By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | You might not have heard much about a 40-year-old Republican state senator from Edgefield County, but he’s now a big player in setting the state’s political agenda.
Meet Shane Massey, elected April 6 as the Senate’s new majority leader. He now runs the GOP Caucus in the Senate, meaning that he is supposed to pull Republicans together to accomplish party goals and speak with a unified voice.
“His vibe strikes me exactly as [U.S. House Speaker] Paul Ryan,” said one observer who has worked with Massey.
Considering Massey’s college degree in chemistry from Clemson, the comparison is striking. Both he and economics-driven Ryan seem to be driven by numbers and facts, as if the world is more black and white than various shades of gray.
“It ain’t his first rodeo,” the observer said. “He strikes me as smart. It’s easier for technical people, in my experience, to become humane than it is for humane people to become technical.”
Job number one for Massey is to get the GOP Senate Caucus acting more as a unified body. In recent years, it has been split between two camps — moderate to conservative establishment senators to more right-wing renegades who take hard-line positions on taxes and social issues.
Massey is a good fit to lead the caucus because he dips toes in both sides. Because he’s in his ninth year in the Senate, he’s got some establishment credentials, even though he’s the third youngest senator in the chamber. But politically, he often leans more to siding with the hard-liners.
“If we’re going to move forward with conservative solutions to address real concerns that people have, we have to reform our state ethics laws,” Massey said last week after taking the leadership role. “We have to give the public more confidence in their elected officials.”
On Wednesday, it appeared ethics reform, stalled for four years, got some traction when the Senate voted for additional income disclosure measures. But by Thursday, a Democratic senator blocked the measure as too soft and 16 Republicans killed another proposal shining sunlight on “dark money” — unregulated funds spent by outside groups on campaigns.
A Democratic colleague said he viewed Massey as a capable, involved and intelligent legislator with whom Democrats worked for the good of the state. But recent paths for some legislation being pushed through without Democratic input gave him pause. Too much partisan coordination could be bad for the body, he suggested.
“Remember the traditions of the Senate and work together,” the senator observed, “so it doesn’t turn into ‘We’re going to ram this or that down somebody’s throat.’ We’ve lost some of those [moderate] bridges.”
Through the years, colleagues say Massey has built trust throughout the GOP caucus in his recent work as Senate majority whip for which he was chief contact with freshman senators.
One relative newcomer observed, “I’m a big fan of Shane Massey’s. I think Shane is a smart guy. He knows the way the body operates. He’s his own guy, but is not pushed around by using the catch phrases of the day, not pushed around by the special interests.”
In fact, a look at Massey’s recent campaigns for Senate is kind of startling. He’s run two full-term Senate races at a cost of just over $203,000. Contributions generally were from lawyers and an array of state business and trade associations. But Massey, a lawyer, put in more money by a long shot than any group. He collected few donations from out-of-state groups and none, as best as we could tell, from rich-guy, dark money political action committees trying to put their stamp on the Palmetto State.
As a senator, Massey has long promised to “shake things up.” He’s been for ethics reform, offshore drilling, more job training and allowing local governments to tax more for local projects. He’s been against increasing the minimum wage, concentrating a lot of power in one place, spending on special projects and using state taxes for private colleges.
In the days ahead, let’s hope Massey can shake things up in Columbia — but to get all senators to work together for compromise and common sense to move the state forward, not just to push boilerplate Republican solutions.
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