats could have taken in down temporarily for cleaning or something until the law is changed so that mourners didn’t have to be reminded of the racial violence that has plagued the state.
NUMBERSix
Number of U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold a tax subsidy provision of the Affordable Care Act. The King v. Burwell ruling, a major victory to President Obama, ensures that more than 154,000 South Carolinians won’t lose financial aid to keep their health insurance.
The time has come
“We know that bringing down the Confederate flag will not bring back the nine kind souls taken from us, nor rid us of the hate and bigotry that drove a monster through the doors of Mother Emanuel that night. Some divisions are bigger than a flag. The evil we saw last Wednesday comes from a place much deeper, much darker.
“But we are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer. The fact that people are choosing to use it as a sign of hate is a something we cannot stand. The fact that it causes pain to so many is enough to move it from the Capitol grounds – it is, after all, a Capitol that belongs to all of us.”
— Gov. Nikki Haley during a Monday news conference in which she called for the Confederate flag to move off the Statehouse grounds. Her statement was a quick, sharp turn that followed last week’s massacre of nine church-goers at a prayer meeting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Read the governor’s full remarks
S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIAGov. David Beasley
S.C. Encyclopedia | David Muldrow Beasley was born in Lamar on February 26, 1957, the son of Richard and Jacqueline Beasley. He graduated from Lamar High School in 1975 and attended Clemson University from 1976 to 1978. He transferred to the University of South Carolina in 1979 after being elected to the S.C. House of Representatives at the age of twenty-two. He received his undergraduate degree in 1979 and his law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1983. He married Mary Wood Payne on June 18, 1988. They have three children.
Beasley served in the S.C. House of Representatives from 1979 to 1994. He was originally elected as a Democrat representing Darlington and Marlboro Counties, and his legislative focus was on education. Beasley was chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Education, chair of the House Education and Public Works Committee, and vice chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Children. From 1987 to 1988 he was majority leader, and in 1991 he was elected Speaker Pro Tempore.
In the fall of 1991, Beasley switched to the Republican Party because he felt that “the Democratic Party was moving so far to the left” and “that Republican philosophy and Republican policies were more in line with what is good for America over the long term.” In 1994 Beasley defeated Tommy Hartnett and Arthur Ravenel to win the Republican Party’s nomination for governor. He then defeated Democrat Nick Theodore in November.
In his early years as governor, Beasley was perceived as a rising star within the Republican Party and was selected as chair of the Republican Governors’ Association. His conservative political philosophy emphasized that social problems could best be solved by creating wealth through the private sector. During his first three years as governor, more than $16 billion in private-sector capital investments was made in South Carolina. During the same period, property and business taxes were reduced by more than $1 billion. Beasley also supported welfare reform through a welfare-to-work program that gave tax credits to businesses that hired welfare workers. In addition he helped start the Putting Families First Foundation, which brought together churches, local chambers of commerce, and other voluntary organizations to assist welfare families in making the transition from public assistance to self-support.
In 1998 Beasley was defeated in his bid for reelection by Democrat Jim Hodges, who ran on a platform emphasizing education and the creation of a state lottery to provide additional funding for education. Analysts attributed Beasley’s defeat to the get-out-the-vote efforts of the Democratic Party, financial contributions made by video poker and prolottery supporters to the Hodges campaign, and Beasley’s growing identification with Christian conservatives. Beasley had angered conservative supporters during his term, however, by calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from above the State House dome. In June 1999 he moved to his farm in Society Hill and joined the Bingham Consulting Group, an international business and consulting firm. In 2003, he received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his stand on the Confederate flag.
– Excerpted from the entry by William V. Moore. To read more about this or 2,000 other entries about South Carolina, check out The South Carolina Encyclopedia by USC Press. (Information used by permission.)
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