STATEHOUSE REPORT | ISSUE 21.33 | AUG. 19, 2022
BIG STORY: Cheney doesn’t have much chance in S.C. in 2024, says Sanford, others
NEWS BRIEFS: S.C. Supreme Court temporarily blocks 6-week abortion ban
LOWCOUNTRY, Ariail: Staying
COMMENTARY, Brack: Conservation scores greening in South Carolina
SPOTLIGHT: Riley Institute at Furman University
FEEDBACK: Bullies love intimidation
MYSTERY PHOTO: Old white church
Cheney won’t have much 2024 chance in S.C. say Sanford, others
By Andy Brack | While the national media punditocracy is babbling about the possibility of GOP stalwart Liz Cheney running for president in 2024, any campaign would run straight through South Carolina, an early primary state.
And as long as former President Donald Trump keeps an iron grip on the Republican Party, Cheney doesn’t have much of a chance here, said party observers like former Gov. Mark Sanford.
“Until this fever breaks, it’s still a scarlet letter being against Trump, whether he runs or not,” Sanford said Wednesday. In 2020, the conservative former governor and congressman ran against Trump in a short-lived primary campaign.
Cheney, the ranking Republican on the special U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, is considered Trump’s chief Republican critic. On Tuesday, she was beaten in a landslide in a GOP primary for her Wyoming congressional seat by a Trump-backed candidate. She is a daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
“In my opinion, no one who won 29% in their most recent statewide primary has any business running for president of the United States,” said state Rep. Mark Smith, a Mount Pleasant Republican who backed Trump in 2020. “Liz Cheney is clearly out of sync with the Republican grassroots.”
The wait for the Kool-Aid to subside
A veteran GOP analyst, who asked to not be named in this story, said South Carolina Republican leaders were unlikely to veer from Trump.
“In this environment with the blind fealty and enthusiastic separation from reality Trump demands and so many eagerly offer, it would be incredibly difficult [for Cheney]. If he is absent, then maybe the effects of the Kool-Aid will begin to subside, but the fear of retaliation that permeates through the current GOP isn’t likely to disappear.”
Sanford said he admired Cheney’s “voice for sanity and what were once conservative, Republican principles,” but the economic angst that Trump tapped into will continue to grow, morphing into something more toxic.
“I admire her pointing to true north, but I know something about tilting at windmills,” Sanford said. “Right now, her message would hardly be the formula for success in South Carolina.”
Smith said he is waiting for the 2024 presidential primary to get closer before worrying about individual candidates.
“It’s a long time until 2024 and I’m eager to see who runs,” he said. “I look forward to meeting all of the candidates and introducing them to my constituents.”
- Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
S.C. Supreme Court temporarily blocks 6-week abortion ban
Staff reports | As state senators met in a Columbia committee room to talk about almost completely banning abortion, the S.C. Supreme Court unanimously issued an order Wednesday to block the state’s recently triggered ban temporarily on abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. That law generally has ruled out abortions after six weeks.
“We applaud the court’s decision to protect the people of South Carolina from this cruel law that interferes with a person’s private medical decision,” said Jenny Black, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. “For more than six weeks, patients have been forced to travel hundreds of miles for an abortion or suffer the life-altering consequences of forced pregnancy. Today the court has granted our patients a welcome reprieve, but the fight to restore bodily autonomy to the people of South Carolina is far from over.”
Clearly, the raw politics of abortion continue to roil the legislative and judicial landscape in South Carolina.
In the injunction, the state’s five justices granted an emergency motion by abortion providers to suspend the state’s current abortion law, which was triggered in June after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal protection offered by the landmark Roe v. Wade case. The order essentially returned South Carolina to the status quo on abortion in the state before the federal June ruling that turned the matter over to the states. And now at issue is whether state law enshrouds privacy protection that extends to abortion.
“We merely maintain the status quo by adhering to that part of our state’s policy set forth” in 1974, the court wrote, noting that state legislators didn’t get rid of previously-passed abortion protections when they passed the fetal heartbeat ban. And that, they wrote, “arguably creates a conflict in the law.”
Andrews blasts Senate committee
The S.C. Supreme Court’s order came while the S.C. Senate Medical Affairs Committee heard public testimony in Columbia on S. 1373, a proposed bill seeking an almost total abortion ban that would make it a crime for anyone to provide an abortion outside of a medical emergency. The Senate bill would also restrict the ability to share information on abortion, which has drawn broad criticism by the press on free speech grounds.
