The news of political consultant and newspaper publisher Rod Shealy’s passing Wednesday afternoon was a mix of shock and, yet, the expected. When Shealy revealed that he had a brain tumor, naturally you expect the worst. Then he went through the treatments and got back to work and for those of us on the outside of his universe, it looked like the man would win despite the odds. After all, that’s something he’s been doing for a long time.

As for us, we didn’t know Shealy too well, beyond some discussions during the 2008 election cycle and the occasional soiree. What we did like about him is that he seemed to genuinely care about what he was doing without taking it too seriously. And everything that everyone has said about his campaign style is undeniably true. He could take a candidate with little money and simply outwork the other guys. Also, even though he said he reformed as he got older, Shealy’s lovable rogue streak was impossible to dislike.

After going through a number of remembrances, we particularly liked Earl Capps’ recount of the man.

…Rod was the one who really defined the Shealy clan. He was confident, sometimes cocky, and always brimming with ideas and stories. While his shirts were colorful, his personality was even more so. If you worked with one of his candidates, you never knew what was going to pop out of his head, or when.

The most important things I learned about politics from Rod is that you never went wrong by running a race based upon hard work and listening to the little guy. His low-dollar campaigns that were based on candidates walking and low-cost mailings often beat the expensive top-down campaigns which put more effort into slick production and mass media efforts. Before anything else, Rod made his candidates get out, walk neighborhoods and talk with people.

In this day and age, where we’ve become so disconnected and hide behind mass and electronic media, this approach was refreshing. A lot of professional communicators teach us to speak, but Rod taught us to listen.

The title to this post comes from the Charleston City Paper‘s Chris Haire, who seems to get just as fired up about RedState’s Erick Erickson, the Viking, as we do. The tweet pretty much ruined our morning, as we planned on laying down and listening to podcasts all morning, which is how we enjoy spending our weekend mornings. Now we’re ending up writing this while listening to audio of Thursday’s “Pardon the Interruption.” Dammit.

So, Erickson responded to comments on his post. It was fucking painful to read.

I can’t say that I am surprised by the level of aggravation and acrimony in the comments of my “Letting the Chips Fall” post. I certainly promised more than I delivered. You should have seen the first six drafts. They were much better.

Six drafts? Really? What is he, a bad writer in an English 101 class? And they were better? Maybe he should have run with one of those half-dozen, then.

For the few cheery souls remaining, I appreciate that you got the point — it’s exactly what Will Folks has been doing, but doing in a ridiculous third person narrative. The emails and phone calls from people in the media wanting to know when exactly I was going to do the big reveal on this were more than a little illuminating.

OK, so while trying to raise money for a candidate in a state in which he does not live, and knows even less about, he talks big and delivers nothing and that was the point? Hey, we have a public relations degree. We know spin when we see it, especially bad spin. And goddamn, this is bad spin. Then he goes into his bad argument again.

Look — if you told us we would be spending all this time sticking up for the gubernatorial campaign of Lt. Gov. André Bauer, we would have told you that you were nuts. But here we are again. Here’s how Erickson came up with his theory that the Bauer campaign was behind all this: He references the well-known fact that Will Folks worked with Rod Shealy four years ago. Then, he sites the well-known belief that Sen. Jake Knotts had a guy investigating political opponents who were, and this is important, out to get him. And to back it all up, what does Erickson do? He sites a Harper’s article from three years ago, and year-old posts from Wheels, who was then and is now a paid consultant of Richard Quinn & Associates, the firm behind Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster‘s gubernatorial campaign.

It — it boggles the mind. The man is an uninformed fool. We haven’t chimed in on the Tim James mess as it deals with the Alabama gubernatorial election. Know why? We don’t know enough. Just reading what shows up in news stories and blogs does not make you informed. It comes from discussions with people in the know, people not in the know, and generally living in the eye of the storm.

As we’ve said before, it’s one thing to make an educated guess, but it’s quite another to spend 30 minutes on Google and think you’ve solved the mystery behind a political scandal. Just about every political insider in Columbia thinks Erickson has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. Might be a clue.

