Friday, The State reported that Sen. Vince Sheheen’s gubernatorial campaign made a few erroneous endorsements in a list sent out last week. It’s an easy enough mistake to make, which is why we wonder why campaigns put out lengthy endorsement lists. There always seems to be a cock-up one way or another.
In the story, Rep. Anton Gunn, who was included as one of the endorsers, said, “I haven’t endorsed anybody. I’ve got my own [re-election] race to concentrate on. I’m not mad [at Sheheen's campaign staff]. I know it was an honest mistake.”
The best part of the story was reporter Gina Smith ironically making a mistake of her own. Several times, she called Sheheen campaign manager Trav Robterson “Trav Roberts.”
Trav Roberts, Sheheen’s campaign manager, is taking the blame.
“This was an oversight on my part,” Roberts said Thursday. “We got very excited that nearly 60 percent of Democrats in the House and Senate were endorsing Vincent. Blame it on an overzealous campaign manager.”
Roberts would not discuss how the list was put together. He noted, even with the six Democrats removed from the list, a majority of Democrats at the State House are backing Sheheen.
But hey, it’s the Friday before St. Pat’s. Everybody gets a mulligan, right?
We’ve found ourselves perplexed over the recent months regarding the interesting political flexing going on by Steve Benjamin’s campaign for mayor of Columbia. The man ran as the Democratic nominee for attorney general in 2002, and counts among his strongest supporters top Midlands Democrats. And yet, it’s not a cut-and-dry situation.
Benjamin hired the local political consulting firm Richard Quinn and Associated to run his campaign. This is the same firm who ran Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster’s race against Benjamin in 2002, and is running McMaster’s gubernatorial campaign. Naturally, that’s giving Benjamin a free pass on RQ&A’s in-house blog, The Palmetto Scoop. Really — Wheels McGee has been at every Benjamin event we’ve ever attended, which is a tad odd for a GOP political consultant and blogger.
In the meantime, he’s also hired several people who were a part of President Barack Obama’s campaign during South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary (Craig Schirmer and Laurin Manning, among others). Early Thursday morning, Benjamin’s campaign announced it would start running a radio ad playing up his Obama connections in the Democratic-leaning capital city.
COLUMBIA, SC – Steve Benjamin’s Mayoral Campaign broke onto the airwaves this week with a radio ad featuring a 2007 voicemail left by then Senator Barack Obama.
“I’ve saved this voicemail for well over two years now,” Benjamin explains. “It has been a personal inspiration for me because I still believe in what we can do when we work together. I still believe in hope.”
The radio spot, Benjamin’s first, went into rotation this week and can be heard on radio stations all across Columbia and at www.stevebenjamin.com.
This takes an extraordinary amount of hubris, considering that his consultants ran U.S. Sen. John McCain’s Republican presidential primary campaigns in this state not once, but twice. Quinn Sr. was a close, unpaid advisor on McCain’s campaign for president in 2008. Then there’s something else.
Interestingly, the child, who seems fit to consider the majority of Republicans in the General Assembly as socialists, has been slurping Benjamin since the very outset. Baldy ran a line of smack against former Speaker of the House David Wilkins, writing, “Anyway, given how ferociously Wilkins promotes (and protects) his reputation as a “Republican,” we were a bit surprised to see him hosting a fundraiser earlier this week for uber-liberal trial lawyer Steve Morrison, who is running for mayor of Columbia, S.C. on the Leftist Lying Bastard ticket (j/k … it’s a non-partisan election).”
Mind you, he never says things like this about the Quinn firm and its relationship with Benjamin, even while assailing RQ&A when it comes to Innovista. It’s often said that a man is judged by the friends he keeps. Another old bromide is “actions speak louder than words.” Benjamin’s words try to play up his connection to Obama. But his actions in regard to people like the Quinns, Folks and Fogle say so much more.
And at this point, we’ve been totally soured on Benjamin, Morrison and City Councilman Kirkman Finlay III. Somebody put a call in to Aaron Johnson.
Wednesday, the S.C. Chamber of Commerce released its endorsements for the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primaries. Sen. Vince Sheheen took the nod for the Democrats, which is not very surprising. With the exit of Charleston attorney Mullins McLeod and Columbia lobbyist Dwight Drake from the race, it’s not hard to figure out that Sheheen will best Supt. of Ed. Jim Rex and Sen. Robert Ford for the nomination.
