Governor’s Race Starting to Get Interesting

Boy, the race to be South Carolina’s governor is heating up and we’re still in the Dog Days of summer. It’s only going to get more intense as Labor Day marks the traditional time for the political punching to start.
In recent days, Gov. Nikki Haley has made the rounds touting an endorsement by the S.C. Chamber of Commerce — the same group that endorsed Sheheen four years ago but got whipped and cowed into shape after Haley won.
Haley also is airing an ad to highlight her record of moving some 20,000 South Carolina welfare recipients to the workforce. While critics complain the numbers aren’t accurate, what’s interesting is that Haley, who has been governor as the unemployment rate has dropped from double digits to less than 6 percent, is airing a welfare ad after proposing a new education program to help poor kids earlier this year in her State of the State address. It’s almost as if the conservative governor who wouldn’t allow more than 200,000 poor people to take advantage of government health insurance through the Affordable Care Act is focusing on using Democratic themes to soften her image.
As College of Charleston political science professor Gibbs Knotts notes, “The welfare to work language harkens back to the 1996 welfare reform law that was passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by Democratic President Clinton.”
Furthermore, starting with a welfare commercial is interesting because the state agency in charge of it — the state Department of Social Services — has been battered in the media and by state legislators for mismanagement by a Haley-picked director, Lillian Koller, who resigned in June.
Meanwhile, two of Haley’s challengers have been on the air too.
In May, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen went after Haley for mismanagement at the Department of Social Services (DSS) with a tough ad. But last month, the Democratic Governors Association got even meaner with a heavily-played ad about a lawyer who left DSS when she said she couldn’t keep working at the agency because the agency was “leaving children in dangerous situations to make the numbers look better.”
Knotts said the Democratic campaign’s focus on children might help create a gender gap and more support from women for Sheheen.
“I also expect him to focus on administrative mismanagement within DSS to be part of a larger attack against Governor Haley,” Knotts said. “I suspect that he will also spend time during the campaign talking about the security breach at the South Carolina Department of Revenue.”
Also new: independent Republican challenger Tom Ervin has launched a one-minute television commercial to highlight his character. Voiced by Ervin’s wife, the candidate’s first statewide ad since winning a spot on the ballot highlighted how Ervin paid for a funeral of a World War II veteran and got veterans to attend the funeral to honor the man’s service.
“The Ervin ad is a classic ‘get to know you, ad,” Knotts said. “South Carolina is a patriotic state and veterans and the families of veterans remain an important voting bloc.”
To date, there have been no big television ads from two other candidates, Libertarian Steve French of Charleston and United Citizens candidate Morgan Bruce Reeves of Winnsboro.
In the weeks ahead, look for Haley to tout her economic successes — bringing down the unemployment rate and working to land new plants and helping existing big businesses like Boeing to expand. More than likely, she’ll continue to be mostly positive, but to rely on outsiders, such as the Republican Governors Association, to attack Sheheen with nasty ads such as one that painted him as a (gasp) lawyer.
Meanwhile, Sheheen and Ervin have to be careful about being too negative. If they don’t give people enough positive reasons to vote for them as more than being “not Nikki Haley,” they could suffer at the polls.
Incumbents always have an advantage over challengers because they have good name recognition and don’t have to tear apart opponents as much. But with Haley’s approval ratings low enough to make campaign insiders squirm and with polls showing the gubernatorial race tightening, anything could happen. And probably will.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. He can be reached at brack@statehousereport.com.