Salon.com > South Carolina

Mark Sanford — ready for a comeback?

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 07:00:00 +0000

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who left public life two years ago after mysteriously disappearing to visit his then-mistress in Argentina, is poised to re-enter the political arena.

Acknowledging reports that he is seriously weighing a congressional bid for the seat he once held, Sanford wrote in an email late Saturday: "To answer your question, yes the accounts are accurate." Sanford promised "further conversation on all this" at a later date.

The two-term governor was a rising Republican political star before he vanished from South Carolina for five days in 2009. Reporters were told he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, but he later tearfully acknowledged he was visiting Maria Belen Chapur, a woman he called his soul mate at a news conference announcing his affair. The two were engaged earlier this year.

The opening for Sanford comes after Rep. Tim Scott was appointed to fill the remaining two years of Sen. Jim DeMint's seat. DeMint announced earlier this month he was resigning.

News that Sanford, 52, may be interested in the seat comes days after his ex-wife, Jenny, appeared to be dipping her toe into the state's political waters.

Tim Scott named as Jim DeMint’s replacement

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:02:00 +0000

Nikki Haley has chosen Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C., to replace Sen. Jim DeMint when he steps down in January to head up the Heritage Foundation.

The New York Times' Caucus blog reports that three Republican officials say that Scott will take the spot, making him the first black senator from the South since the late 1800s -- and the only black senator in Congress.

From the Times:

Ms. Haley seriously considered a number of potential contenders, particularly Jenny Sanford, the ex-wife of former Gov. Mark Sanford, who supported Ms. Haley in her race two years ago. But in choosing Mr. Scott, she selected a lawmaker with a strong conservative voting record during his two years in Congress.

Nikki Haley dashes Colbert’s Senate dreams

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 18:47:00 +0000

Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., shot down Stephen Colbert's dreams of replacing Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., joking that it was because "You didn't know our state drink. Big, big mistake."

In a Facebook post, Haley, addressed the calls for Colbert to replace Sen. Jim DeMint, who announced last week that he was leaving his seat in January to take a job as chair of the Heritage Foundation. Haley, who must appoint DeMint's successor until a special election can be held in 2014, wrote in the post:

Stephen, thank you for your interest in South Carolina's U.S. Senate seat and for the thousands of tweets you and your fans sent me.

But you forget one thing, my friend.

You didn't know our state drink. Big, big mistake.

Haley was referring to her April appearance on The Colbert Report, when Stephen didn't know that milk was the state's official drink. Haley, for her part, was stumped by Colbert's question about the state amphibian - the spotted salamander.

Colbert taunts the Internet, says he’s open to replacing DeMint

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 21:55:00 +0000

In news that is probably too much to hope for, Stephen Colbert says he is not ruling out replacing Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., should Nikki Haley come calling.

"Stephen is honored by the groundswell of support from the Palmetto State and looks forward to Governor Haley's call," Carrie Byalick, Colbert's personal publicist, wrote in an email to Mother Jones.

DeMint announced today that he will step down from his seat in January to run the conservative Heritage Foundation, meaning that Gov. Nikki Haley will have to appoint someone to replace him until a special election can be held in 2014.

In response, a Twitter feed, @ColbertforSC, popped up to encourage Colbert to run. The account, and accompanying website, is not affiliated with Colbert.

[embedtweet id="276723943430316032"]

[embedtweet id="276743134099169281"]

In the past, Colbert, a native of South Carolina, has twice tried to run for president, first in 2007 and then again 2012.

Tea Partyer cuts and runs

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:03:00 +0000

Prominent conservative Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., is stepping down from his seat to head up the conservative Heritage Foundation, the Wall Street Journal reports.

DeMint will leave in early January, meaning that it will be up to South Carolina's Republican Gov. Nikki Haley to appoint a successor, who will have to run in a special election in 2014. DeMint was reelected in 2010, but already announced he wouldn't seek another term.

From the Journal:

In an interview preceding the succession announcement, Sen. DeMint said he is taking the Heritage job because he sees it as a vehicle to popularize conservative ideas in a way that connects with a broader public. "This is an urgent time," the senator said, "because we saw in the last election we were not able to communicate conservative ideas that win elections."

"This really gets my blood going again thinking about the possibilities. This is the time to elevate the conservative cause," he told the Post.

Are Republicans losing the South?

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 16:41:00 +0000

One of the more interesting elements of President Barack Obama’s re-election victory was his strong performance in the South. He won Virginia and Florida—again—and came close to a win in North Carolina, where he lost by just two points. “Obama’s 2012 numbers in the Southeastern coastal states,” writes Douglas Blackmon for The Washington Post, “outperformed every Democratic nominee since Carter and significantly narrowed past gaps between Democratic and Republican candidates.”