The Republican endorsement went to U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett. Making a decision in that race is way more risky for anyone this far out from the primary. Barrett, Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster and Lt. Gov. André Bauer are in a three-way dogfight for the nomination, and it’s only going to get nastier as the months go on until June.
Wednesday afternoon, the Sheheen campaign launched a new Facebook effort: “Hey, folks — let’s beat Gresham Barrett to the 5,000 mark in FB fans! It would be great if you could click on ‘Suggest to Friends’ underneath the profile picture. Thanks!” That was followed by Barrett’s page responding with, “We’ve been challenged. The Sheheen campaign is trying to beat us to 5,000 fans. Help us get there first by clicking the ‘Suggest to Friends’ link under my picture.” Barrett made it first.
All of this is to say that it looks like the leading candidates for both nominations are already preparing to go at it. That means that the other guys — Rex, Ford, McMaster, Bauer — better step up their campaigns, or the general election campaign will start before the June primary showdown.
In 2008, now-Rep. Mike Sottile ran for the open seat in HD-112, a nice place to live in the Lowcountry. Mt. Pleasant Town Councilman Joe Bustos was the chosen candidate in the Republican primary by the “pro-hit list” forces in South Carolina. Like many of their other candidates selected by that group, Bustos wasn’t very successful, losing 56-44. Sottile went on to win unopposed in the general election.
Evidently, losing by eight and now battling incumbency is not stopping Bustos for making another go. In case you missed it, in the meantime he also lost a race for mayor of Mt. Pleasant. We guess some people like making running for office — and losing — a hobby on par with building model airplanes and sports rec leagues.
Bustos promised to end politics as usual, adding, “Growth of government is out of control, and we must elect new leaders to rein it in.”
Bustos also said his 2009 mayoral campaign will help his chances this time. “I think the door-to-door campaign (last year) worked very well and we were really coming up in the polls, so I think we have a certain amount of momentum in this campaign.”
[sarcasm] Yes, political scientists are universally agreed that losing consecutive races for office makes the voters more amenable to your new campaign. [/sarcasm] If the people who backed Bustos in ‘08 are smart (S.C. Club for Growth, Howard Rich, the Sanford mafia), they’ll spend their money on a race in which their candidate may actually have a chance.
You would think that Democratic candidate for SC-02, Rob Miller, would have taken some good lessons from his 2008 campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson. When he announced again, it looked a lot to us like it would be similar to Beaufort architect Jane Frederick’s second run against the late U.S. Rep. Floyd Spence. He’d pull some votes, but wouldn’t significantly challenge Wilson.
Last fall’s fun and games infused both campaigns with an insane amount of money for a South Carolina race for Congress. Miller now has more money than Democratic Sen. Vince Sheheen, who actually has to run a statewide campaign for governor instead of just one of six districts. Capitalizing on his buzz, Miller has been traveling the country to raise money and making the best of his Internet fundraising.
But other than that, his campaign has largely been a low-key affair. So, it came as an interesting revelation to see the report and fallout from Miller’s appearance at a meeting of the Greater Irmo Democratic Club. From what we’ve been able to gather, the Club invited WIS to the meeting, then there was a brouhaha about who ordered the WIS cameras be kept out.
After a couple days of thinking about this, we consider it Miller’s, or his campaign’s, fault. The woman who spoke for the GIDC, Joanne Hafter, said in a story by WIS, “I just want to set the record straight, neither I or anyone from GIDC made the decision to exclude the media, especially after we invited the media in the first place. It was Rob’s campaign manager who was adamant about not having press coverage.”
We actually met Ms. Hafter years ago, when we went to school with her daughters. Between the person we knew (however briefly) and the person we don’t, we’re siding with the GIDC on this incident. After all, we’ve been alerted to other screw-ups with the media committed by the Miller campaign.
When you’re the underdog in a district that skews against your party, you have to be very careful about what your campaign does, who it courts for support and how you manage your media exposure. Common sense would say that Miller would have known this already. Doesn’t seem like his campaign figured that part out.
We can’t say this enough: The leadership of the S.C. Democratic Party has woefully failed in its mission to further the party and to get people elected. Actually, we think it was former DNC chairman Don Fowler who said in class one day that the No. 1 job of political parties is to get people elected. Or maybe it was my professor at Alabama. Shit runs together.
