Earlier on Monday, we say a post the child did on Sen. Vince Sheheen. We didn’t pay it much mind, because we don’t pay the person writing it much mind. But, later on in the day, we were alerted to a certain phrase in the post. That line did ring a bell at the time, but there were more important things to do.

Sheheen doesn’t speak with an accent any worse than other well-educated state leaders that are South Carolina natives, but whatever. Witness:

That wording was used in something else he wrote — the ultimately failed blueprint to turn the General Assembly into Gov. Mark Sanford‘s rubber stamp.

Guess everybody not from the Lowcountry’s landed class is a bumpkin these days.

Sen. Lee Bright, who ran a line of attack against former Rep. Scott Talley last year by calling him a trial lawyer, isn’t opposed from cleaning up among attorneys. In his second quarter disclosure report, law firms and attorneys gave him a solid amount of cash.

From April through May, Bright seems to have come around to the deep pile of money available from the state’s lawyers. He took in $7,750 from members of the bar, representing 54 percent of the money he’s accepted in the past quarter. That includes $1,000 from the S.C. Trial Lawyers Association.

Bright was one of the “hit list” challengers, and the S.C. Club for Growth was nasty in its attacks on Talley. Will Folks, who developed the proposal to target Republican legislators in the primaries for the Club, wrote, “Talley’s sold out completely now, bending obediently to the will of the education and trial lawyer lobbies, both of which have donated thousands upon thousands of dollars to keep this State Senate seat in their grubby, self-serving paws.”

Oopsy.

Talley’s main emphasis in his law practice is as a real estate attorney. Trial law takes up a very small amount of his work. But, that didn’t stop his opponents from trying to smear him. Now Bright, who is easily not one of the brightest bulbs in state government, has cut himself off at the knees with his and his supporters’ hypocrisy.

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.

Finally, we have our verdict — the ill-conceived plan birthed by Will Folks, Gov. Mark Sanford and the S.C. Club for Growth to toss out conservative Republicans who backed public education did not work.

Wednesday, the Senate Education Committee killed the private school choice bill, S. 520, the so-called “South Carolina Educational Opportunity Act.” The whole point behind the hit list saga was to put enough stooges in the legislature to back Sanford’s school choice plan, and, like everything else the Governor has tried to do, it failed to the degree that Sanford ought to put the “fail whale” on his letterhead.

These were guys who went after former Rep. Bill Cotty, even though he got an “A” rating from S.C. Club for Growth for last session the session before last, because he backed quality public education.

The effort these people put forth was one of the major issues that has caused a significant rift in the state Republican Party. While South Carolina is conservative enough for the SCGOP to withstand the sort of attack Sanford and his allies have mounted the past few years, they will have it on their conscience that they gave away two House seats in 2008 and have left the door open for Democratic victories in 2010.

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.