Dr. Annie Andrews, a Mount Pleasant Democrat running for Congress in the First Congressional District, reminded senators she’s testified before to refute conservative talking points on Covid-19, gun violence and abortion.
“I am here again, today, to tell you that this bill is not consistent with established science and this bill will kill women and turn doctors into criminals,” she said in prepared testimony. “But will you listen to me? Unlikely. Time after time you deny science, you turn away expertise, all so that you can score political points and win your primaries.
“You consistently put political science over actual science. You should be ashamed.”
In other headlines:
Graham appeals court order to testify in Georgia probe. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has formally appealed a court order to testify in front of a special grand jury investigating whether former President Donald Trump and allies tried to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. Expectations of the appeal came after a judge ordered Graham to appear to testify on Aug. 23.
Labor Party candidates kicked off S.C. ballot. A judge has kicked off Labor Party candidates in the 2022 South Carolina elections for governor and a seat in the U.S. House. The judge cites that the party missed the deadline and did not host their nominating convention in time.
S.C. attorney general threatens FOIA suit to Charleston schools. S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson is threatening the Charleston School district board with prosecution over alleged violations of the Freedom of Information Act.
Scott details second chances in book. In its NPR Book of the Day segment, the station has an interview with U.S. Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C., on his current bestselling memoir.
Police regulatory measure signed into law. S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster on Thursday signed into law the Law Enforcement Accreditation Bill. The new law requires non-certified officers to work alongside certified officers when on duty, forbidding them from performing law enforcement duties alone until they are fully trained. It also expands the definition of police misconduct, which now includes officers failing to intervene when they see another officer abusing members of the public and willfully failing to report another officer’s misconduct.
International African American Museum to open in early 2023. Nine core galleries, a special exhibit space and a genealogy center in the International African American Museum (IAAM) are taking shape to present a sweeping story of the Africans’ forced migration to America. The long-planned $100 million museum is expected to open early next year.
Hilton Head woman slips, killed by alligator. A Hilton Head woman reportedly slipped into a pond while gardening and was killed by an alligator, authorities said. The accident happened Monday morning. What to do if you see an alligator.
Staying
Cartoonist Robert Ariail often interprets things a little differently, but always has an interesting take on what’s going on in South Carolina. Love the cartoon? Hate it? What do you think: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Conservation scores greening in South Carolina
By Andy Brack | Over the 20 years that the Conservation Voters of South Carolina (CVSC) has been scoring legislators on how green they vote, one thing is clear: They’re voting greener. Perhaps that indicates how the mere act of grading them every other year leads more of them to support environmentally-friendly positions. Let’s hope so.
“Scores continue to increase over time since CVSC first started scoring the legislature in 2003,” confirmed Meagan Diedolf, the organization’s government affairs director. “When we need legislators to step up, on both sides of the aisle, they do!”
Of course, the issues and players change every year, but during these times that partisanship rules and the great political divide in South Carolina festers just like across the rest of the country, it’s pretty remarkable our state lawmakers actually improved their environmental conscience over the years, at least based on scores on key votes.
The scorecard, Diedolf said, “shows that the voices of conservation voters are heard by legislators. Despite the challenges of the last two years, conservation issues continue to bring both sides of the aisle together showing strong bipartisan support for conservation with 38% of the members of the General Assembly (65 of 170) scoring 80% or more.”
The latest scorecard is surprising in other ways. First, you might be startled that the state legislator with the highest score is a Republican House member from Pickens County. Rep. Jerry Carter of Clemson, a retired nonprofit executive, scored 121 out of 100. (The CVSC ‘s scoring method gives extra credit to lawmakers who are primary sponsors or co-sponsor to targeted environmental legislation.) Just four points behind at 117 was Rep. Nathan Ballantine, R-Lexington. The top House Democrat in the ranking was Rep. Spencer Wetmore of Folly Beach, who scored 111.
In the S.C. House, eight Republicans and 11 Democrats out of the 124 in the chamber scored 100 or better. And more than half of the chamber – 65 members – scored a 70 or better on the eight bills that the CVSC used to make its ranking. Among the votes were measures on solar property taxes, reform of Santee Cooper, funding the Conservation Bank and offshore wind.
