Connor announces for lieutenant governor

Bill Connor, an attorney and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, announced his candidacy as a Republican for S.C. lieutenant governor on the north steps of the State House on Tuesday. Though he has not yet announced, it is believed that current Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer will run for governor in 2010.

“When I returned home, I was shocked to find that my country had started to abandon those principles we went overseas to protect,” Connor said in a statement, referring to coming back from Afghanistan. “I’m running for lieutenant governor to work to bring back those traditional values that our Founding Fathers wrote into our Declaration of Independence. I’m running to help South Carolina be the ‘shining city on a hill’ that Ronald Reagan once proclaimed America could be.”

Ed. note: the city on a hill comment was made in America’s colonial days by the Puritan leader and governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, John Winthrop, in 1630. Reagan later co-opted it.

Connor, in addition to his service in the military and in law, wrote a book called “Articles from War,” a collection of his writings published in The Times and Democrat. All proceeds from his book are donated to private Christian schools in the Palmetto State.

However, in what is unusual for a first-time candidate, he also has a Web site linking to his extensive writings, which may not be the best thing for a candidate, as he will give any of his opponents a vast amount of oppo research to comb through.

Connor is the only candidate, so far, to announce for lieutenant governor.