The number of texts between Folks and Haley campaign manager Tim Pearson are simply staggering. And Folks’ paranoia is, well, damn heartwarming. Then there’s the interesting roundabout involving the local news industry. Folks is scared shitless about by AP reporter Jim Davenport, but he was actually behind on the story, as the Free Times‘ Corey Hutchins was doing his due diligence on it. And The State was way, way behind, as per usual. We got a laugh out of this Pearson text: “I talked to oconnor. Feel a little better abt things. Will call later.” It’s good to know The State can be reassuring campaign staffers when it’s getting its pants beat off on a story.

You might have also noticed them talking about “last year.” Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was regarding us. Yeah, don’t know how the word spread, but apparently a little less than a year ago, Folks got himself all worked up in a lather thinking that we were going to break the story that’s consuming so many people these days. But we weren’t. Never were. Never even considered it. Whole thing kind of caught us off-guard at the time.

The last bit, which should be disconcerting to U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, is that it looks like a higher-up in his campaign has been regularly leaking information to Folks. We know who it is, obviously Folks knows who it is, and the leaker knows he should probably keep a lid on it from here on out. Not telling Barrett what to do, but if we had an employee leaking information to a guy who had a direct line to a competing campaign, heads would roll.

The morning of March 30, Dawson told Free Times it would be inappropriate to comment about Steele or the RNC. He said he’d moved on and it wouldn’t be advantageous to talk about his feelings about him or the organization. But later that day, Dawson told The Washington Post that the RNC needed to demonstrate fiscal responsibility at a time when Republicans were criticizing Democrats on spending issues.

Yep. On April 3, Dawson said in WaPo, “The reality is that we’re being portrayed right now as the party of limousines, $600 hotel rooms, lavish meals. I understand there are things you need to do that are necessary for top donors, but we’ve fought real hard not to be portrayed as that.”

April 8, Dawson talked to a reporter from the McClatchy newspaper group.

Dawson, the former head of the South Carolina Republican Party, lost to Steele 91-77 in the sixth round of voting after three other candidates dropped out in the January 2009 intraparty voting for RNC chairman.

Dawson said his GOP contacts around the country are upset by the recent controversies surrounding the national party.

“There is some angst out there and disappointment in the hinterlands,” Dawson said.

[...]

Dawson, now a GOP political consultant in Columbia, S.C., said the problems tied to Steele’s leadership of the RNC have distressed influential Republicans.

WaPo? OK. A beat writer for a newspaper conglomerate? Sure. One of the best alt-weeklies in the South? Nope. And it should be noted that Dawson was nailed for his free-spending ways when he was chairman of the SCGOP. Guess he figures reporters’ questions from outside Columbia will be comprised of more softballs than he’d get back home.

We didn’t pimp ourselves for The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza’s “The Best State Political Blogs,” but thanks to some very nice people, managed to make the list.

If those people, plus the few thousand others we picked up along the way, decide to cast a ballot, we’d be very appreciative.

You can vote by going to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DIxYnZhbVIIllipxIF_2baBA_3d_3d. Or, picking up a copy of FT, filling it out and mailing it in to: Free Times, PO Box 8295, Columbia, SC 29202. You have to vote by Oct. 16. Mind you, you have to fill out at least 15 categories for your ballot to count. You can’t write in the same thing in more than three categories. And, if it’s a paper ballot, you have to include your full name, phone number, age and address, and can only have one entry per envelope. Also, you can only vote once — this ain’t “American Idol.”

Over the past week, The State has been receiving plaudits for its coverage of Gov. Mark Sanford‘s meltdown, and conducting the sort of reporting that a publication does when it totally owns a major story. In fact, The State is probably guaranteed a number of SCPA awards already. But, they better not break their arms patting themselves on the back just yet.

The fact is, The State was lazy. For the six months that it had the emails blowing up Sanford’s affair with Argentine businesswoman Maria Belén Chapur, the paper acted like a number of other papers act in South Carolina — gumming the subject. No teeth to be seen. In fact, the emails were sent to the paper via the letters to the editor function, but no one thought to tell then-editorial page editor Brad Warthen about it, who was on a short vacation.

Did The State take advantage of their resources, or McClatchy‘s resources, to aggressively pursue the story? No. The emails sat around while the legislative session went on.

If it weren’t for Sen. Jake Knotts keeping a watchful eye on the Governor and alerting the media to the fact Sanford had skedaddled without telling a damn soul where he was, those emails would still be languishing in The State‘s offices and Sanford would be gearing up for his book launch. You see, it’s up to the press to hold elected officials accountable and monitor their actions. Papers, especially when given primo inside information, shouldn’t have to wait for a political opponent of an official to make a claim to get on a story.

Right there are the two big breaks — poached emails and an investigation of the Governor’s whereabouts — neither of which were turned up through original sleuthing by the paper. The story, and this is what galls us the most, was fucking given to them on a silver platter.

Perhaps one of the reasons that this pisses us off so much is that our big story about Sanford was gone after in a totally different manner. Before knowing exactly what was going on, we went hell-bent for leather looking for the story, high and low. Contacts and conversations initiated by us led to our possession of the hit list proposal. Then we shopped it to the Free Times, because, frankly, we couldn’t trust The State to do it right.

There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears that went into investigating and publishing that story. It wasn’t handed to us. It didn’t come gift wrapped. It was a royal goddamn pain-in-the-ass two month ordeal. Investigative journalism isn’t easy. Throwing yourself into a story to that degree makes you want to bang your head against a wall and tear your hair out.

The State had it easy.

The S.C. Press Association has named Corey Hutchins and myself as the winners of the in-depth reporting award for January 2008′s “The Hit List” in the Free Times, in FT‘s division.

The entire process of running down the story was an ordeal, taking two months. It all started with the question, “Where is Will Folks getting his money?” After some asking around, the hit list proposal dropped in our laps and the story took off from there.

While it was assumed that Folks wrote the proposal, there was no certainty, as there was no listed author on what we had. Nor was the organization it was written for. However, after doing an immense amount of background research and talking to a number of people, the path hit the homestretch: calling the members of the listed core council.

Because every one of the groups allied with Gov. Mark Sanford are staffed like an interlocking directorate, it was a bit of luck that one of the first calls was to Chad Walldorf. The assumption was that the proposal was written for Reform SC. However, during a phone call the day after Christmas, Walldorf, who was the chairman of both Reform SC and S.C. Club for Growth, said that the proposal was written by Folks for SCCfG. Without that key confirmation, the whole thing probably would have fallen apart.

The next two weeks were devoted to writing and rewriting the opus, to the point of being so tired with the subject, looking at the story in its Word file or the lists of notes and quotes felt like a decent into madness.

As we all saw in the primaries last year, the plan did come to fruition, after a fashion, but with mixed results for the Governor and his allies. And, if the proof in the pudding is legislative success, it doesn’t look like Sanford got the big win he was looking for.