The Senate, where scorecard rankings were based on six similar votes, had a decidedly more partisan outcome. Eleven Democrats and two Republicans scored 100 or above. At top was Sumter Democratic Sen. Thomas McElveen, who got a 113 out of 100. But as with the House, a majority of senators – 27 out of 46 – scored 70 or higher. A dozen are Republicans.
Of the 65 House members who scored 70 or better, 18 live along the coast. In the Senate, seven of 27 live along the coast.
“Coastal and Lowcountry legislators continue to lead proactive efforts to protect the South Carolina we all love,” Diedolf said. “It [the scorecard] also shows increasing support for conservation as a whole, with only 15% (25 of 170) scoring less than 50%.
With the success of CVSC’s scorecard, maybe we need more scorecards to hold lawmakers accountable, helping them to see the light in new ways. There are a lot of public measures that advocacy organizations could launch. Some ideas:
- A Democracy Index of S.C. legislators’ votes to rank them on how they support representative democracy over authoritarianism.
- A Pork Primer on wasteful projects that find their way into the state budget.
- An Economic Index to measure tax fairness.
- A Social Fairness Register to document non-economic positions on helping all South Carolinians, not just the precious few.
Groups could make scorecards about votes on education, health care, road quality and even support of free speech as indicators of how they’re doing.
Let’s encourage groups to use the CVSC’s model to give lawmakers more grades. Maybe it will move the General Assembly in a direction to better keep up with the times.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Riley Institute at Furman University
The public spiritedness of our underwriters allows us to bring Statehouse Report to you at no cost. This week’s spotlighted underwriter is Furman University’s Riley Institute, which broadens student and community perspectives about issues critical to South Carolina’s progress. It builds and engages present and future leaders, creates and shares data-supported information about the state’s core challenges, and links the leadership body to sustainable solutions.
Launched in 1999, the Institute is named for former South Carolina Governor and former United States Secretary of Education Richard W. (Dick) Riley. It is committed to nonpartisanship in all it does and to a rhetoric-free, facts-based approach to change.
- Learn more about the Riley Institute.
- Also learn more about the Riley Institute’s Center for Education Policy and Leadership.
Bullies love intimidation
To the editor:
Intimidation has been expressed in many ways lately. Open carry of firearms and AR-15 promulgation into the general population without any standards are the most significant examples. Guns intimidate, and their wide distribution is to carry out that intended effect. Political minorities need symbols of intimidation to maintain their power.
Take the recent release of the FBI employees involved in the return of U.S. secret documents from the Mar-A-Lago Club. The unredacted version stating the FBI employee names are distributed to fuel up the haters, so they sponsor intimidation to sting and head off any similar investigations of theft of secrets.
Bullies love intimidation. It is their strong suit. Words and logic are interruptions to be pushed aside through the SLAPP lawsuits you describe. They fear the power of an idea and need to suppress them.
We will be on the losing side of keeping the rights democracy provides. A bipartisan proposal to stop SLAPP suits to protect free speech shows how far we have declined. Every day gives witness to the assumed way of life that can be quickly taken away if we do not resist intimidation in its many forms.
– Fred Palm, Edisto Island
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Old white church
This week’s mystery shows an old white church. Where is it? Bonus points if you can tell us something about the church. Send your guess – and your name and hometown – to feedback@statehousereport.com.
Last week’s photo, “Classical building,” showed an old post office in Florence that has turned into the Hugh and Jean Leatherman Education Complex at Francis Marion University.
Longtime sleuth Jay Altman of Columbia tells us the old post office, first built around 1905, has “served many purposes while open. The first floor served as the post office, the second floor contained the Federal Court and other offices, and the third floor housed other federal offices. The old Post Office and Federal Court moved to a new Federal Building and Post Office in 1975. In 2017, Francis Marion University purchased the Old Post Office and began renovations for use in the FMU School of Health Sciences, with plans for classrooms, laboratories, and offices.”
Congratulations to all who identified the photo, sent in by Barry Wingard of Florence: Don Clark and Bill Segars, both of Hartsville; Steve Willis of Lancaster; Pam Little-McDaniel and Jacie Godfrey, both of Florence; Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; David Lupo of Mount Pleasant; Frank Bouknight of Summerville; David Taylor of Darlington; Will Bradley of Las Vegas, Nevada; Scott Brown of San Francisco, Calif.; and Pat Keadle of Wagener.
>> Send us a mystery picture. If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com and mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
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