It appears Lt. Gov. André Bauer has used funds from unknown sources and from his lieutenant governor campaign account to promote his bid for governor. If that is the case, it would be a violation of S.C. campaign ethics laws. At the very least, reporters should inquire about the funding source of Bauer’s recent television advertisement and his use of re-election campaign resources to benefit his gubernatorial campaign.

On Feb. 20, Bauer sent out an email to his supporters asking them to contribute to his race for the Republican nomination for governor. The email contained the logo for his gubernatorial campaign and contained a link to the campaign Web site. The only problem is, the email contained the disclosure that it was paid for by “The Committee to Re-Elect Andre Bauer.” That suggests that the email was paid for with money from the lieutenant governor account, which is forbidden by state law.

Specifically, the law in the S.C. Code of Laws is Section 8-13-1350. In part, it reads, “A contribution solicited for or received on behalf of the candidate is considered solicited or received for the candidacy for which the individual is then a candidate if the funds or contributions are solicited or received before the general election for which the candidate is a nominee or is unopposed.”

In plain English, it simply means that money raised for one office cannot be used to further a campaign of the same individual for a different office. Normally, candidates receive permission from contributors and then transfer funds from one committee to another, which is legal.

You may have already seen Bauer’s first advertisement of his gubernatorial effort. Again, it appears that his campaign is playing fast-and-loose with the rules again. An announcer says it was paid for by “Citizens for Andre Bauer.” Yet, according to the State Ethics Commission, no committee of that name is registered with the state. Bauer’s Web site lists “Andre Bauer for Governor” as the committee of record.

Again, it raises the question as to whether Bauer is using money from one committee to benefit another, or whether his campaign is just that incompetent, not keeping up with what the campaign committee is actually named.

The treasurer for “Citizens for Andre Bauer” that was listed on forms submitted for the advertisement to Columbia’s WIS-TV is Hank Page. Interestingly, Page is a state employee who works in the Lieutenant Governor’s Office. While state law is forgiving of what public employees do in their off-hours, if anything involving the campaign happened during work hours that would be a violation of the law, as well.

According to Section 8-13-1346, “A person may not use or authorize the use of public funds, property, or time to influence the outcome of an election.” The only exceptions are ones that are relevant to conducting public business, such as creating informational newsletters, other informational products, setting up public meetings and responding to inquiries from the media concerning a ballot measure.

For more than 10 years, Bauer’s consultant of record has been one of the more colorful figures in S.C. politics, Irmo’s Rod Shealy. For this campaign, Bauer’s been splitting his money between well-known Virginia consultant Chris LaCivita and Columbia lobbyist Larry Marchant’s Black Label Strategy. However, it has been reported that Shealy is still very involved in Bauer’s latest gambit.

While he also publishes community newspapers, Shealy’s claim to fame in this state is what can only be called his circumspect campaign tactics. Perhaps the most well-known of his antics happened in 1990, when he offered to pay an unemployed black fisherman to run for Congress from Charleston as a Republican. By entering a black candidate in the primary, Shealy is alleged to have hoped to scare white voters to the polls in the hopes of helping his sister in her GOP primary bid to become lieutenant governor. The activity spurred a state investigation that led to a fine by the State Ethics Commission. In an interview with Harper’s magazine in October 2007, Shealy called it, “a campaign violation for failing to disclose a candidate I dreamed up.”

But that’s not all.

In 2007, a robo-call with racist overtones was launched in the special election runoff between Randy Bates and Rep. Shannon Erickson for House District 124. Rumors among Beaufort County political insiders implicated Shealy in the move. His son, R.J., was managing Bates’ campaign and denied the campaign was involved.

When Sen. Tom Davis was making his run in 2008, he became engaged in a primary battle against then-Sen. Catherine Ceips, who hired Shealy as her consultant. Over the years, Davis had a house in Beaufort that had rooms for rent, at times to reporters from the Beaufort Gazette. During the period of leaving his position as Gov. Mark Sanford’s chief-of-staff and announcing his campaign, he began renovating the residence with the intention of making it his own.