Indeed, Blackmon—who won a Pulitzer for the book Slavery by Another Name—sees this as a crack in the Republican Party’s otherwise solid hold on the South. A growing African American population, combined with greater Latino immigration and a shrinking white electorate (the share of white votes in Florida dropped to 66 percent, for example) has allowed Democrats to make gains in states that were once GOP strongholds. Judging from Election Day, this is most true in the five states that hug the coast: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Sen. Graham: I’ll “go nuts” if people say Romney “wasn’t conservative enough”

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:44:00 +0000

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Jonathan Martin of Politico that “if we lose this election there is only one explanation — demographics."

“If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts,” Graham said. “We’re not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.”

Thirteen and locked up for life?

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 20:27:00 +0000

At 21, Thomas Simmons has spent nearly half his life in confinement.

When he was 13, Simmons was sent to a juvenile detention center for raping and sexually abusing a younger relative over a period of years. When he was 17, Simmons became the youngest person indefinitely committed to South Carolina’s adult violent sex offender treatment program, according to court testimony.

The government initially placed Simmons in a restricted wing and assigned a staff member to stay with him to protect him from the other residents, many of them middle-aged child molesters, a program psychologist testified earlier this year.

Four years after his civil commitment, Simmons is asking the South Carolina Supreme Court to order his release. Though experts for the state Attorney General’s Office say Simmons is still dangerous, a psychologist at the sex offender commitment center testified at a court hearing earlier this year that Simmons has not shown signs of sexually violent behavior since before he was 13, and should be released.

Quote of the day: “Thugs”

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 22:21:00 +0000

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint joked around at the Values Voter Summit about how easily he gets confused by protesters:

“You know, we had a lot of bad news this week,” DeMint said. “On my way over, I was reading another story about a distant place where thugs had put 400,000 children out in the streets. And then I realized that was a story of the Chicago teachers strike. But we’ve got to think of good things.”

Via ThinkProgress.

White supremacist’s wild ponzi scheme

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 19:19:00 +0000

A South Carolina extremist who helped engineer an attempt to turn the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) into an actively neo-Confederate organization is now facing prison for his role in a Ponzi scheme that defrauded hundreds of people.

Ron G. Wilson remains free on bond after pleading guilty on July 30 to two counts of mail fraud. Wilson signed a plea agreement admitting that over an 11-year period he and his company, Atlantic Bullion & Coin, cheated at least 800 investors who collectively lost $59 million.

Wilson acknowledged that he told investors, falsely, that he was buying silver with their money and that it was stored in a Delaware depository. In the plea agreement, he wrote that he used “fictitious account statements” and “used money for my personal benefit.”

Is Stephen Colbert just kidding?

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:45:00 +0000

Later today, Stephen Colbert will host a rally with Herman Cain in South Carolina. It's part of his increasingly complicated involvement in his home state's GOP primary. Colbert wants voters to back Cain as a way of supporting Colbert's run for "president of the United States of South Carolina." Write-in candidates aren't allowed, hence the partnership with the one-time GOP front-runner, who qualified for the ballot before dropping out of the race amid controversy.

Who's kidding who? Is the joke on Cain? On South Carolina voters? Or is Colbert not joking at all? His super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorow, Tomorrow -- technically now in the capable hands of his colleague Jon Stewart -- has run a number of joke ads on TV. (One involves a lengthy attack on Colbert himself: "America is in crisis, and Stephen Colbert is turning our election into a circus. ... Why is the 't'' in his name silent? What else is he silent about? Letting murderers out of jail?") But Colbert and Stewart also spent a significant segment of Tuesday night's "Daily Show" explaining the dos and don'ts of super PAC coordination -- a satirical cover for discussion of an undeniably serious subject.

South Carolina, the troublemaker

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:43:00 +0000

Throughout its troubled, troubling history, South Carolina has been America’s agent provocateur, a political troublemaker vastly out of scale to its ranking as the nation’s 26th most-populous state. Today, with South Carolina’s primary around the corner, its role of national turd-disturber is heightened by the fact that since 1980 every successful Republican nominee for president has won the South Carolina primary.

South Carolina’s role as national bellwether bad-boy was cemented long ago, in 1861, in fact, when unionist attorney James L. Petigru, possibly the last sane man in antebellum Charleston, complained about his state’s secession from the American Union, decrying, “South Carolina, too small to be a republic, too big to be an asylum.” It should thus be no surprise that this coming Saturday, a tiny number of South Carolinian Republicans have the opportunity to place their loony imprimatur on the upcoming national election.