Anyway, the party couldn’t recruit and run a decent candidate against U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in his most vulnerable election year, and is having serious problems filling out the roster on down-ballot races with legitimate candidates. The leadership, seemingly not having a problem with this consistent level of epic suck, is pointing fingers elsewhere.
Democratic chair Carol Fowler blames in part, the economy.
“I think a lot of it is just being pragmatic,” said Fowler. “Fundraising is terrible for candidates this year. Fundraising is always much worse for Democrats than it is for Republicans. There’s just not as much money out there as there has been.”
Intense eye-rolling to commence. Democrats across the country usually have less money than GOP candidates. That’s not an excuse. Nor is the economy a good enough explanation. In a state that gives the Republicans roughly only a 10-point advantage, the GOP has no problem fielding multiple candidates for statewide races. This isn’t a 80/20 or 70/30 state. It’s close to 55/45. That suggests more of a problem within the party than it does external factors.
And as long as the SCDP fails to address the problems within its own operation, the more elections will be decided in the Republican primary in June.
An AP story from Monday presents an interesting idea. A poll was done of 500 black voters in each state of South Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri and Indiana. Two-thirds of those responding said they were closely watching electoral politics this year and between 3/4 and 4/5 of all respondents said they intend to vote this year. The collective sigh you just heard was from Democratic strategists who are considering that November may not end up as bad as anticipated.
In South Carolina, like the South in general, politics are racially-charged. You can run whatever naive line of thinking you want, but in the states of the old Confederacy, the Democratic party is very black and the Republican Party is very white. That’s just the way it is. Hence, unprecedented black turnout in North Carolina and Virginia in 2008 helped President Barack Obama win those states — something a Democrat hasn’t done in decades.
The last time Dems did anything worthwhile around here, 12 years ago, a well-coordinated and motivated black electorate got to the polls and made it a good year for the donkeys in the Palmetto State. We’re still thinking it will be a big year for Republicans, in this state and nationally, but if there is any truth to this poll, the races in the general election could be a lot better than anticipated.
The joke around town after the Americans for Job Security ad against U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett came out was that the organization was really named, “Americans for Nikki Haley.” Guess it’s not so far-fetched. Per the petulant child, Haley consultant Jon Lerner was involved with the advertisement and Gov. Mark Sanford solicited donations to put it on the air.
That rumbling sound you heard emanating from Columbia on Friday was a collective expression of, “Pfft. No shit.” Nobody except for a reporter for The State would think that an ad like that would be regarding anything else beside the race for governor.
Unless Supt. of Ed. Jim Rex has an election leprechaun running around with a pot o’ gold and votes, it looks like Sen. Vince Sheheen can now be called the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor. Shortly after noon on Friday, attorney and lobbyist extraordinaire Dwight Drake ended his campaign.
I got into this race because I believed that South Carolina’s families deserved much more than they were getting from their Governor. We are facing the toughest times in a generation, and we can only take that on with dedicated, experienced leadership that is focused on putting our people back to work and building a better future for our kids. I have ambitious ideas for getting our state back on track, and I have the knowledge and experience to put those ideas into action.
But a statewide campaign for office is not just about these things. It also requires resources – campaign dollars to run in a competitive primary and in a competitive general election.
This comes on the heels of former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mullins McLeod dropping out of the race and endorsing Sheheen. As of now, Drake has not announced an endorsement, but anybody paying attention to the race knows the Democratic race has been decided.
We don’t know if it ran statewide, but this morning there was an interesting ad running on Fox News in Columbia. While we were generally ignoring the television — background noise is a necessity for the Information Generation — suddenly the talk on the flickering screen commanded our attention.
It was an advertisement for U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, one of the “big three” candidates for governor. It was responding to a statewide ad buy by the rather secretive “independent” group, Americans for Job Security. The ad talks about Barrett’s conservative leadership in the House, among other things.
Here’s the kicker, though — the ad was paid for by Barrett’s Congressional campaign. Or, that is, funds from that campaign account. Seems a little strange, but the AJS toady that was interviewed by the press said their ad was about his time in Congress, not his gubernatorial campaign, so hitting back with money from the Congressional account makes some sense.