Reportedly, Bates, who was Ceips’ chief of staff, showed up with a translator to the house and encountered a supposed illegal alien named Josias Mirales Ayala. This came on the heels of Davis’ wife securing contractors with the express intent that everyone working on the house would be legal, documented workers. The man who owned the company painting the house said he never employed anyone by that name.

Bauer knew of Shealy’s reputation when he hired him for his run for state representative in the ‘90s, and kept him on for his special election race for state senate and the 2002 and 2006 lieutenant governor’s races. Needless to say, those decisions cast some light on Bauer’s evaluation of whom he wants close to him and what he is willing to get into for his campaigns.

Starting in summer of 2009 and continuing into this year, South Carolinians have been inundated with more than they would like to know about the personal life and personal shortcomings of the Governor. In addition to everything else resulting from his behavior, the State Ethics Commission launched an investigation into Sanford’s misappropriation of state funds and campaign donations. An exhaustive initial investigation revealed 37 potential ethics violations.

During the discussion of whether the Governor should be impeached, censured or resign, more than a few people expressed concern about Bauer assuming the state’s highest office. Most South Carolinians already know the famous incidents – the plane crash, speeding at over 100 miles-per-hour and the like. But, it also involved his campaign practices.

It wouldn’t make much sense to replace one man with personal behavioral and professional ethics problems with another one.

Who knew that an odd-numbered year would give us the sort of political skullduggery that’s usually reserved for the regular cycle? Well, it came down today that consultant Mike Green was arrested in Myrtle Beach because, according to WMBF, he was trying to create problems at a private party for mayoral candidate Mark McBride at Crocodile Rocks at Broadway at the Beach. Green was arrested for trespassing around 8 p.m. The candidate is in a runoff today with incumbent Mayor John Rhodes.

The police report, cited in the article, said that a consulting firm “pays him to cause problems for the opposing side, which is Mark McBride campaign.” Unless there’s something else been going on, Rhodes has been paying notorious Palmetto State consultant Rod Shealy for this race. The Mayor sent $7,891 his way in the third quarter of this year.

Apparently, “an altercation” occurred and Green repeatedly refused to leave. Yes, that area of Myrtle Beach tends to have that effect on people, especially those from environs north. The mug shot was also classic — blame that bad ol’ Tom DeLay. Now everybody smiles before going into the holding cell.

Jeffery Sewell, S.C. political consultant and noted RINO hunter, recently sent out an email advertising his access to the S.C. Election Commission voter file. In the subject, he writes, “Complete ’08 SCEC file complete with appendeges e.g. no dead, felons etc blah blah…buy from me or pay twice the price…available right now.”

Now, Sewell has been kind to this site in the past, which surely means Wolfe Reports will join the number of recently axed sites from his news aggregator. That is fine. It is only a matter of time until we piss off nearly everyone and find ourselves begging for money for cheap beer like the rest of the homeless in Five Points.

However, how does a guy who has taken pride in going after “Republicans In Name Only” offer his voter file to Democrats? One of the email addresses listed is Jay Parmley, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Not only that, but Parmley is a member of the RISE SC Facebook group. RISE SC, as you may recall, is totally opposed to school choice, which Sewell says he favors and in which movement he has been involved.

But, that is not all. He has also offered the list to Rick Beltram, chairman of the Spartanburg County Republican Party. It should not take most people long to wonder why a guy who says he is a supporter of Karen Floyd and says she will be the next S.C. Republican Party chairman would be offering his list to one of her opponents.

And, still, there is more. He also offered it to people he called RINOs in the past, like S.C. operatives Rod Shealy and Wesley Donehue. What is not known is if the other people on the listing, like SCGOP chairman Katon Dawson, Richard Quinn & Associates’ Rick Quinn, McAllister Communications‘ Dave Wilson and Starboard Communications‘ Mike Green are considered to be in the same camp as the others, or just open to cut rate voter file access.

Either way, there are more things afoot in S.C. politics than anyone could even imagine.